Jem wrote:
Cavey wrote:
Agreed, and personally I think that sucks. I'd cut all manner of other things first, before cutting 'make work pay' in-work benefits, personally.
That said, to be fair, the tax credits budget was spiraling out of control and the whole thing was stupidly complex (as befitting of Gordon Brown). It's got to be right that we, the taxpayers, are not expected to subsidise the likes of Tesco to pay people sub-living wages in dead end jobs. It's one thing paying young apprentices in genuine training employment, with college, low wages (but with the promise of a good education and Trade in return), but shelf-stackers? Nah.
But what good does lowering tax credits do? Tesco are still going to pay people sub-living wages in dead end jobs. People will still do them, because they're desperate and have no other way to earn.
It's all well and good them saying they'll implement a living wage to compensate, but a) it's nowhere near to a living wage and b) that's not going to be on the scene til what.. 2020 I think was originally said? The two things need to happen side by side or not at all. In the mean time, the government make money out of people who can least afford to sacrifice it.
Well, as I said before Jem, I'm personally queasy about this and, call me old-fashioned but I'd be cutting stuff like useless, vanity Cold War nuke programmes, so-called green subsidies shite (and an awful lot of foreign aid to boot) before taking the food out of people's mouths who WANT to work and are trying to make a living. But hey, that's just me.
To try to answer your post, though, well, lowering tax credits lowers the burden on the over-stretched public purse and taxpayer, which IN ISOLATION is obviously a good thing, right? Of course, the (big) downside in this case is that in so doing, people at the bottom end of the pay scale are going to lose out and likely be forced back into 'full time' unemployment/benefits. The Tories have tried to counter this with insipid minimum wage increases to compensate, and although helpful they're obviously not enough. Again, though, being economically competent they well realise that they can't just whack this up without killing the fragile (especially youth) jobs market in the UK, else we end up like France, Spain, Greece and all the rest of 'em in Europe with 50% or more youth unemployment, which is worse than anything we are discussing here.
With respect, then, it's all very well saying 'The two things need to happen side by side or not at all.' but words are cheap, we cannot do this
sustainably in economic terms (and still retain shite like Trident, big Defence budget, green subsidies etc.). We can't let the welfare budget spiral even more out of control than it already has, either. So, it's a case of having to make tough, unpopular, difficult decisions and actions, be they stuff like this, cutting down the public sector pensions liability or whatever else, all stuff that Labour funked time and again, and creating the conditions for the economy to grow itself out of trouble. If we carry on with 3-4% growth year on year for the next 5-10 years, with unemployment falling as it has, we should by then have a gamut of much higher paying and higher skilled jobs on offer by the expanded economy (let's hope our useless, utterly hamstrung education systems can generate the commensurate number of well educated young people to feed this machine, as opposed to having to 'import' skilled and semi-skilled people en masse in their hundreds of thousands as we have had to do thus far).
Being an effective, reforming government, getting undeniable economic results as against a supremely challenging economic backdrop was never going to be easy, or pleasant.
_________________
Beware of gavia articulata oculos...
Dr Lave wrote:
Of course, he's normally wrong but
interestingly wrong