Poor rates

“ I agree with this humble Economist that it seems to be as ungenerous as impolitic to throw on the poor’s rates a burthen which ought to be borne by those who profit from the labour thus inadequately remunerated. ”

“ That the exorbitant increase of the poor rates in England is chiefly owing to the enormous abuses in the administration of the poor-laws, but partly to the oppressive reduction of the price of labour, resulting from the great improvements in machinery. ”

“ Since 1836 our poor-rates have gone on increasing to an alarming amount; and, except there be a speedy alteration in things, not only will the working classes be all paupers, but the middle class, whom they are mainly dependent upon, will be paupers also. The reduction of rents of all kinds of property is very considerable. In consequence of the distressed state of trade a reduction of wages is taking place almost unparalleled, and I fear must go on till the manufacturing population in the cotton districts are reduced to a condition from which they can never recover themselves. ”

“ This then would be the effect of poor rates in an advancing society; but in a stationary, or in a retrograde country, so far as capital could not be withdrawn from the land, if a further rate were levied for the support of the poor, that part of it which fell on agriculture would be paid, during the current leases, by the farmers,361 but at the expiration of those leases it would almost wholly fall on the landlords. ”

“ However, to get rid of all dispute, and to state one staring and undeniable fact, let me first observe, that it is notorious, that the poor-rates are looked upon as enormous; that they are deemed an insupportable burden; that Scarlett and Nolan have asserted, that they threaten to swallow up the land; that it is equally notorious that a large part of the poor-rates ought to be called wages ”

“ It would appear that the facts above adduced are abundantly sufficient to put down for ever the chief ground on which the opposition to the poor-laws rests; that is, their assumed inevitable tendency to a ruinous and oppressive increase of poor rates. ”

“ Besides every ratepayer has suffered when any cause has permanently depressed the labouring class. All have to pay more poor rates and so are led to discuss, and if possible to remedy, abuses and grievances. In this way the evils of bad administration of relief have been checked and interest in all matters affecting the poor has been stimulated. ”

“ Here is nothing superfluous, nothing but what appertains to the earliest stages of civilization, and what every well-arranged society ought to be able to give in return for manual labour of the lowest kind. With inferior means the labourer must suffer the obloquy of being remunerated from the parish rates, to which all are forced to contribute as fully as though the employer paid the fair value of the labour in the first instance, and the amount were assessed on the price of his commodity, instead of being assessed in the form of poor’s rates. ”

“ We may observe, that the manufactures, the laborious part of mankind, the poor's rates, and the number of paupers, will everlastingly go hand in hand; they will increase and decrease together; we cannot annihilate one, but the others will follow, and odd as the expression may sound, we become rich by payment and poverty. If we discharge the poor, who shall act the laborious part? ”

“ We've tamed inflation rates that were devastating the purchasing power of those least able to afford the basic necessities of life and reversed an upward spiral in the number of poor people that began in 1979. ”

“ I believe that it will tend to prevent our being startled at one time into hasty and therefore wasteful expenditure by those disgusting exposures which are occasionally made, at another time frightened by rising rates into equally inconsiderate and equally wasteful parsimony. ”

“ Do the ratepayers ever think that the seven millions of annual poor rate would in one single year place every recipient of Poor Law relief, old and young, man, woman and child, on the shores of America?—would pay all expenses, and leave them one or two pounds their pockets to begin the world with? ”

“ A man, for example, owning property to the value of $5,000, contracts a debt of $5,000. By the reduction of one-half of the currency of the country, his property in effect becomes reduced to the value of $2,500. But his debt undergoes no corresponding reduction.... But if the effect of this hard money policy upon the debtor class be injurious, it is still more disastrous, if possible, on the laboring classes.... Of all the subjects of national policy, not one ought to be touched with so much delicacy as that of the wages—in 354other words, the bread—of the poor man. ”

“ As the public revenue is all derived from those who labour, and as it can come from no other persons, if the prosperity and happiness of the subject were a mere matter of indifference, which it cannot be supposed to be; still it would be an object for government to preserve his resources undiminished. It was our lot, in another chapter, to mention the enormous increase of the poor's rate, which was in part attributed to the general increase of wealth ”

“ Hold rigidly to the assumption that there are no changes in utility schedules. Will there not be, none the less, a radical readjustment of prices? Will not the prices of Riverside palaces and steam yachts sink and the prices of things which the poor esteem rise? The utility-curves of the erstwhile rich, assumed to remain unchanged, no longer count for so much as before in the market. The rich cannot go so far down their curves in the consumption process as before. The poor, or those who had been poorest, now count for more in the market. ”

“ Then, again, it is said, that as the manufacturing system has created a weak and dangerous population, and one likely to be suddenly impoverished by the vicissitudes of the system, they should be compelled to relieve it when those adverse periods arrive. Does the rating of the manufacturer bear any proportion to his capital, the extent of his business, or his profits? His poor-rate receipt records an inappreciable item of expenditure. The pressure of the rate is not upon him, but upon the householders of the suburbs where the poor reside. ”

“ Reference has already been made to the most striking and important exception to the general tendency of prices to fall, namely, that money wages and incomes in all civilized countries have shown a tendency not to fall, but to rise. Whether the incomes of the rich have increased faster than those of the poor, or whether the movement has shown itself with rough uniformity for all classes, is immaterial for the present discussion. The admitted fact of a general upward movement alike among rich, middle class, and poor is the significant thing. ”

