As the Guardian notes this morning:
A new frontier of the battle over the welfare state is being opened up as employment ministers look for ways to target the working poor by asking 1 million in-work recipients of tax credits to do more to boost their earnings.
Under the proposals, jobcentre staff will have powers to withdraw universal credit if claimants are deemed to be doing too little to increase their earnings.
Ministers are considering more frequent interviews at jobcentres, and even requiring people to move to different jobs to reduce the size of the benefit bill.
Let's just consider what this means for a moment.
First, in an economy where there are 2.5 million unemployed and many, many more under-employed because of a lack of demand in the economy as a whole this policy is absurd: Job Centres can't find work for those unemployed right now, let alone those in work who aren't, according to the government, earning enough.
Second, let's remember that this proposal is running in parallel with a suggestion that the minimum wage be frozen or cut.
Third, let's ignore for a minute the implications of this for choice or liberty that the right wing is meant to particularly treasure.
Fourth, let's wonder for a minute how those in work are to go about all these extra interviews, with Job Centres and new employers when their existing employer has no reason to give them paid time off to take part in this process. Who picks up the tab for that?
But last let's just nopte the sheer economic absurdity of this. There are no jobs because the Tories will not undertake the necessary spending to create them, and the whole of the Tory supply side reform agenda, whether about minimum pay, reducing employment rights and more, is about cutting wages and making it easier to sack those who want an increase in them.
In which case this policy will only work in the land where the Magic Job Tree grows alongside the Magic Money Tree that ensures all such jobs are well paid.
And that only exists in the head of some policy wonks in Tory think tanks.
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http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/AssemblyPropositions/2013/P.047-2013.pdf
Hi Richard, It looks like Jersey & Guernsey are in support of country by country reporting? Is this classic double standards or what!!!!!!!
Well, not country-by-country reporting: more an OECD DTA
But amusing all the same
The rats are leaving the good ship secrecy
On the same issue, there is a story in The Guardian today about rising numbers of “zero hours” contracts: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/apr/02/rise-staff-zero-hour-contracts
So the government is attempting to force low-paid workers into more traditional full-time jobs at the same time as its outsourcing and privatisation policies are meaning that that kind of job is becoming harder and harder to find.
As Michael Caine once said: “If they ain’t got ya one way, they’ve got ya the other.”
They are fantasists all, it seems. No, really, increasingly it looks as if what we’ve come to term the right-wing are suffering from something as yet undiagnosed. They don’t need opposition, they need treatment and perhaps education in equal measure.
I am making an effort to understand the economic ways of the world and your articles and twitter feed are contributing greatly to my knowledge (thank you!). I understand and agree with this article entirely and I also can see immigration boosts economies [your tweet] . However in the current climate, how are these two things commensurate with one another?
Yes! Especially as migrants tend to be strongly economically motivated and often create employment
Immigrant communities do have a strong motivation as they often come from backgrounds of relative hardship ( my grandparents were immigrants). Of course, this can go hand in hand with forcing wages down unless the minimum wage is upheld. There are many immigrant workers paid below this and often living in poor conditions but are still motivated at this level because they can send money ‘home’ to their families.
Yes, Simon, I guess there are absolutely no lazy Poles or Latvians.
After reading this I was reminded of that quote by Martin Niemöller, and with a little adaptation:
First they came for the unemployed, poor and disabled, I did not speak out because I was not unemployed, poor and disabled.
Then they came for the working poor, and I did not speak out because I was not one of the working poor.
Then they came for those on middle incomes, and I did not speak out because my income was higher, not top rate, but higher.
Then they came for me …… and there was no one left to speak out for me.
What we are seeing, is the Tories on a mad supermarket trolley dash, trying to wrestle the goods from the shelves of the public finances to give to their friends and donors before 2015, where they can’t be certain of an overall majority win.
I may quote you…
Should start “First they came for the refugees, but I was not foreign, so I did not care”.
So many of these vile policies were trialled on asylum seekers and justified with the same demonisation and outright falsification as the current attacks on the poor and disabled. Even the vouchers-instead-of-money system started off as a scheme to punish asylum seekers and tie them in to some supermarkets’ profits.
We really should not forget this.
Allow me if you may to share with you the deeply offensive Daily Mail big front page headline today ” Vile Product of Welfare UK” ; this headline in itself is vile because it tries in 4 words to associate the Derby ” fire” father murderer with the those people who are receiving benefits in the UK. It must be the worst form of demonisation it has used in recent times.
As a UK citizen I am deeply offended that the very right wing Mail can sink so low in its political propaganda moreover I do believe it is similar to the press propaganda techniques of the Nazi party which in the mid to late 1930s attacked Jews, Trade Unionists, German Communists and eventually Social Democrats.
There comes a point when a country’s intelligentsia, its Labour movement and its moral and religious leaders have to say enough is enough. The next election will be like this; the Conservatives have not won an election since 1992 but unless the opposition are well organised and have an Obama like network set up the Conservatives could win with their wealth and media support. In the meantime how do good people stop the Mail?
We shout and shout again
I think there is a danger that the tories will make a deal with UKIP and go to the country next year – to coincide with Euro elections.
Now that would be scary
Richard knows that I have already predicted this – or at least that Cameron would go to the country on a manifesto pledge to leave the EU, with the rider that winning the General Election would constitute a Yes Vote to withdraw.
The link up with UKIP is one stage beyond what I have said, but it is all too possible, given the incipient xenophobia/racist instincts of UKIP and the attacks on “the enemy within” (the poor, the sick, the ill, the disabled and the unemployed = “skivers”) of the Tories.
Ironically, the one thing that COULD prevent this is a measure I have railed against before, but which could prevent this, namely, the need for a 66% = 2/3rds majority for Early Dissolution of Parliament, ahead of May 2015. The Tories could NEVER achieve this, as only they would vote for it (unless the Lib-Dems really ARE totally zombified!).
Accordingly, we would probably see rushed legislation to repeal this bit of law! Wow – that really WOULD tear the scales from the eyes of the public. Alternatively, Cameron would try to bring in a dissolution via an Order in Council, which technically could be done. However, that too would REALLY stretch the constitution at the seams, and would probably lead to open revolt, if the Queen concurred, or her “removal for her own safety” if she did not concur.
We live in interesting times, indeed.
Fortunately the Fixed Term Parliament Act 2011 means that the Tories can’t go to the country early because there can only be a dissolution before April 2015 if either (a) two-thirds of MPs vote for it, or (b) if, following a vote of no-confidence in the Government, an alternative Government can’t be formed within 14 days. Neither of those scenarios looks likely and in any case the Tories would be worried that the Euro-elections would boost UKIP support at their expense so I don’t think they would want a June 2014 poll even if we were operating under the old system where the PM could ask for a dissolution any time he wanted.
If Tories wanted a 2014 election, why would Labour object?
So when exactly is the Scottish referendum ?
I would start looking for right-wing press support for independence, coupled with promises from financial/investment organisations for an independent Scotland.