Bigger states, better captains and stronger safety nets

Morning all,

Imagine having a team of people who can pretty much draw any chart you can dream up? I know, I’m incredibly lucky. But who knew they were so well read? When I asked the Resolution crew what I should read this summer the answers were too good to keep to myself. Plus, we’re thinking about Gettysburg, complaining about Spotify and considering the public’s appetites for tax rises.

Sorry to say this will be the last TOTC I send until September rolls around. Never fear though – you will be in safe hands with some very exciting guest editors in the coming weeks, before we take a break in August.

Have a great summer,

Ruth
Chief Executive
Resolution Foundation

Oh captain my captain. Strong leadership matters. This paper analyses the 2.2 million soldiers of the Union Army during the American Civil War and the efficacy of their front-line leaders (not generals, but low-ranking officers who served side-by-side with their men). The authors assessed captains “value-added” which revealed that one standard deviation increase in quality of leadership reduced battle desertions from 3.9 per cent to 2.3 per cent. That means good leadership would reduce battle desertions by more than 1,500 at a battle the size of Gettysburg. Better leaders also earned 7 per cent more after the war and were more likely to be hailed as “brave” in post-war accounts of the conflict. The downside? Top captains tended to die more because they led by example.

Add to playlist. In my experience at least, the auto-recommendations on Spotify can be useful. But this new analysis disconcertingly confirms that those “This is What You’ll Like” playlists might be more “This is What We Were Paid to Serve You.”  The study constructs a model which shows that under realistic conditions (market dominance by a handful of streaming services, the ‘black-box’ nature of recommendations, and willingness from labels to pay for favourable treatment), introducing bias into ‘Discovery Mode’ would help Spotify to maximise its profits. While there are anecdotal claims that such practices are already widespread, we cannot know for certain – but it certainly appears to be in Spotify’s interest to shill a spot in your next playlist to the highest bidder.

What colour is your safety net? As we’ve pointed out before, the UK is not leading the pack on unemployment support. Some argue that’s a good way of encouraging job-seekers back to work – but recent research on unemployment insurance (UI) challenges the idea that support delays job searches. The study, based in Washington state, compared part-time workers who received UI with those who weren’t eligible. Qualifying workers only saw a three-day delay in finding work, implying that the extra help did not demotivate them. Not only that, but UI recipients earned higher hourly wages over the next two years, worked more shifts and stayed in their roles longer. The additional support provided workers with security while they sought stable employment, rather than accepting the first job out of desperation. In the end, every dollar spent expanding unemployment benefits generated $2.57 in value. Fortunately, UI (albeit a much less generous version) is one idea to have survived the gutting of the Government’s welfare reforms.

Life is a rollercoaster. Research has previously identified a universal U-shape curve in life satisfaction. Wellbeing declined from youth into middle age (work, childcare and taxes?) before rising again around age 60 (retirement and grandkids?). But according to this paper, that pattern has faded in recent years. Using data on life satisfaction in 21 European countries they find that since 2020 life satisfaction has been rising with age in Northern European countries, peaking when people are in their late 60s. However, the opposite is true in six southern European countries, where young people’s life satisfaction has been rising during this period. A mixed picture then, and worth noting that the existence of a U-shape pattern had been contested by researchers who find cross-sectional studies are insufficient to draw broad conclusions, and that average happiness scores obscure vital fluctuations.

Something for the summer?

Here’s your RF approved summer reading guide, sourced from the bookish bods of the RF offices. I hope it provides inspiration for some mind-expanding beach reading…

Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume. If you thought you’d had enough of time loops, think again. This iteration of Groundhog Day is more grown-up than its forebears, following a middle-aged bookseller as she considers her marriage – Zachary

Is this working? by Charlie Colenutt. A list of interviews with British people, asking about their jobs. No big thesis here, just a compelling description of the day-to-day of a vast range of jobs in the 2020s, in the style of Studs Terkel’s American classic ‘Working’ – Louise

Escape by Marie Le Conte. With the AI explosion accelerating the heat death of the internet, what better time to get off the 2025-net and revisit a simpler time when the internet was fun, earnest and full of possibility – Simon

Christopher Clark’s Revolutionary Spring. This is an all-encompassing (very readable) account of the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. From Paris to Budapest, if you’re heading to the continent this summer, you’ll likely be passing through somewhere that was galvanized by these upheavals almost two centuries ago – Angelica

Butter, Asoko Yuzuki. A book to make you hungry and confused and a little frightened and then hungry again. Wildly unexpected, don’t be put off by its (well-deserved) ubiquity in book shops and train carriages – Rob

The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. About how one man – who never held elected office – amassed terrifying power and reshaped New York. It shows transport and planning to be the sexy topics they are. If you don’t fancy the 1,000+ pages, the 99% Invisible podcast did an incredible series on the book last year – Nye

Chart of the week

Parliament has broken for summer, but the key question lingers: are taxes going up this autumn? Despite (as oft quoted) taxes being at a record high, a bigger state remains more popular than taxing and spending less… and MUCH more popular among Labour supporters. Our chart, using the latest British Social Attitudes data (read more from NatCen) shows how in general, public views on tax and spend are counter-cyclical. The survey asks people to choose between more tax and spend, the same, or less. Support for more dipped in the big-spending New Labour years, rising again during coalition/Conservative austerity. Labour and Conservative voters follow this trend, with the former more pro-tax and spend. The twist? The pandemic caused a smaller reaction than you might expect – and a divergent one. The current 28-point gap between attitudes of Labour and Conservative supporters is the largest since the 1980s, with 54% of Labour voters preferring higher tax and spend compared to 36% in 2010, despite tax and spending both being higher than they were then. But since 2016 we also see voters without party affiliation fell (even more) out of love with a bigger state…