Sadly, John McDonnell appears not to know what poverty is

One of the little difficulties possible is that if a weird, or odd, definition of something is used then folk might forget what that definition is. Thus they end up spouting nonsense because they use numbers as defined but forgetting why the definition used militates against their proposed policies. This has just happened to John McDonnell on the subject of poverty:

There are 14.5 million people in poverty in Britain, including 4.3 million children. Two-thirds of those children are in a household where someone is in work. If you are in work, even if your company is booming, you have little say over whether you will benefit from its profits. If your landlord increases your rent or threatens eviction, or if your mortgage company fails to pass on interest rate cuts, you are largely powerless.

The prices of the basic goods you need to live on are set by a small group of multinational companies that between them carve up the market and set the prices to profiteer. So it’s a statement of the obvious that poverty is caused by the combination of low incomes and high living costs faced by many British people. But what brought this about?

That is, we’re afraid, abject nonsense. Not because it disses our favoured neoliberalism, nor because it’s against our beloved markets. But because it doesn’t understand the definition of poverty being used.

Which is living in a household on less than 60% of median household income, adjusted for size, after housing costs. This measure of poverty is one of relative poverty - having less than others. Carving up markets, profiteering, have nothing to do with this whatsoever. This is about the distribution of incomes, not the prices of goods and services.

Think on it - if every income in Britain doubled tomorrow then the poverty level would be exactly the same as it is today but living costs would be remarkably more affordable. If every income halved then inequality in income distribution would be exactly as it is today and therefore so would poverty - while living costs would have become remarkably less affordable.

The poverty level claimed is all entirely nothing to do with high living costs at all. Because of that original definition of poverty being used - one of inequality, not absolute standards of living.

The problem with forgetting - if ever even known in the first place - the definitions created to show how appalling the modern world has become is that by forgetting one misses what has in fact been defined. Therefore any proposals to fix the problem fail given the lack of knowledge of what has originally been defined.

Or, you know. GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

McDonnell’s original statistic is about inequality of incomes, his subsequent burbling is about the absolute level of prices. These are entirely different things. He’s therefore wrong because he’s forgotten how his original numbers were compiled and defined.