

Austerity leads to political unrest - sp332
http://www.underpaidgenius.com/post/8729189868

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aj700
Correlation is not causation. I am British.

The austerity cuts haven't started yet. They may cause unrest later. They
can't cause unrest before it.

reasons for UK problems:

1\. Economy is crap.

2\. Inequality. Public education is crap. Lower classes are as anti-
intellectual as any red state American.

3\. Multiculturalism. Between new immigrants and old ones. Young and old.
Muslim and non-Muslim. Black and white. Taxpayer class, benefits class. These
cultures are totally ghettoised from each other.

4\. Rioting is fun. Herd behaviour. Media coverage - monkey see monkey do.
Monkey sees little social sanction.

5\. Britain is not a democracy. First past the post is the most stable
oligarchy for a political class short of dictatorship. 3 parties fight only
for a few thousand swing voters.

~~~
politician
4 out of 5 of your points could be summarized as "bourgeoisie oppression."
When this happens in the Middle East the media calls it "the Arab Spring," but
when it happens in an ostensibly Western democracy it's "random acts of
violence without cause."

At least, that's how Fox News was portraying it this morning.

~~~
MrScruff
There is no oppression, just no equal opportunities for all. However, a
sufficiently motivated and able person can do well for themselves in the UK
regardless of their background. They're just statistically unlikely to.

~~~
_delirium
I don't know much about the UK job market; how does race-blindness compare to,
say, continental Europe? From what I can tell here in Denmark, it's still
harder to get hired if you have a Muslim- or African-sounding last name, even
with good credentials, than with a Danish or at least European last name.

~~~
MrScruff
It's undoubtedly true that you'll face some prejudice as a minority in the UK.
However I would imagine if you have better qualifications than the other
candidates most of the time you'll get the job.

I would say in the UK race and class both incur a noticeable handicap. Just
not an overwhelming one.

------
po
Here's a link to the original instead of blog spam:

<http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6851>

~~~
sp332
Dang, I missed the link right at the top. Sorry for the blogspam.

~~~
po
When an post is only a few sentences of commentary and thousands of words of
block quote, it's easy to mistake it for original content.

Good article, thanks.

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joshuaheard
I would take the same data and argue that government social welfare programs
lead to political unrest. When you start to take away the free government
benefits that the underclass has grown to depend upon, you cause stability. It
is analogous to withdrawals symptoms during an intervention on a drug
addiction. Don't blame the doctor for the patient's withdrawal symptoms, blame
the drug addiction.

~~~
_delirium
The hypothesis that social unrest is primarily the result of _withdrawal_ of
social programs, rather than simply their absence, should mean that we fail to
see riots when the social programs didn't exit in the first place. But there
are plenty of examples of riots predating a strong social safety net; for
example, the Haymarket riots in the United States.

I don't see any historical evidence for the claim that stability typically
accompanies lack of social programs.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The article claims a _correlation_ between withdrawal of social programs, not
a hard and fast rule. Pointing out a single data point which goes against the
trend does not invalidate the statistical claims.

~~~
_delirium
The post I was replying to _has_ no statistical claims. My example was
illustrative; the broader point is that to advance a hypothesis that riots
accompany _withdrawal_ of social safety nets, but not their absence, you would
need to show a general lack of riots in periods where social safety nets
didn't exist in the first place. But there are thousands of examples of riots
in countries and periods with no social safety nets; the Haymarket riots are
just one random example.

Perhaps it is possible to perform a statistical analysis that shows that the
absence of social safety nets does still, in general, produce stability, but I
haven't seen one put forth. The linked article certainly does not include any
data relevant to that hypothesis.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The original article claims that a % change in social benefits is a strong
predictor of riots. I'm assuming that by choosing to focus on this factor, the
article intends to imply that it is the strongest predictor within their data
set.

If that is the case, then the number of riots is related more strongly to
withdrawal of benefits than to their base levels.

This would support joshuaheard's claims, though of course it doesn't rule out
the possibility that riots(social benefit levels) is a nonlinear function,
increasing near 0 and flat in the regime where the original dataset lived.

------
djm
I'd guess that unrest is inevitable when a country gets a debt problem
whichever way you deal with it. The current unrest in London and other UK
cities _may_ be the result of austerity and what happened in Greece recently
certainly is.

However, the alternative (inflation) would have the same effect. See 1920's
Germany/Austria for example - 'When Money Dies' by Adam Fergusson is _the_
book on this.

~~~
_delirium
> However, the alternative (inflation) would have the same effect.

I don't think this is necessarily true. Pre-euro, Greece devalued the drachma
several times in order to manage its debts and trade balance (by around 15%
each time in 1983, 1985, and 1998), but it didn't lead to rioting in the
streets.

~~~
djm
That's interesting. I guess it depends on the scale of the inflation. Germany
printed money to pay their war reparations with and when it got to the hyper-
inflation stage everybody was screwed.

Inflation in relatively small amounts is only going to really hurt savers so I
guess if the population distribution is skewed towards more people with debt
than with savings (isn't it always!) then a government might be able to use it
to reduce the likelyhood and scale of unrest.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah; now that I think of it, it also may depend on how easily you can
decouple inflation in external terms (currency devaluation vis-a-vis another
currency) from internal inflation (change in prices in local currency). From
what I can tell from Greek relatives, the average person didn't see much
effect from the 83/85 devaluations, because there wasn't much internal
inflation. Imported items got more expensive in drachma terms due to the
exchange rate, but going to the barber didn't: he still charged about as many
drachmas as previously, so your local buying power wasn't really reduced. It's
just that everyone now both made and charged less money in dollar terms, which
is actually deflation from an external perspective.

