Last week, this blog referred to the question of a
falling birth rate, and the alleged ‘problems’ it creates. The Sunday times
(paywall) carried an article
this week about a new report from a think tank calling itself the Centre for
Social Justice on the same issue. The report itself, Baby Bust, is available here.
The main factor on which it alights is that it is all the fault of immature men,
who are entering the adult work force later and thus deferring parenthood for
men and women alike. But it was the ‘solutions’ which caught my eye.
Leaving aside the socially conservative proposals
about incentivising marriage and encouraging mothers (not fathers, note) to be
stay-at-home child carers, moving to ‘household’ rather than individual taxation
– all massive steps backwards, particularly for the status and role of women in
society – it was their proposals for education which leapt out at me:
“Reduce the school
leaving age and get most young people into the workplace as early as possible”,
and
“In a similar vein,
we should drastically reduce the numbers of 18-year-olds going to university.”
They didn’t suggest to what age the school leaving
age should be reduced. I suspect that they don’t want to go back to sending 8
or 10 years olds down the mines (or aren’t prepared to say so), but it seems
clear that they want to at least reverse the increase from 16 to 18. They also
want to increase the retirement age to qualify for the state pension. My
interpretation of it all was that their idea of ‘social justice’ seems to mean
that working class boys, and women in general, should know their place and
understand their station in life, as though the 1950s was some sort of golden
age. It was a depressing read, and no surprise to find the foreword written by
a Tory Shadow Minister.
But, to return to last week’s post, what it’s really
all about is looking for a ‘solution’ to a ‘problem’ in a way which avoids the need
to look at how the economy serves society, and above all at wealth distribution
within society. ‘Social Justice’ which protects the wealthiest at the expense
of the rest is an Orwellian use of language, to say the least.
Posts
3 comments:
The school leaving age in Wales is 16, not 18. In England, there's a requirement to remain in either education or training until the age of 18, although the latter can be connected to employment. So even in England the school leaving age isn't really 18. I'd suggest that the biggest issue with an aging population combined with a falling birthrate is that we need an ever increasing number of younger people to look after an ever increasing number of those older people who can no longer look after themselves. It's difficult to find those people. Part of that is low pay of course. But it's also because most people aren't prepared to do it and the pool of potential carers is forever shrinking.
"The school leaving age in Wales is 16, not 18. In England, there's a requirement to remain in either education or training until the age of 18" Fair comment, should have been more precise in describing the current position.
"...the biggest issue with an aging population combined with a falling birthrate is that we need an ever increasing number of younger people to look after an ever increasing number of those older people..." I'd agree that that is actually a bigger issue than the largely economic one (paying for pensions, etc) which the report to which I referred was seeking to address. I won't pretend that I have a ready-made solution to that, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't involve increasing the birth rate. Low pay, as you say, is a part of the problem - and the desire of some of those who don't want to do the job themselves to bar immigrants from doing it is another.
This is not as stupid as it will sound.
Intensive investment into, I hate what will spring to mind, robotic assistance for elderly care preferable at home. Far far more capable than today but maybe learn from Japan .......
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