Harry's Place

Have you ever wondered about the correlation between men’s upper-body strength and their attitudes toward economic redistribution?
So have I. Fortunately a study published in the journal Psychological Science provides some interesting answers.
The study found that among rich men, those with the most upper-body strength had the most negative attitudes toward redistribution. Somewhat more surprising (at [...]

At The New Republic, Ruy Teixeira reviews two books challenging the conventional conservative wisdom about austerity as an economic policy: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth and The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, by epidemiologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu.
It is not just in conservative circles that the austerity idea remains [...]

The New York Times reports:
As an elementary school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But recently he has seen something altogether different, something he thought was impossible in Greece: children picking through school trash cans for food; needy youngsters asking playmates for leftovers; and an 11-year-old [...]

Part of the rationale for capping the increase in basic benefits to less than inflation was to signal approval for those in work and who had not enjoyed a similar pay-rise.
A pay-rate which the authorities do have direct control over is the minimum wage, and this is to be increased by 12p per [...]

The EU and its antecedent organizations always have struck me as being based on laissez-faire economics and free-trade; which had been concealable during the credit boom when those previously opposed found reasons to involve themselves with its inner sanctum.
Other disparities between stated views and actual actions can be seen in recent economic policy of Cyprus. [...]

The Office of National Statistics recently covered the rise of underemployment during the Great Recession.
Although the definition of the term can be subjective – individuals who merely are prepared to work more hours whilst currently being in full-time (or near enough) employment, or some of the multitude of university graduates who believe working in ice-cream [...]

It was true last June, and it’s even truer now.
Fans of the classic “Leave it to Beaver” sitcom (which appeared on American TV from the late 1950s to the early 1960s and has since been endlessly rerun) may appreciate this brilliant take on what conservatives like Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly consider a golden age of [...]

Kevin Meagher at Left Foot Forward cogitates on the successes – or not, as the case may be – of the Regional Growth Fund. Launched in 2010 with £1.4 billions of funding, it was intended to kick-start economic development in down-at-heel regions of England and Wales.
Margaret Hodge, chairing the Westminster public accounts committee points [...]

This tells a lot about life in the United States– for better and for worse.
While segregation of neighborhoods by race is decreasing, segregation by income is increasing.
A report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center said the percentage of upper-income households situated in affluent neighborhoods doubled between 1980 and 2010, rising to 18 percent. In [...]

I wanted to pick up on one or two threads which emerged in the discussion following my recent brief post about housing benefits.  As Kolya remarked in the comments, this is not the kind of issue which seems to encourage a calm exchange of views, certainly not a shift in anyone’s established position. However, although [...]