As I have already noted today, Oxfam are arguing in a report that they have issued that in the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.
There is a lot of evidence that the same thing is happening in the UK. As the Guardian reports this morning:
The recent recovery in jobs is skewed to London and the south-east, according to a study by the TUC that mirrors recent reports highlighting a growing north/south divide in income, wealth and property prices.
According to the report the UK's economic recovery has failed to reach the north-east, the north-west, Wales and the south-west, leaving them in the same situation or worse at providing jobs than they were 20 years ago. Even areas of the country that have seen a strong pick-up in jobs during the last year, such as the West Midlands, have suffered over the longer term and are worse off than they were in the early 1990s at providing employment for the local population.
And as the Guardian also noted:
A separate study by the CBI and accountants PwC of the financial services sector showed that after a couple of years of moderate growth, employment grew at the fastest pace since 2007, with an increase of 10,000 in the fourth quarter of 2013. A further rise of 15,000 is expected in the first three months of this year, taking employment in the sector to 1.16 million.
The industry, which is heavily skewed to London and the City, is still providing 52,000 fewer jobs than at the end of 2008, but is expected to join the capital's boom in commercial activity over the last year.
So yes, employment is rising slowly, but the benefit is all flowing one way. This is the consequence of the finance curse Atul Shah is writing about today.
Oxfam are quite right to be campaigning on this issue.
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And Labour’s response to this is…to bash the poorest again. If you live in an already relatively privileged, wealthier area with more job opportunities and less job insecurity, you’ll get a higher rate of benefits. If you don’t, Labour will give you another good kicking because they feel like it. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/20/labour-restore-link-contributions-benefits?CMP=twt_gu
And if you have poor language and maths skills as many poorer people who are already struggling do – that’s often why they’re poor and struggling- Labour will kick you in the teeth again. Because they want to. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10583032/Prove-basic-maths-and-literacy-skills-or-lose-benefits-Labour-says.html Meanwhile, they’re doing everything they can to woo The City; their recent announcements on limiting market share of banks is just the kind of policy designed to make potential voters think that ‘something is being done’ that prompts a flurry of somewhat lame protest from banks yet designed to change very little. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2013/12/12/policy-network-singing-the-city-of-londons-tune/
An economy that is top-heavy with an economy run by banking and finance is only going to suck out money from the real economy like a hoover as more and more of it goes into speculation and “making money from money”.
Until the finance sector is properly taxed and regulated and cut right down to size and until the economy is rebalanced towards the productive economy, more money will be transferred from the real economy into the pockets of the wealthy.
And I wish the media would stop describing the paltry rise in the economy to a titanic 0.8 as a “recovery”. It is anything but; the economy continues to bump along the bottom.
I be very interested to know what the conservatives would have to say if it were Labour in charge right now and Labour tried to describe a rise to 0.8 as a recovery!
David:
They tried all the ¨training¨ and ¨re-education¨ in their previous incarnation (incarceration?) from 1997-2010.
It didn´t work then.
It didn´t work for the same reason it won´t work next time: Rent-seeking ¨partnerships¨ with various ¨providers¨ who are providing money for themselves, but little, of anything, for the trainees.
So we have a large amount of people with certificates and little else.
And we still have to account for the large amount of people suddenly found fit for work, while being unfit to be employees (I´ll ignore the equalities act since SO many employers also do), by another ¨provider¨, doubtless rent-seeking by being unable to add to anything higher than 15 (which is the amount of points given, above which you have a fitness problem, and below which you don´t).
I could continue..but I think a read of the coming URL will say it all, and even though this country is the UK and not the USA, one tends to follow the other:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-20/retail-death-rattle
Then we can move-on to Mr Milibands fantasy of being able to control organisations that ignore regulations that exist to control them……
Hi JohnM. Yes, you’re right. I worked at DWP/Jobcentre Plus Head Office in Sheffield for 8 years and saw the rapid politicisation of the department after 1997. And by sheer coincidence, of course, A4E is also head-quartered just around the corner from the Jobcentre Plus head office in the city. The numeracy and literacy tests will have a punitive effect on very vulnerable people. Many people with numeracy and literacy problems have the sort of learning difficulties that employment via Remploy was designed to assist. That’s gone. As we know the Atostazi are also passing people with conditions like ME, depression and chronic anxiety as ‘fit for work’. Yet all these conditions can impair cognitive function, which will lead to many such people being classed as in need of ‘training’, whereas what is really needed is for them not to be faced with the whole futile process of trying to seek work in a workplace that isn’t fit for them, living in fear of sanctions, which will only exacerbate their conditions. Rachel Reeves can go hang.