The BBC put out the following tweet this morning:
1 in 5 UK workers is not paid enough to provide a basic standard of living, research for KPMG suggests http://t.co/0hvF9y1j #livingwage
Yes, that's KPMG, the accountants.
As the report suggests:
It claimed that nearly five million people failed to command the Living Wage - a pay packet that enabled a basic standard of living.
The rate stands at £8.30 an hour in London and £7.20 in the rest of the UK.
I have no reason to doubt the report; it only supports known earnings statistics. That said, until Conservatives (indeed, any politician) can explain how they will address this issue (and Labour has started with the ungainly predistribution policy) then they have no right to berate those claiming benefits whilst in work. It is simply not possible to live with any respect on these wages.
That leaves the more important question in need of an answer, which is how come we tolerate a society where this is not just permitted but is clearly acceptable?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
would that be a ‘re-distribution policy?
the other sounds Calvinist
That’s one of its presentational flaws!
Predistribution is paying the right gross wages rather than redistributing net pay via tax
Richard – sorry for the lateish response to this post of yours:I was caught up in a private matter. However, I want to take issue with you on what I would regard as a simplistic explanation of pre-distribution.
We have a common acquaintance in Canon Peter Challen, Chair of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice, and Peter’s book “Seven Steps to Justice” (ISBN 1-8724-1027-8, New European Publications, 2002. Co-authored with Rodney Shakespeare) makes it clear that pre-distribution is the description of an economic system in which everyone has TWO basic incomes (with welfare benefits therefore being required for a smaller number of really needy individuals, such as recipients of Disability Living Allowance etc)
These two incomes come first, from the spreading of capital ownership, via a souped-up version of ESOP’s under the system known as binary economics. As the ownership of capital is spread, so the earning of dividends on that capital is also spread, until every citizen has both ownership and access to an income stream.
NOTE: this is NOT the creation of something out of nothing (as is the case with bank-created debt), but the investment of money in worthwhile ventures (and not in speculative hedge-fund bets on e.g. the price of rice or grain, which lead to starvation for real people, and ill-gotten wealth for the 1%) = REAL investment in REAL projects leading to REAL wealth and REAL income.
The pre-requisite for the above is, of course, the return of the creation of money FROM the Banks TO a democratically controlled and accountable Government (and not the bunch of rentier capitalist bandits that currently make up the Establishment).
And this return of the right to create money to the Government would permit the creation of the second basic income, in the form of a sort of QE placed directly in the hands of citizens and consumers, I am perfectly confident that we would be on the way to coming out of recession now if we had entrusted QE funds to ordinary families, many of whom are really suffering under this Government’s insane austerity crusade.
“Crusade” is used advisedly, for they are class warriors against the many, and on the side of the few, aiming to capture their New Jerusalem, which is a neo-feudal state in which the 1% loll in gated luxury, while the 99% beg at the gate.
Just consider FoodBanks, which have mushroomed – filling a REAL need – since these jokers captured the citadel in 2010. Last night there was a searing programme on BBC about a FoodBank in Coventry, showing that there are people in the UK living on, and often below, the breadline – parents eating only once a day to ensure their children have decent food.
Henry Mayhew (“London Labour and the London Poor”) and Friedrich Engels (“Condition of the Working Class in England”) would conclude that we are going backwards, and undoing all the advances of the last 150 years. Such, I believe, is the aim of the cruel jokers in power here in the UK, and those seeking to defeat Obama in the USA.
And there REALLY IS a better way.
Andrew
This is an occasion where we disagree: I have looked at Rodney Shakespeare’s binary economics
I am afraid its assumptions are as far fetched, mathematically neat and as removed from reality as neoclassical economics
We have to embrace reality and all its messiness
I don’t think binary economics does that
Best
Richard
So if the minimum wage is so low as to be unacceptable or as you put it…..
“It is simply not possible to live with any respect on these wages.”
Why is it taxed at 20%?……Why not raise the tax free allowance to above the minimum wage?…….The removal at £100k stops the wealthy gaining anyway.
Because then we get Romney saying 47% do not count
And he’ll follow it as the Telegraph have already done here by saying they should not vote as a result
Your schemes are very transparent
No your ideology is very apparent, if those on the minimum wage are too poor then don’t take their money in taxes to then “perhaps” give back in benefits. You are letting your desire for universal benefits overide your desire to help those on the poorest wages.
It might be important to those on the left but not to workers wanting the extra money!
Universal benefits are vital: they represent our universal relationship one with the other
ironic that KPMG is in the process of laying off 5 % of its workforce and instigating a pay freeze across the entire firm……………
Richard, I know you like to look at charts…
http://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/household-net-worthless-poverty-here-we-come.html
Richard, what’s your take on this…
http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/09/its_official_cutting_top_tax_r.php
CTJ opinion invariably sound