Category Archives: Articles

Tax breaks for useful jobs

A new paper says that the income tax rate in socially useful jobs should be lower than in socially useless ones – here, regular guest-poster Charlotte Cavaille gives this argument a once-over, as part of a pair of posts on tax. With … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged | 2 Comments

Does truth matter?

If you’re reading this blog, then you’re probably interested in ‘the truth’ – by which I mean that you’re interested in the way the world really is, rather than pretending it’s the way you want it to be. We tend … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

So should we bother with ‘microclasses’?

Earlier in the year I published two blog posts on ‘microclasses’ – the idea that your specific occupation is an important structuring factor for the social world, beyond its position in a broader class. In this post I look back at … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Is there life after work? The welfare state in a future without jobs

Peter Frase argues that liberals are wrong to focus on universal employment: “Forget job creation, we need to do more job killing. Cutting the military budget, reining in the financial sector, and dismantling the prison-industrial complex will destroy many jobs. … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Microclass mobility (and its critics)

A few weeks ago I blogged about the idea of looking at class inequality in terms of ‘microclasses’ – that is, instead of looking at ‘big class’ inequality (e.g.  professionals vs. manual workers), we look at ‘microclass’ inequality (e.g. welders … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The red rag of health incentives

In this guest post, Harald Schmidt from the University of Pennsylvania takes apart the media furore about a proposal  (at least as reported) to cut payments to unhealthy benefit claimants if they didn’t go to the gym – using the insights gained … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Classes or ‘microclasses’? The nature of occupational inequality

From Bush to Bush. Miliband to Miliband. Kennedy to Kennedy. Churchill to Churchill. There’s no shortage of political dynasties either in the US or UK, where politically powerful parents beget politically powerful children. Likewise, we often observe how doctors’ children become … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , | 12 Comments

The surprising truth about benefits stigma in Britain

This article was originally posted on the LSE Politics & Policy blog - it’s a co-written post by me, Kate Bell and Declan Gaffney, based on our new report on the stigma of claiming benefits that  came out last week. If you don’t pay … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Coalition, benefit cuts, and income inequality

This is a piece that first appeared in One Society‘s ‘half-term report’ on the Coalition Government and inequality (references and footnotes available in the full report). The whole (short!) edited volume is also worth a read, containing articles by Kate … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Class Inequality in Austerity Britain

In this guest post, Steven Roberts summarises his new book (co-edited with Will Atkinson and Mike Savage), ‘Class Inequality in Austerity Britain‘, and presents a vision of the political role of Sociology in the 21st century.   Not that it has … Continue reading

Posted in Articles | Tagged , | 2 Comments