As the FT reports this morning:
George Osborne has reassured companies that they will not be forced to raise wages to offset £12bn of benefit cuts to the working poor, as he puts the finishing touches to this week’s Budget.
To put it another way, George Osborne is going to cut benefits for those on the lowest pay but who are in work and do nothing at all to increase the minimum wage, the net effect of which is a guaranteed increase in poverty.
He argues that cutting tax is his alternative. This, however, makes no sense at all: he must know that 6 million people in receipt of in work benefits do not pay tax so there is no compensation for them from any such cuts he may offer. After all, reducing nothing to nothing is nothing. And that, it seems, is what the government will expect people to live on.
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http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/blog/will-wages-fill-the-tax-credit-gap-dont-budget-for-it/
Agreed
Osborne continuing to stoke the “class war”.
You won’t hear barely a murmur from the Right because they are all about exploitation.
Their followers think nothing of paying someone the minimum possible, after all poor people don’t know what hard work is and besides it’s their own fault for being poor….
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/27/britannia-unchained-global-lessons-review
or jacking up the rent on their buy to let, or
busily pulling up all the ladders that enabled the working class to climb out of poverty.
Their mascots are the vile simpering Elizabeth Truss, the cretinous Chris Skidmore, the obnoxious Kwasi Kwarteng, the poisonous Priti Patel, and the conniving reptile, Dominic Raab.
They raise nastiness to an artform, as they cheer on every slash that Gidiot makes to the welfare state.