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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUK in breach of international human rights
The United Nations has confirmed that the UK's Austerity policies breach the UKs international human rights obligations.
The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has expressed serious concern about the impact of regressive policies on the enjoyment of economic and social rights in a damning report on the UK.
Based on evidence it received from Just Fair and other civil society groups, the Committee concludes that austerity measures and social security reform breach the UKs international human rights obligations.
This was the Committees first review of the UK since 2009 and thus its first verdict on the Austerity policies pursued by successive governments since the financial crash. Over eight months the Committee conducted a dialogue with government officials, the UK human rights commissions and civil society groups.
http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/news/uk-in-breachhuman-rights/00287.html
The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has expressed serious concern about the impact of regressive policies on the enjoyment of economic and social rights in a damning report on the UK.
Based on evidence it received from Just Fair and other civil society groups, the Committee concludes that austerity measures and social security reform breach the UKs international human rights obligations.
This was the Committees first review of the UK since 2009 and thus its first verdict on the Austerity policies pursued by successive governments since the financial crash. Over eight months the Committee conducted a dialogue with government officials, the UK human rights commissions and civil society groups.
http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/news/uk-in-breachhuman-rights/00287.html
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UK in breach of international human rights (Original Post)
Denzil_DC
Jun 2016
OP
No surprise there, the Conservatives are entirely and independently wedded to austerity
TubbersUK
Jun 2016
#4
leveymg
(36,418 posts)1. What does that say about the US?
AusterityRUS.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)2. Or Liberia.
elleng
(130,865 posts)3. or how many other countries
forced into 'austerity?'
Denzil_DC
(7,232 posts)6. I first posted these two articles below on the UK Group a while back.
Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1088&pid=9481
It seems a good time to re-post them, perhaps for a wider audience.
Maggie Chapman: How a dodgy spreadsheet and a bad joke created the Tory austerity lie
FOR the last five years, an argument has raged. On one side, you had almost all living Nobel Prize winning economists, the evidence of history and organisations representing almost all of the less well off in society. On the other side, you had a few powerful journalists, a cluster of billionaires, a dodgy spreadsheet, and a bad joke, scrawled on a piece of paper by a minister from a defeated government.
...
These were the people who argued that you needed to rapidly cut government spending to reduce the deficit caused by the 2008 financial crisis. In the world of universities, serious research, and evidence, their case rested on a study by two economics professors called Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
These two American academics had produced a famous spreadsheet of economic data from across the world. They said it proved that if a government borrowed more than 90 per cent of the value of their country's Gross Domestic Product, then that slowed the country's economy down, making it harder to pay back the debt.
...
In 2013, though, something happened which would have altered the course of history, if government policy was decided by reasoned argument. A young economist went back to the original spreadsheet and spent some time looking at their basic sums.
It turned out that Reinhart and Rogoff had made a simple copy and paste error. Correct their mistakes, and their Excel spreadsheet added up very differently. The justification for austerity literally disappeared in the click and swoop of a mouse.
Full article: https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/2821/maggie-chapman-how-a-dodgy-spreadsheet-and-a-bad-joke-created-the-tory-austerity-lie
FOR the last five years, an argument has raged. On one side, you had almost all living Nobel Prize winning economists, the evidence of history and organisations representing almost all of the less well off in society. On the other side, you had a few powerful journalists, a cluster of billionaires, a dodgy spreadsheet, and a bad joke, scrawled on a piece of paper by a minister from a defeated government.
...
These were the people who argued that you needed to rapidly cut government spending to reduce the deficit caused by the 2008 financial crisis. In the world of universities, serious research, and evidence, their case rested on a study by two economics professors called Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
These two American academics had produced a famous spreadsheet of economic data from across the world. They said it proved that if a government borrowed more than 90 per cent of the value of their country's Gross Domestic Product, then that slowed the country's economy down, making it harder to pay back the debt.
...
In 2013, though, something happened which would have altered the course of history, if government policy was decided by reasoned argument. A young economist went back to the original spreadsheet and spent some time looking at their basic sums.
It turned out that Reinhart and Rogoff had made a simple copy and paste error. Correct their mistakes, and their Excel spreadsheet added up very differently. The justification for austerity literally disappeared in the click and swoop of a mouse.
