Hear me out: it's really simple and it's really socialist (this is a positive word in my lexicon).
Read this: it's about the State of California's move to fine Wal-mart $6000 per employee who uses the state's minimal medical care. It's $6000 because that's how much each employee costs California. Wal-mart doesn't pay its workers enough to live on. It encourages them to use food stamps and other state assistance to make up the gap between what it pays them and what it costs to actual stay alive.
It's the same here in the UK. We have a 'minimum wage', which is set by the government. Very, very weirdly, it's much lower than the 'living wage', the amount calculated to be that required to survive.
The gap between the two is profit for employers and a massive loss for the taxpayer. By providing benefits for people who work (i.e. most of the people who claim social security), we aren't helping them. We're subsidising corporate profits. We're also using taxpayers' money to prop up the economy: maybe this is a little Keynesian, but I'd prefer corporate profits to be recycled into the economy as pay rather than ship them offshore, as Amazon and friends do.
It's so simple. We just vote to equalise the minimum wage with the living wage. Bingo: companies have to pay their employees more, taxpayers don't have to shovel money directly into corporate shells in the Cayman Islands. We could spend our taxes on schools, trains and street lighting, or (if you're a Tory), just pay less tax. We'd probably be healthier and happier too: people who take home a decent wage will lead healthier, happier lives. People who have to depend on the bureaucracy and suspicion of the social security system have a much harder time. And we'd have a much simpler and smaller social security system.
There really is no downside.
Showing posts with label living wage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living wage. Show all posts
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
How to get re-elected: by Paul Uppal
After our much needed festive break, the egregious and secretive millionaire representative for The Dark Place is on his feet again, and this time he's taking the opportunity to tick off all those whinging constituents:
When he says that 'wealthy people accumulate wealth… through wealth creation, rather than income', what he means is that he avoids paying the same tax rate as me (despite me being very much not a millionaire) by paying himself dividends rather than a salary from Pinehurst Securities. The top rate of income tax is 40% on earnings above £42,000. The top rate for his capital gains, as he points out, is 28% (though of course needy Paul is also kept off the breadline by his £65,000 parliamentary salary).
Uppal's right that Labour's capital gains tax rate was a shameful 10%, but it's time he stopped making petty points like this. He fails to realise that from the outside, we're the farmyard animals and looking from the pigs to the men, it's hard to tell them apart. New Labour was obsessed with financial sharks because it had no industrial policy, nor any interest in one: I don't think this is quite so true of the current Labour Party.
Paul Uppal and his friends are not the solution. They are the problem. Uppal's business has contributed nothing to the British economy: it simply shifts money around. No jobs are created, no innovations generated. And yet he has lobbied for – and won – another tax break for owners of empty properties, who'd rather we subsidised them than accept a lower market rate: he's just another hog at the trough, but this hog spends his time denouncing the poor for their expectations of state aid!
Quite simply, Paul Uppal MP and his party are parasites. It's clear from the legislation they've enacted (top rate of income tax dropped, corporation tax dropped, tax inspectors sacked, food safety protection cut, welfare for disabled children cut…) that they have no intention of acting in the national interest. They are shamelessly pursuing a policy of class warfare and self-interest. They have captured the state and in the Kenyan phrase, it is 'their turn to eat'.
Am I making too much of this anodyne little speech? Well, Mr Uppal made it during a debate about the Living Wage. He's against it, just as the Conservative Party was against the Minimum Wage. The miserable nature of this country is obvious from the fact that the notional living wage is higher than the legal minimum wage. Put simply: you can't live on the minimum wage (and social security benefits are even lower). Under Labour, the scandalous solution was to subsidise low wages with social security – essentially inviting corporations to inflate their profits and share prices at the expense of the taxpayer and the poor. That's why I'd upgrade the minimum wage to the living wage and abolish benefits for those in work. The shareholders (including my own pension provider) need to accept that profits shouldn't come at the expense of cold houses, bad food, thin clothes and poor health.
Under the Tories, it's far, far worse. With the vicious attacks on social security, the state won't even be providing that safety net. So wages will remain at the rock bottom, and the state won't even cover the difference between the minimum and living wages. People are being driven from their homes, while Mr Uppal spends his time speaking up for the already rich.
And they accuse the left of waging class war.
