Sunday 29 August 2010

THE CUTS WILL DISPROPORTIONATELY HIT THE POOR



It seems that it is an excellent time to bury bad news.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has reported that the coalition’s budget has affected poor households disproportionately, but little has been made of this in the press, as Nick Clegg settles his feet under the desk for a prolonged period as acting Prime Minister.


As an aside, do you remember the derision which met Nick Clegg’s statement, made only a few months ago, that he came into politics to be prime minister .....? Eat crow people who smirked or even belly laughed!

The IFS’ assessment highlights impact of the looming cuts to public services, which will hit poorer households significantly harder than richer households.
The Financial Times, no less, reckons that the IFS conclusions will put massive pressure on Liberal Democrat MPs. After all, which Liberal could honestly say that he came into politics to vote for measures that target the poor as a means of bringing down a deficit which has largely been caused by the rich?

The FT’s own calculations, based on the effect of cutting public services by 15%, showed the losses were heavily concentrated in poor families and dwarfed the effects of other Budget tax and benefit changes. Losses for the poorest 20% of households would be around 8% of income, with losses of less than 3% among the richest 20% of families. Given that the richest really do not use all of their income on a daily basis, and the poor usually do, the unfairness is compounded and will in some cases, bring real misery.

The results,
interesting, contrast with the Treasury’s own analysis, which amazingly, and conveniently, does not include the effect of public spending cuts, and so shows larger proportionate losses among the richest.

Spokesmen (people) for the chancellor said that he had been “totally straight and clear” about what was included in the Treasury analysis and what was excluded. One claimed the chancellor’s boast that the Budget “was progressive” was accurate. He said the government had implemented some of Labour’s policies.

As if that were some indication of progressiveness!!!

But, in most media this was small beer compared to the Earth shattering news that, in Kernow, a wealthy lady had given birth to a baby daughter just like approximately 1,900 other women across the United Kingdom.

Awesome.

20 comments:

  1. Tris you miss the point. It doesn't matter a fuck who is in, the poor always get the rough end of the stick. Child poverty grew under 13 years of a Labour Government. We have to look at the bigger picture, which is control of our society and the enrichment of politicians particularly at the top. Pay them £30k and tight expenses and see who wants to be a politician then.

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  2. Tris

    The stinking Torys would much rather talk
    itchy citchy coo goo goo gaga baby talk.

    than discuss how thanks to Clegg (petain) collaborating with the (vichy) coalition
    in beating up the poor/disabled/unemployed/pensioners/low waged.......

    with their unfair and regressive budget cuts
    still the IFS gave a partial criticism and did not take account of all the high paid jobs which the Coalition will create(well in their imagination any way)

    Clegg has become the Billy liar of British politics he say any old shit and then contradicts himself in his next statement.

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  3. Labour's cuts implemented by the ConDems sums it up for me.

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  4. Of course it's going to hurt the poor the most. They don't vote Tory and now they wont vote Lib Dem either!

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  5. Hey DL.

    I rather thought I'd made that point with my comment about progressiveness not really being Labour's thing.

    I know it doesn't matter which one of the useless London parties is in. We have the worst social mobility in Europe. If you are born poor, you’re likely to stay poor and probably the social mobility part of it is not getting any poorer!! They babble on about social mobility and they seem to think that if a working class person buys his house he will suddenly have become a middle class person. In fact what he has become is a person with the millstone of an ex-council house around his neck.

    Labour, which it now seems was run not from London, but from Washington, DC, US!, are every bit as bad as the Tories. Who doubled the bottom rate of income tax, costing people who more or less subsist, a disproportionate amount of money? Oh yeah. Labour! Really that lot need to change their name! It’s an insult to the people who struggled to establish the movement....

    And the Liberals too are complicit in this.

    I remember that Prince Charles once said in a speech that he considered it a great privilege to have been born British.... The rest of us may feel less privileged...

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  6. Niko...

    I see that you have emerged from your cohabitation with Dean unscathed and ready for your next attack on the Conservatives.