Full article: https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/2821/maggie-chapman-how-a-dodgy-spreadsheet-and-a-bad-joke-created-the-tory-austerity-lie
Maggie Chapman's the Scottish Green Party Co-convener, so obviously her ravings are easy for the likes of Osborne to dismiss. And he's done such a sterling job of shrinking the deficit that he must be taken seriously. (He's also reportedly about to unleash a little tax lovebomb for the better-off funded off the backs of those suffering from disability welfare cuts etc., but that's by the by.) She also doesn't link to the debunking by this "young economist."
But Bloomberg Businessweek gives more details:
FAQ: Reinhart, Rogoff, and the Excel Error That Changed History
Harvard University economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have acknowledged making a spreadsheet calculation mistake in a 2010 research paper, Growth in a Time of Debt (PDF), which has been widely cited to justify budget-cutting. But the authors stand by their conclusion that higher government debt is associated with slower economic growth. Heres what you need to know:
How big is this mistake?
Reinhart and Rogoff wrote in their 2010 paper that average annual growth was negative 0.1 percent in countries with episodes of gross government debt equal to 90 percent or more of GDP between 1945 and 2009. Liberal economists have been critical of their work for years (just economists being their usual cranky selves), but now three economists at UMass say Reinhart and Rogoff made several mistakes and omissions. According to the UMass scholars, the corrected number is positive 2.2 percentwhich means GDP still grows, even when debt levels are very high.
Do Reinhart and Rogoff admit they got it wrong?
They admit they accidentally excluded five rows from an average in their Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, but not the other charges. Fixing the spreadsheet error would lift growth in those high-debt countries to about 0.2 percent annually (still not that good). Adding country data that wasnt available when they did the 2010 paper would boost growth further, to perhaps 0.5 percent (ditto). The UMass economists get all the way up to 2.2 percent by using a counting method that gives more weight to a few countries that experienced long periods of high debt. Reinhart and Rogoff insist that their method is better.
Wonky.
Yes, and Reinhart and Rogoff argue that its beside the point anyway. They put more weight on other data covering longer time periods, which finds that growth is about 1 percentage point lower in episodes of high debt compared to when debt is below 90 percent of GDP. (U.S. government debt is over 100 percent of GDP when you include debt owed by one part of government to another, such as the Social Security trust fund.) They say that even the UMass researchers found that high debt and low growth go hand in hand.
You mean that high debt causes low growth?
Not necessarily. Reinhart and Rogoff are careful in their academic work not to claim causation. Its possible that slow growth leads to high debt rather than high debt causing slow growth. (Or maybe the causality runs in both directions.) One complaint of their critics is that in Op-Eds, interviews, and other non-academic work, Reinhart and Rogoff have sometimes flatly asserted that high debt leads to slow growth when other explanations are possible.
Full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-18/faq-reinhart-rogoff-and-the-excel-error-that-changed-history
Harvard University economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have acknowledged making a spreadsheet calculation mistake in a 2010 research paper, Growth in a Time of Debt (PDF), which has been widely cited to justify budget-cutting. But the authors stand by their conclusion that higher government debt is associated with slower economic growth. Heres what you need to know:
How big is this mistake?
Reinhart and Rogoff wrote in their 2010 paper that average annual growth was negative 0.1 percent in countries with episodes of gross government debt equal to 90 percent or more of GDP between 1945 and 2009. Liberal economists have been critical of their work for years (just economists being their usual cranky selves), but now three economists at UMass say Reinhart and Rogoff made several mistakes and omissions. According to the UMass scholars, the corrected number is positive 2.2 percentwhich means GDP still grows, even when debt levels are very high.
Do Reinhart and Rogoff admit they got it wrong?
They admit they accidentally excluded five rows from an average in their Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, but not the other charges. Fixing the spreadsheet error would lift growth in those high-debt countries to about 0.2 percent annually (still not that good). Adding country data that wasnt available when they did the 2010 paper would boost growth further, to perhaps 0.5 percent (ditto). The UMass economists get all the way up to 2.2 percent by using a counting method that gives more weight to a few countries that experienced long periods of high debt. Reinhart and Rogoff insist that their method is better.