“ No, the cost would be paid by the laboring men of the country, whom the depreciation of the currency would plunder of the difference between the rise of the prices of necessaries and the rise of wages. The cost would be paid by the industrious and frugal, whose deposited savings would be robbed of their value; by the pensioners, the disabled soldiers, the widows and orphans of the slain, whose slender incomes would be despoiled of their power to buy bread; by every honest man in the land, who would suffer in the game of overreaching which the inflated currency would bring with it. ”

“ Among these stresses is the gradual increase in the costs of doing business. The decline in supplementary costs per unit of output ceases when enterprises have once secured all the [Pg 657] business they can handle with their standard equipment, and a slow increase of these costs begins when the expiration of old contracts makes necessary renewals at the high rates of interest, rent, and salaries which prevail in prosperity. Meanwhile prime costs, wages and raw materials, rise at a relatively rapid rate. ”

“ But the fact ought to make us all think whether we cannot carry our rates and our charity to a better market than we have been in the habit of doing—to think, not that the remedy is to be sought in this exact way, but whether the annual rate is not to a large extent equivalent to an annual capital, which, once spent, would extinguish the rate altogether. ”

“ If we are at all to distinguish a natural or normal rate of wages from the fluctuating rates of the market, that natural or normal rate will be found really to depend, not on the cost of producing subsistence, but on the amount or rate of general production, or the amount of production per capita in the community, or, in other words, on the average productivity of labour. ”

“ It is doubtful if the rise in wages is keeping pace with the rise in prices. So far as it fails to do so the load is on the usual pack animal, the poor man.
The rest of the loss falls chiefly upon the creditor class, the people with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at long leases, the people with pensions, endowed institutions, the Church, insurance companies, and the like. They are all being scaled down. They are all more able to stand scaling down than the proletarians. ”

“ And, of course, inflation and government borrowing led to a fourth problem, the high interest rates that made it hard or impossible for people to afford the homes, the cars, the other purchases that keep our economy moving and provide jobs—the final problem. ”

“ If it shall be found that for one year the net earnings have been less than 31⁄2 per cent., and for two years less than 41⁄2 per cent., unless it shall be proven that this deficit has been fostered by neglect of due economy, or by extravagant expenditure as aforesaid, the rates shall be raised. ”

“ It is this arbitrary shifting of cost-burdens, coincident with recent price fluctuations, that accounts for the prevailing outcry against advancing costs of living. Naturally, individuals and groups who fare badly in the process of pecuniary readjustment are prone to complain, and those who account an accelerating balance of income over costs are sanguine.
Whether the United States has reached or passed the industrial condition of maximum per capita productivity is a mooted question; some who have given much study to the problem of production are inclined to support an affirmative conclusion. ”

“ Who will deny that, when the depreciation of such a currency drives up prices, the laboring man's wages rise last and least? Who will deny that, when the bubbles of paper speculation burst, the laboring man's earnings are cut down first and lowest? Is our country an exception to the rule? The statistics compiled by the Labor Bureau of Massachusetts, corresponding with those of the United States census, show that the cost of living had risen sixty-one per cent. ”

“ These are the low value of money in the rich state, in consequence of its plenty, compared with its high value in the poor one, in consequence of its poverty, and the experienced inapplicability of machinery or the division of labour to agricultural operations. ”

“ It has only one certainty, the increase of prices, with the consequent increase of profits and rents. The benefits to be obtained from it by the poor are vague, must be confined to one section only, and cannot be got by that except at the cost of those which are differently situated. ”

“ Nor, in estimating the cost of our labour, would it be allowable to leave out of our calculation the amount of our poor rate. That has for centuries been raised for the purpose of supplementing wages, and so is practically a part of the wages of the labouring class, levied on the owners of land and houses. ”

“ Already we've felt some of the good side effects of getting serious about our economy. Unemployment has dipped to its lowest level in 22 months, and interest rates are at their lowest rates in 20 years. ”

“ Any rise in the average price of necessaries, unless it be compensated by a proportionable rise in the wages of labour, must necessarily diminish, more or less, the ability of the poor to bring up numerous families, and, consequently, to supply the demand for useful labour ”

“ Generally speaking, the reduction of rates is of no benefit whatever to the working class. Rates are levied upon property.—Q. Do not the working class pay the rates and taxes? A. No. Rates and taxes are paid out of the surplus value taken from the workers by [245] their exploiters. As already explained, the return to the workers, their wages, is determined by their cost of subsistence, regulated by competition in the labour market ”

“ Well then, in the first place, with regard to provisions, the poor will be no worse off in this respect than if there had been no advance in the price, for it is not to be supposed that if the rich are so attached to the luxuries of the belly as notwithstanding the increased price to buy the same quantity as ever, that they would have bought less, if the price had continued lower. ”

“ Chapter XIV The persistence of poverty amidst advancing wealth Look over the world today. In countries the most widely differing - under conditions the most diverse as to government, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to currency - you will find distress among the working-classes; but everywhere that you thus find distress and destitution in the midst of wealth you will find that the land is monopolized; that, for its use by labour, large revenues are extorted from the earnings of labour. ”

“ The item of money will be less, for it has been paid out in wages; there will be less raw material, less coal, etc., and a proper deduction must be made from the value of the buildings and machinery for the week's wear and tear. But if he is doing a remunerative business, which must on the average be the case, the item of finished products will be so much greater as to compensate for all these deficiencies and show in the summing-up an increase of capital. Manifestly the value he paid his hands in wages was not drawn from his capital nor from anyone else's capital. ”