The FT notes this morning that:
The prime minister will say Britain needs to move from a “low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare society to a higher-wage, lower-tax, lower-welfare society” as he hints at a radical overhaul of the tax credit system.
Increase the minimum wage, significantly, then Mr Cameron. That's the obvious first step in that process.
Cut tax, if you want too.
But making benefits cut the first stage is just callousness when there is no guarantee on the others. And everyone knows it.
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“The prime minister will say Britain needs to move from a “low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare society to a higher-wage, lower-tax, lower-welfare society”
Well, yes Mr Cameron. We all want utopia.
But we are where we are because of Tory economics.
Surely the good old British public aren’t going to allow these people to take it out on the ill/vulnerable/unemployed YET AGAIN? I didn’t think we’d allow it the first time but I was wrong and believe it could happen again with in-work relative poor against ill/out of work relative poor all underpinned by a bank created housing crisis. The perfect neo-feudal cocktail.
This classic piece of Double speak says all we need to know:
““Again, it’s dealing with the symptoms of the problem – topping up low pay rather than extending the drivers of opportunity.”
You just can’t make this garbage up. let’s look at the phraseology:
1) ‘Drivers of opportunity’: Leaving a large percentage of the populace in dire poverty and increasing wealth upwards whilst condemning the many to debt slavery.
So now those IN work are to be condemned for not having the ‘ambition’ to become financial consultants?
I feel that Gideon will be more than happy to settle for two out of three, a low wage,low tax (for the top tier) and low social security society.
What kind of person sees a low welfare society as a goal?
What kind of people accept it?
Those who accept it appear to be those look upon those with less income than them, with less accumulated wealth than them, as simply there to provide for their own every need.
It’s not neo-feudalism in my view, a term I regard as simply misleading because the property system is so vastly different from that of the Middle Ages, but it’s certainly a headlong plunge back to the social attitudes found in this country’s gentry and their attached politicians back in Walpole’s 18th century, when the early agents of capital were restructuring society to suit them, not the large landed aristocracy.
Now we have a new aristocracy of wealth, entrenched in globalism and demanding their pound of flesh from wherever they can exact tribute from the populations subjected to their wealth extraction, a process driven ever-onward through their bought politicians. These politicians aren’t here to serve us, they’re here to introduce us to the demands of our new masters, dressed in the language of fairness and common sense, claiming, as do all ruling classes and their academicians, that the morality of their social class should be the goal and the ruling principle for all social life.
I don’t think proportional representation is going to sort this one out… we’re going to need a bigger boat.
Neo implies it is a development
But let’s not split hairs
I’m not sure how relevant this is, but I was struck by this Krugman blog post, linking race to welfare.
The Issue That Won’t Go Away
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/the-issue-that-wont-go-away/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
Implicit in the Conservative position is a belief in “them and us” rather than “There but for the grace of God”
Indeed
Cameron’s PR skills are excellent but, as usual, are no more than lipstick on a pig of a policy.
Cameron’s statement admits that Britain has become a low-skilled, low-wage economy. We are now well into a sixth year of Conservative rule and wages are still significantly less than they were in May 2010. Forcing people off working age benefits will not increase wages. I suggest the following:
1. An increase in the NMW to the ‘living wage’.
2. £300 per week tax-free.
3. A guarantee of at least 30 hours of work per week for those that want to work.
4. 2% increase in salary for all public sector workers.
5. A job guarantee for all those out of work for more than a year, paid at the NMW.
The ball is now in Cameron’s court.
Soundbite politics.
Publicised by an admiring press owned by tory donors.
The rotating atmosphere impeller will become covered in solid excrement; when the workers who depend upon tax credits to pay the bills find they have to chose between being housed, or clothed, or fed. And when they finally get around to the really BIG welfare recipients, the state pensioners, and they will eventually, the rotating atmosphere impeller will cease rotating, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of excrement.
Maybe then, even with a compliant, captured and corrupt “free” press, people will realise that tories only look after tories.
Create a situation of high structural unemployment and low wages with disempowered workforce. Create a situation of indebtness to Capital. Create a debt crisis caused by Capital. Give even more money to Capital to control by creating more debt. Use crisis as a shock therapy to force people into unemployment with no option but to take low paid work whilst faced with market costs they can’t control, even if they’re capable of work. Take money out of the social security system by cutting taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, allow and encourage tax dodging include tax fraud. Create a low wage economy where the lowest incomes bear the highest marginal tax burden and their incomes are given over in Market dictated costs to the controllers of Capital. Let Capital encourage an austerity narrative whilst money continues to be syphoned from bottom to top. Encourage a scapegoating narrative of the poorest, weakest and most disempowered claiming the biggest burden on national finances whilst creating a situation where the opposite is actually true. Use that as a shock doctrine to cut social security to make it difficult or impossible for people to fare well. Create a situation where people are forced to compete for low paid, insecure work to make up for loss of social security, making it harder for them to contribute to the social security system. Blame them for not contributing enough to the system and use that an excuse to cut social security. Create a situation where disempowered people are blamed for not being paid enough or able to get work to match their market dictated costs. Give all money taken away from those people to the Market and the controllers of Capital in the form of indebtness. Repeat.
The easiest hit from the employee’s point of view is to adjust National Insurance – stop the top cap and increase the allowance before anything is paid. Doing, in effect, what the coalition did on personal allowances for tax (NI is tax by another name). I suppose the Tories will say it was under Lib Dem pressure. Is this why a similar system is off the the government agenda? Or is it just because it doesn’t allow money to be saved by the government however hard we plebs work?