hard times - tom clark

[...]... contemporary Anglo-American economies as one giant Marienthal Through one-to-one interviews with recessionary victims, as well as detailed analysis so up-to-theminute that it has yet to reach the academic journals, it maps out the ways in which bad financial news pours off the business pages and onto the streets of our communities Back in Marienthal, there was, of course, material hardship: hunger was... be.29 But in the midst of a serious slump, an atomic emergency revealed the antithesis of an atomised society There is little doubt that a long record of earlier growth is one of the things that has helped Japan weather hard times well In this ‘rich society that got a bit poorer’, the marginal things that were cut back on were less important, and sometimes barely noticeable Visiting in 2011, a Guardian... protection for workers produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Anglophone countries are bunched at the bottom.19 The fruits of boom-time growth were grabbed by the rich (to varying degrees) in New Zealand, Canada and Australia, as well as in Britain and America 20 Churchill wrote romantically of the ‘English-speaking peoples’; de Gaulle less benignly about ‘the AngloSaxons’... distinctive Anglo-Saxon way of doing business no longer sounded so anachronistic And one of our most frightening findings is that, in line with the uneven damage of the great storm, political opinion has polarised in a way that could frustrate hopes of either country changing its ways Nonetheless, the world needs to know how societies that run along these laissez-faire lines cope in the face of hard times –... soon be forgotten in more prosperous neighbourhoods – dog poor communities into the indefinite future Aside from boom-time inequality, Britain is an interesting society for the wider world to watch in hard times, because it is putting something else on trial, too: namely, the doctrine of so-called ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ This is the strategy, freely pursued by the coalition government after 2010,... oldest statistical indicator of its absence – the suicide rate Chapter 6 then steps out of the home and onto the streets, to gauge the strength of social networks Throughout, we ask whether hard times are re-inforcing pre-existing divisions by blighting the vulnerable more With the American recovery well under way and the British economy finally picking up, too, we consider whether we might soon be able... slump In increasingly unequal societies, it is becoming evident that the real pain of recession is not dished out randomly, but reserved for hard- pressed ‘usual suspects’ That renders the old argument about weathering the storm collectively less persuasive to well-to-do communities who feel they are not much at risk, and thereby retards hopes of a common response Chapter 10 wraps things up and insists... up by 470% and those in the US have risen 550% In the face of these sorts of numbers – and these sorts of charts – any talk of hard times suddenly sounds hyperbolic Statistics and charts aside, is all this supposed progress meaningful? Growth works slow-motion magic: it is hard to spot while it is happening, and is more easily grasped at a distance Let's consider how technology transformed the reach... When exactly did the hard times begin? But the great divide was always likely to have very particular consequences during a serious bust For if a first sensible thought is that a depression in today's advanced society – richer by far than 1930s Marienthal – should bring nothing like the same hardship, a sensible second hunch is that a lot will depend on how the pain is shared The sky-scraping opulence... of the English working-class family budgets recorded a century ago in Round About a Pound a Week were consumed by necessities such as rent, food and functional clothing, today, with the subsequent rise in average incomes, there is indeed more often expenditure on things not strictly required for survival.5 If hard times in today's rich societies only mean reduced outlays on non-essential items, then . Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clark, Tom, 1976– Hard times : the divisive toll of the economic slump / Tom Clark, with Anthony Heath. pages cm Includes. treats the contemporary Anglo-American economies as one giant Marienthal. Through one-to-one interviews with recessionary victims, as well as detailed analysis so up-to-the- minute that it has yet. Clark, with Anthony Heath. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 97 8-0 -3 0 0-2 037 7-6 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Economic conditions—2009– 2. United States—Social conditions.