Danger! Men at Work
The Scottish Economy, By Members of the Staff of Glasgow Wive sity. Edited by A. Caimcross. (C.U.P. 30s.) THIS is essentially a superior statistical handbook. Not manY its chapters will interest the general reader, as most of the econonl information is presented rather raw. The sociological chaPt.c ('Housing,' Crime' and 'The Churches') are the most interest1,1, all round. They concentrate, of course, on what can be statistical; shown, and are chiefly of value for their exemplary handling oft,' sources. The specialist, however, will give pride of place to Mr. A. Campbell on the Scottish national income: a pioneering work 46 great importance that faces all the problems of disentangling Scotian from the United Kingdom with ingenuity and fairness. If religion is part of the Scottish economy why not politics ? 1■4°) of the economic description could cheerfully have been sacrificed I° a politico-economic picture on the lines of Andre Siegfried's-Tablea des Partis en France, correlating voting with urbanisation, land tennrt etc. Even the chapter on trade Unions eschews politics—which as if there had been a chapter on politics that left out trade uni011- Having very rightly stepped out of the bounds of his title the edit° seems not to have gone far enough. Scotland is a poor place, and the Welfare State, transferdn, income from rich to poor people, necessarily transfers it from rick t, poor places. Deep analysis is professedly no part of the autIO, intentions, but their work raises interesting questions. It is too ofte; assumed that deliberate transfers by the social services and tame, are the only ones. This is to neglect such other government translo1? as the hill-farming subsidies (England is flatter than.the Celtic Fringeco and the redistribution resulting from private economic activity. instance all 'administered' prices, whether set by business men or cirsil servants, have the grave fault of 'postalisation': costs (esPceiant, transport), varying greatly with the particular consumer, 'absorbed' in an allowance for overheads charged equally to all OP( sumers. Thus no one pays exactly what a service costs \him, alift income is redistributed in an irrational but by no means rando,, manner. Only a price freely negotiated without regard for costs a commodity market is certain to avoid this fault (though it 111 have others more grave). It is particularly common with price maintenance: I suspect that nearly all resale price maintaill"„ goods involve a subsidy to Welshmen and Scotsmen by Englishnle't, who pay part of the higher transport costs to the more outlying Par,,i of Wales and Scotland. In addition it is certain that English r.",d journeys yield a higher profit per mile towards central expenses. research might well uncover the same phenomenon in other nati° alised industries. Such delicate questions the authors do not raise. Even the C51,..1c Committee (Cmd. 8609) did not raise them all, let alone solve tben:j Do we really want Scottish statistics in sufficient detail to ansI them? The present state of such studies is reassuringly back"ar; An uncomfortable feeling that the subsidy does indeed flow fr0,14 England to Scotland suffices to embarrass, without silencing, 1,0 nationalists. This is the state of mind in which most Englishi„ and Scotsmen would wish them to be. More precision, Pr°111 magnitudes, would give the centralisers a really popular argort_em against all reasonable proposals for'devolution. It might also teri the English majority in Parliament to make' all sorts of chsll!„. subtly profitable to England. Just to give one instance, an incre?"rd in employers' and employees' national insurance contributions Wore relieve the general taxpayer; and England (not Wales) pays ro° money per head in taxes. Surely no one wishes Anglo-Scottish affairs to be regulated such meannesses. Ignorance is a good reason for give-and-take, ts Mr. Campbell's chapter at least comes near to breaching ignorance. The University Of Glasgow is skating on a hornet:,
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