Como se combate o populismo? "Com eleições", responde Fukuyama

[Jameson]

Rhetoric against 'Anglo-Saxon model' belied by facts
By Nicholas Timmins, Public Policy Editor
Published: June 22 2005 19:23 | Last updated: June 22 2005 19:23

The UK's welfare state and labour market, and its perceived similarity to that of the US, appear to have helped scare French and Dutch voters off the European constitution.

Britain's "Anglo-Saxon model" is believed to have produced filthy hospitals, long queues, a collapsing pension system and draconian welfare-to-work programmes that produce high levels of poverty and inequality.

The truth is more nuanced. Under Tony Blair's government, spending on health is rising at record levels. It will soon match and possibly exceed the EU average after decades of trailing.

Cleanliness remains a battle. But hospital waiting times are falling. And from an admittedly low base, the the UK has some of the fastest improving outcomes in cancer and heart disease.

There is a long way to go, and a serious debate over whether the scale of the improvement is matching the extra resources. But overall the UK's health system is getting better not worse.

It is around welfare-to-work, and flexible labour markets, that, at first sight, some of the biggest differences between the UK and the rest of Europe appear. Benefits for those out of work have always been lower in the UK than in much of mainland Europe.

The payments have become more conditional under both Conservatives and Labour.

A "rights and responsibilities" agenda has required unemployment benefit claimants to seek work or training. However, the reforms have included more generous in-work benefits for those who take low-paid jobs, which are now underpinned by a minimum wage.

Even in the UK, this is seen as a model drawn from the US. But John Hills, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion (Case) at the London School of Economics, says that "while much of the rhetoric and jargon match that of the United States, many of the reforms have involved much more carrot and much less stick than in the US, and in some cases have produced as good, if not better, results".

Some of the inspiration for them came as much from programmes in Sweden and Denmark as they did from the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Richard Leyard of the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance argues that similar approaches have helped Ireland, the Netherlands and Portugal, as well as Denmark and the UK, produce dramatic falls in unemployment.

On pensions, the UK's position is starkly different to that of much of mainland Europe, although this is less a result of Blair's Labour government policies than those of the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997.

State pensions have always been less generous in the UK, with a bigger role for the private sector than in most EU countries. The Conservatives slashed the value of the state pension to the point where the problem in the UK is no longer one of affordability - the challenge that most longer-standing members of the EU still face.

Instead, the UK's problem is one of adequacy. State pensions are mean. Private pension saving has been hit by mis-selling scandals, the big stock market fall after 2000, rising life expectancy, and new accounting rules that have exposed large pension fund deficits.

The Blair government's solution has been to boost the income of Thursday's poorer pensioners. But it has so far failed to reform the system so that state and private saving combined will produce an adequate income in old age - something that many people, on current trends, will lack.

However, a range of new tax credits, combined with higher employment, has meant that since 1997 "the UK has made a significant step on the road to bringing child poverty rates down towards average EU levels . . . at a time when other high poverty countries within Europe have seen child poverty rise", Kitty Stewart, a research fellow at Case, concluded in a recent study.

The number of poor pensioners is down by a quarter. And while childless adults without work have not done well, "looking at the overall poverty rate for the population as a whole, the UK's performance is the best in Europe", Ms Stewart wrote.

But if the numbers in poverty are down, thanks in part to those welfare-to-work reforms, overall inequality has barely shifted since Labour took power in 1997.

The poor have seen their position improve relative to the middle and even to much of the top income brackets. But the very rich - those in the top half to 1 per cent of the income distribution - have continued to accelerate away from everyone else.

In that, at least, the UK's Anglo-Saxon model does have more in common with the US than most of mainland Europe.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/009ef834-e343- ... 511c8.html

[R_Martins]

bem, em crescimento da economia, em taxas de desemprego, em cargas fiscais, etc etc etc... está muito melhor do que os países que ainda não fizeram qualquer reforma... não é por qualquer razão que a taxa de desemprego em frança ou na alemanha, ou na Itália é sempre a multiplicar em números inteiros em relação à britanica...

e estamos a falar do R.U., porque se formos a falar da irlanda, então nossa senhora tenha pena de nós...

pode nem tudo ser perfeito na terra de sua majestade, mas não tem a economia estrangulada com défices publicos, cargas fiscais incomportaveis ou sistemas sociais pesados e rigidos, daí conseguirem safarem-se mesmo em tempo de crise... simplesmente porque conseguem continuar a atrair investimentos, onde outros países nem lhe chegam a tomar o sabor...

...sim é verdade. Creio que é a terceira ou quarta vez que os britanicos escolhem o Blair, é porque as coisas não estão assim tão mal.
Não gosto do Blair, é como o presidente americano, só metem o nariz onde não são chamados.Mas a economia funciona melhor em Inglaterra, que no resto da Europa.
R. Martins

[UmPataconcio]

bem, em crescimento da economia, em taxas de desemprego, em cargas fiscais, etc etc etc... está muito melhor do que os países que ainda não fizeram qualquer reforma... não é por qualquer razão que a taxa de desemprego em frança ou na alemanha, ou na Itália é sempre a multiplicar em números inteiros em relação à britanica...

e estamos a falar do R.U., porque se formos a falar da irlanda, então nossa senhora tenha pena de nós...

pode nem tudo ser perfeito na terra de sua majestade, mas não tem a economia estrangulada com défices publicos, cargas fiscais incomportaveis ou sistemas sociais pesados e rigidos, daí conseguirem safarem-se mesmo em tempo de crise... simplesmente porque conseguem continuar a atrair investimentos, onde outros países nem lhe chegam a tomar o sabor...

[R_Martins]

Como cidadao desta contorbada Europa , eis que assisto diaramente cronicas de Opinion Maquers que O Sr Blair aparece como o verdadeiro senhor de estado do sec 21 .
Sera que tudo esta bem na terra da Sra Majestade?
agradecia opinioes!!

...pelo menos os ingleses dizem que sim, sim senhor Blair!!!
R. Martins

[suica]

Como cidadao desta contorbada Europa , eis que assisto diaramente cronicas de Opinion Maquers que O Sr Blair aparece como o verdadeiro senhor de estado do sec 21 .
Sera que tudo esta bem na terra da Sra Majestade?
agradecia opinioes!!