COVID has really hit older people hard. Under 45s experienced no jump in excess deaths; it has all come from older cohorts. 2/n
So you can see why older people are really down about things. Younger people also seem down. What’s that about? 3/n
Young people have less space in lockdown (as well as less/no garden) 4/n
Younger people - and older people - have lost a lot of jobs. 5/n
Younger people have born the brunt of ongoing welfare cuts this year that have protected the elderly. 6/n
Recent cuts come on the back of yrs of benefit chgs that have boosted elderly incomes & cut younger incomes. 7/n
Such has been the chg in state emphasis that basic state pension will be c 2x unemployment benefits in mid-2020s from parity when Boomers were young. 8/n
So no surprise that Boomers spending has been ... booming. 9/n
And younger home-ownership levels at 25yo c 1/4 the levels seen in Boomers’ youth. 10/n
Tbh, impressed at how little intergenerational friction there is in UK politics. And that (primarily Labour-supporting) young maintain such a steadfast support for better-funding the NHS, given the proportion spent on the old. (For the avoidance of doubt, I’m with them.)
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I’ve been wary of ‘coulda woulda shoulda’ armchair critics of govt strategy around COVID19 using 20:20 hindsight. This @thetimes piece is *very different* & worth a read. 1/n
It describes the trade-offs that ministers facing between excess COVID19 deaths & reopening the country as *impossible* 2/n
The prospect of “trading-off” deaths of some against liberties of others (economic, social) sounds pretty awful. But isn’t this what govts do everyday? 3/n
I’m no epidemiologist & have no insight on COVID-19 unknowables. Like many (all) I have to deal with its potential impact on my particular corner of the world. 1/n
Helpfully, the UK has outlined its approach to a reasonable worst case scenario, which is 50% infection of a new virus with 2.5% mortality rate (untreated) 2/n assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
50% infection w/ 2.5% mortality sounds like a pretty horrific scenario. Best guess as to coronavirus mortality rate seems today to be c2%, but evolving? 3/n worldometers.info/coronavirus/co…
Yes, everyone is fed up with Brexit takes. But this week had a convo with a US friend still confused as to what the hell is going on and why. This analogy seemed to help. You’ll *hate* it.
No American I know has much love for the IRS, regardless of political affiliation. But imagine there was a referendum that proposed *abolishing* it.
Abolitionists might include folks of many affiliations: Ultra-small state zealots; uberwealthy; Leftist reckoning *major* tax reform easiest starting w/ blank sheet; folks pissed off w/ IRS; folks reckon they pay more than their share in tax.
Looking back at my pre-EU Ref scenarios work I can confidently say that the Brexit that May was shooting for was then termed ‘Hard Brexit’
Looked like a coalition of disagreeing Brexit factions could deliver Leave victory, but remarkable that something much harder than most were shooting for became too soft 3yrs on.
Newish Romer & Romer paper is fascinating. Looks at the GDP aftermath in OECD countries hit by finl crises 1980-2017. Ability of fiscal to respond (where low debt = lots of space; high debt = not much fiscal space) really important. brookings.edu/wp-content/upl…
Captain obvious? No! Really actually pretty interesting actually. Why? Because countries worried that they might *at some point* run out of fiscal space sometimes fiscally tighten too early, making the country poorer.
Any clues as to which countries might have delivered large scale procyclical austerity, not because they had to? In the last decade Austria and the UK.