Wonky.
Yes, and Reinhart and Rogoff argue that its beside the point anyway. They put more weight on other data covering longer time periods, which finds that growth is about 1 percentage point lower in episodes of high debt compared to when debt is below 90 percent of GDP. (U.S. government debt is over 100 percent of GDP when you include debt owed by one part of government to another, such as the Social Security trust fund.) They say that even the UMass researchers found that high debt and low growth go hand in hand.
You mean that high debt causes low growth?
Not necessarily. Reinhart and Rogoff are careful in their academic work not to claim causation. Its possible that slow growth leads to high debt rather than high debt causing slow growth. (Or maybe the causality runs in both directions.) One complaint of their critics is that in Op-Eds, interviews, and other non-academic work, Reinhart and Rogoff have sometimes flatly asserted that high debt leads to slow growth when other explanations are possible.
Full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-18/faq-reinhart-rogoff-and-the-excel-error-that-changed-history
elleng
(130,865 posts)9. Thanks for the useful 'reminder.'
TubbersUK
(1,439 posts)5. Ugh ? n/t
TubbersUK
(1,439 posts)4. No surprise there, the Conservatives are entirely and independently wedded to austerity
it's in their DNA, they're Thatcher's heirs after all. They've even been emboldened, on occasion, to come clean about it instead of blaming external factors:
From 2013:
David Cameron makes leaner state a permanent goal
The government is to forge a "leaner, more efficient state" on a permanent basis, David Cameron has said as he signalled he had no intention of resuming spending once the structural deficit has been eliminated, a clear change to claims made after the last general election .
In a change of tack from saying in 2010 that he was imposing cuts out of necessity, rather than from "some ideological zeal", the prime minister told the Lord Mayor's banquet that the government has shown in the last three years that better services can be delivered with lower spending.
The government is to forge a "leaner, more efficient state" on a permanent basis, David Cameron has said as he signalled he had no intention of resuming spending once the structural deficit has been eliminated, a clear change to claims made after the last general election .
In a change of tack from saying in 2010 that he was imposing cuts out of necessity, rather than from "some ideological zeal", the prime minister told the Lord Mayor's banquet that the government has shown in the last three years that better services can be delivered with lower spending.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/11/david-cameron-policy-shift-leaner-efficient-state
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/13/david-cameron-austerity-public-sector-cuts
pampango
(24,692 posts)7. Tories have already proposed withdrawing from Human Rights agreements. That will teach those pesky
liberals a lesson they won't soon forget.
Brexit and human rights: winter is coming
Given the toxic politics of Farage, Johnson, Le Pen and Trump, will human rights be enough to resist right-wing nationalism in the wake of Brexit?
Brexit holds little good news for human rights. They were hardly mentioned in the referendum campaignsnot even to gloat that leaving the EU would let the UK remove itself from the Charter of Fundamental Rights. For the Leave campaigners this was doubtless because human rights are low down (but still on) the list of things they love to hate. ... Human rights are not a vote winnerthey rank with immigration, EU bureaucrats and climate change science among the things Leavers see as a threat to the British way of life.
This doesnt mean that rights arent talked about. The Torieswho want to scrap the UKs 1998 Human Rights Act and (some say) withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) entirelymake the claim that they are true champions of fundamental rights. And even that repealing the Human Rights Act will be a net gain for human rights.
The class upholding these rights was heavily pro Remain and they lost. Human rights were seen as a cosmopolitan luxury for a metropolitan elite protecting its wealth or a conspiracy to erode national values and destroy national identity by giving strangers and foreigners the same legal protections as citizens. Either way, caught in this vice, the urban professional middle classes failed to prevail.
This obscene xenophobia has been legitimated and electrified by its prominent role in the Leave campaign. Not only will it sour social relations within the UK, seemingly a petty-minded island nation with fascist tendencies, it has turbo-charged right-wing European politicians like Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands who called for their own referendums immediately.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/stephen-hopgood/brexit-and-human-rights-winter-is-coming
Denzil_DC
(7,232 posts)8. Shameless *bump* for the later crew. n/t
Denzil_DC
(7,232 posts)10. Final bump for the "austerity lie" links, if nothing else. n/t