    Of course Labour's plans have been incorporated into the Budget.... and there was the small matter of the 10p rate of income tax... Remeber that? Nasty Labour.

    Oh yeah, and you guys' objection to us building council houses...

    Labour the part of the w...w...working m...

    Nah, I really can't type it!

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  7. CH

    Précisément mon ami....as Poirot would say.

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  8. Munguin:

    Yep. You don't hit the people who vote for you...

    ...well, unless your Labour, but then they just assume that the lumpen masses won't have anywhere else to go...

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  9. No, the budget was progressive.

    The report is bias, partisan nonsense to be ignored.

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  10. Ah... is that it Dean.... LOL

    Hmmmm.... the FT is usually relatively reliable and without political bias isn't it?

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  11. Dean,

    Quite right, sir, the budget was progressive. In the same way as in the previous government measures are being taken which mean the poor will get progressively poorer and the rich will get progressively richer - a natural progression when your government is run by millionaires or aspiring millionaires.

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  12. Och, bias. The coalition represents the moderate, centre ground. Anyone differing from that are politically bias, acting against the moderate, progressive mainstream.

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  13. That budget:

    raised the lowest paid out of tax altogether.
    restored the pensions to inflation link.
    didnt freeze the pay of those earning under the nat ave.
    Instituted new banking levies, so that those ho caused the crisis, pay for the cleanup

    Progressive, fair and moderate.

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  14. Ah Brownlie... I grasped the wrong idea when it came to the word 'progressive'...

    You progress from Labour to Tory to Labour and you get progressively worse off.....

    Now I think I've got it.

    Jeez sometimes I'm well silly, aren't I?

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  15. With a dash of LibDems to rub salt in the wounds.

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  16. Unfortunately when the economy goes belly up it usually is the most vulnerable in society who are hardest hit. If Labour had still been in power then I think the IFS would still had said the same.

    The poorest might well be the hardest hit because they depend more on public services and benefits which are going to have to be cut but the scaremongering by Labour is ridiculous. No one is going to be so out of pocket that they will be out in the streets.

    Gordon Brown and his bag of goats are the ones to blame. They fed the rich and they got richer, now the rest of us are paying for them.

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  17. Allan:

    I agree totally with you. This was not a pro Labour post as some seem to have though. I did laugh at the idea that "progressive" was a daft word to use when describing anything they have done.

    You hit the nail on the head when you say why the poor are hit the worst because they have to depend on services. Whereas the rich do not use these services, and the reasonably well off use only some of them, and can to differing extents substitute private services ...

    The poor send their kids to state schools; get their treatment in state run health services, use public libraries, public swimming baths, public sports facilities, public parks.

    The rich go to private schools, private hospitals, buy books they want to read, are members of country clubs or health spas, private gyms and have gardens to play in.

    The moderately rich can substitute some things at least some of the time... eg if a waiting time for an operation on the health service is too long, they can pay for treatment...

    We already know that there will be a de facto reduction in some benefits after a year, because housing benefit will be adjusted... Well off people who are made redundant don’t bother with benefits, reduced or otherwise, presumably because it’s too embarrassing to be seen at the jobcentre and definitely not worth the fifty quid or thereby that people get.

    The poor will be the ones who, when the local library closes down, simply won’t have a book... or when the local council gym closes down will have to go without any facilities.

    It is this that the Treasury left out of their calculations when they said the rich were getting a harder time than the poor. The Financial Times, a non aligned paper was simply pointing out that omission.

    I’m sure that Labour would have done exactly the same thing. They long ago gave up the pretence of caring a damn about poor people, as doubling the bottom rate of taxation shows....

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  18. Tris.

    Agreed with you Tris and the Rich can adsorb more cuts than the less well off. One way the government could protect some of the service that many less well off people depend on is to increase the tax on anyone earning over 35k by 5%. That would exclude around 70% of us but save the services that millions depend on.

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  19. If you and I can see that Allan, why cannot Mr Osborne?

    :)

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