Sweet Jesu, Protect Us From Henry Dimbleby
Before pronouncing upon economics, learn some economics
That the average personofindeterminategender on the Clapham Omnibus doesn’t grasp the finer points of economics is fine, just fine. So too they don’t grasp the finer points of physics and yet they grasp that being hit by the omnibus will do more damage to them than to the ‘bus - or, indeed, Clapham. Which is a fine and intuitive understanding of physics. Well, some part of it at least, density, friction, momentum, summat.
Actually, the average understanding of economics is rather better than that of physics - economics is a description of how humans behave in certain circumstances. We’re all actually pretty good at working out how other humans behave - we are competing with them after all. Or cooperating with them if you prefer - but reading humans is something humans are really pretty good at.
True, there are some findings within economics that said average indeterminategender would do well to pay more attention to - hyperbolic discounting perhaps. In the formal sense it’s saying that we apply too high a discount rate to things that are going to happen in the future. In more detail than that we tend to get the discount rate right out to perhaps 15 or 20 years. Beyond that, too high. This is, as all here will know, the argument that Stern had with himself in his Review. We use too high a discount rate in markets to be able evaluate climate change properly. Therefore we must use a lower one.
Well, OK. But the market interest rate is just the aggregate of what we all think. And even Stern thought market interest rates worked out to that 15 to 20 years time-span.
It’s easy enough to explain why this happens too - being rather less formal here. In the couple of hundred thousand years of humans up to about the last century but one 15 to 20 years was about the likely lifespan limit of a human of an age to be doing any thinking about the future, having any plans for it. It’s sensible to have a planning horizon about your lifespan long. We could also characterise it as 20 years being, historically, about the time period between meeting a girl with a gleam in her eye and the two of you welcoming the first grandchild - at which point babbies are someone else’s problem.
This inbuilt, evolutionary, thing is now cockeyed of course. Lifespans have expanded enormously, possibly about doubled in fact. 20 years isn’t the lifespan horizon any more. But the gut, the hindbrain, still tells us it is.
The net effect of this is that none of us save enough for our pensions. So, we should take note of this idea of hyperbolic discounting in order not to do our Golden Years meat shopping in the cat food aisle.
OK.
However, this acceptance that it’s fine to be ignorant about economics - except for a couple of bits - fails when we’ve got some fool standing up on hind legs to tell us all what public policy should be. Especially if that fool is pronouncing upon economics.
Tackling obesity is the key to solving Britain’s stagnant productivity rates, former government food tsar Henry Dimbleby has said.
Wrong. Actually, **WRONG!**. Fiddling with obesity will make no difference, not one fig’s worth, to productivity rates. The reason why it won’t is that Dimbleby is ignorant of the economics he thinks he’s going to influence.
This is beyond the obvious here. Yes, of course the man who sells fish finger sandwiches is obsessed with obesity. He’s that one trick pony desperately searching for some manner of getting the rest of us to pay attention to the bats in his belfry. We seem to have either ignored all that bunk about UPF - or worse for Dimbleby allowed Van Tulleken to become the standard bearer - so there’s this search for some sort of relevance. Anything will do, as long as we all then do undertake whatever list of self-denials Henners has in store for us.
The problem with this latest claim is that it’s, as above, wrong. Simply, openly, ignorantly, wrong. Of course, that means that in politics it’s going to be a surefire hit but the rest of us should ignore it.
Henners says:
Mr Dimbleby, the co-founder of the Leon fast food chain and a former adviser to the Government, argued that increasing the fitness of the nation could help remedy high rates of economic inactivity in the UK and improve productivity.
He said: “We’ve got a situation where 2.8 million people are out of work for four major conditions: muscular skeletal problems, type two diabetes, coronary heart disease and mental health, three of which are directly caused by food.
“You’ve got the Treasury looking at this and saying ‘my god, diet is costing us a lot of money’.
“If you don’t do anything, what happens is the NHS sucks in the money from the rest of society, because we can’t let that go down.”
He added: “We have lower productivity, lower tax receipts, and we become both sick and impoverished as a nation.”
….
Mr Dimbleby said: “The fundamental [question] is - are people fit and ready to work? Food is a huge part of that.”
….
However, Mr Dimbleby resigned from government work last year, criticising what he called “insane” inaction from ministers and an “ultra-free-market ideology” that he claimed made it impossible to enact change.
Well, ultra free market - if he thinks the current Tories are that then he's not only deluded he’s going to have a hell of a surprise when he comes across me and mine, eh?
But he does throw around words like insane so we can indeed use deluded, ignorant and all the rest.
We can see where he’s going here. If people too sick to work all lose weight and go to work then there will be more people working. So, there should - presumably - be more production. OK.
But he calls that productivity. Which is not just wrong it’s that deluded ignorance.
Productivity is not production. It’s the “production per hour of labour”. If we add more hours of labour and production goes up in lock step productivity has not risen. Production per hour of labour is exactly what it was.
As would almost certainly happen productivity would fall as the marginal worker comes back into the labour force. Productivity is average out across the entire population and all the really, really, productive people are in work - because it pays too much not to be. Yea, even if they’re fat. You do recall Mr. Pavarotti? Those currently out of the labour force are pretty much certain to be lower than median or mean productivity - thus, adding them to the workforce, even if they’re real nice and thin now, is going to reduce that productivity. Which is, to repeat, an average - it’s all production divided by total number of hours of labour.
So, the correct message to Henners is that traditional “Begone, Dolt”.
As to why he’s said it, that’s easy enough. Now that he’s made his cash from flogging fish finger sandwiches he wants something more than mere lucre. A gong or three, social relevance, perhaps to be hailed as the saviour of the nation. He’s picked obesity as his cause. He’s also heard summat about this “productivity” stuff. It really is the determinant of the wealth of the nation - how much we produce per hour of work is how much we can consume per hour worked - it’s the wealth of the nation.
But because the dolt - who should begone - doesn’t know that productivity is production per hour worked and therefore doesn’t change if we add more production hours (or, rather, doesn’t change for that reason alone) he makes this ignorant claim. Because, you see, Our ‘Enery (or Henners to those of us who also went to public school) just doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Which ain’t when you come to think of it, a grand way to start designing public policy, is it? But then that all too many do exactly this gives us a clue as to why we’re in the position we are…..
Fixing the pensions problem is simple to state.
1 Retirement has to be funded from deferred income. So you'll have to work longer as a %age of life expectancy or have a lower income upon retirement.
2 That deferred income has to be invested in actual productive assets.
Both are tricky for politicians as 1 people want to live at others expense.
2 much less scamming opportunities if the funny money goes.
Henry's scheme could make production worse. The vast majority of the UK is not obese and not presenting to the NHS for help with the conditions he mentions. The productive way to get food you like is to work hard and productively and then pay the chef at the pub to make you a full English breakfast. The specialist who is good at it. If that's banned you might decide to work less hard, buy the ingredients and cook them yourself, which not going to employ a specialist.
Same applies to any intervention where what is produced efficiently is taxed or banned into being consumed less or at home.