That point is well worn and made continually, and I am sure that all Members are aware of the top rate of tax being cut, but there is an element of financial amnesia here. As even people who only have a rudimentary understanding of economics will appreciate, the main way that wealthy people accumulate wealth is through wealth creation, rather than income, which is always variable. If we look at capital gains tax, the current rate is 28%, which is in stark contrast to the previous Labour Government, where venture capitalists were paying capital gains tax at a rate of 10%—often much lower than the cleaners who were cleaning their offices.That's right. If you disagree with Paul, you're a thicky thick thicko. And we should listen to him, because underneath the modesty which compels Paul to keep schtum on the sources of his considerable wealth, he's a man on firm ground. Remember: Paul has never picked up a shovel, employed a large number of people, contributed to the wealth and gaiety of the nation with a new thingamabob, ratchet, widget or idea. He is a propertly speculator.
When he says that 'wealthy people accumulate wealth… through wealth creation, rather than income', what he means is that he avoids paying the same tax rate as me (despite me being very much not a millionaire) by paying himself dividends rather than a salary from Pinehurst Securities. The top rate of income tax is 40% on earnings above £42,000. The top rate for his capital gains, as he points out, is 28% (though of course needy Paul is also kept off the breadline by his £65,000 parliamentary salary).
Uppal's right that Labour's capital gains tax rate was a shameful 10%, but it's time he stopped making petty points like this. He fails to realise that from the outside, we're the farmyard animals and looking from the pigs to the men, it's hard to tell them apart. New Labour was obsessed with financial sharks because it had no industrial policy, nor any interest in one: I don't think this is quite so true of the current Labour Party.
Paul Uppal and his friends are not the solution. They are the problem. Uppal's business has contributed nothing to the British economy: it simply shifts money around. No jobs are created, no innovations generated. And yet he has lobbied for – and won – another tax break for owners of empty properties, who'd rather we subsidised them than accept a lower market rate: he's just another hog at the trough, but this hog spends his time denouncing the poor for their expectations of state aid!
Quite simply, Paul Uppal MP and his party are parasites. It's clear from the legislation they've enacted (top rate of income tax dropped, corporation tax dropped, tax inspectors sacked, food safety protection cut, welfare for disabled children cut…) that they have no intention of acting in the national interest. They are shamelessly pursuing a policy of class warfare and self-interest. They have captured the state and in the Kenyan phrase, it is 'their turn to eat'.
Am I making too much of this anodyne little speech? Well, Mr Uppal made it during a debate about the Living Wage. He's against it, just as the Conservative Party was against the Minimum Wage. The miserable nature of this country is obvious from the fact that the notional living wage is higher than the legal minimum wage. Put simply: you can't live on the minimum wage (and social security benefits are even lower). Under Labour, the scandalous solution was to subsidise low wages with social security – essentially inviting corporations to inflate their profits and share prices at the expense of the taxpayer and the poor. That's why I'd upgrade the minimum wage to the living wage and abolish benefits for those in work. The shareholders (including my own pension provider) need to accept that profits shouldn't come at the expense of cold houses, bad food, thin clothes and poor health.
Under the Tories, it's far, far worse. With the vicious attacks on social security, the state won't even be providing that safety net. So wages will remain at the rock bottom, and the state won't even cover the difference between the minimum and living wages. People are being driven from their homes, while Mr Uppal spends his time speaking up for the already rich.
And they accuse the left of waging class war.
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Uppal's crocodile tears
My errant MP is dispensing further pearls of wisdom, this time on poverty (being a multimillionaire, he's an expert of course - these people always are):
What tired, hackneyed rubbish. I could produce hundreds of identical speeches… from the Victorian period. These are the origins of this line of thinking: the moral division of the working classes into the 'deserving poor' and the 'undeserving poor'. To such commentators, economic poverty is a function of your individual and spiritual poverty. If you're poor, it's because you're feckless, lazy and degenerate.
Back in the real world, economics and sociology have revealed a number of points which really shouldn't need exposition. But I'll do it anyway because I'm a teacher and Mr Uppal seriously needs some remedial classes.
Poverty isn't an individual choice. It's structural. All our governments recently - New Labour as well as Tory - have opted for a low-wage economy for the masses and a high-wage economy for the golden circle. Basically, they've accepted big business demands that the workforce be screwed in the name of higher profit margins. Labour, to be fair, squared the circle by providing welfare, tax credits and state services to some extent because they understood that their system built poverty into the economic structure. The Tories - because they genuinely do not care about the poor and view them as atomised scroungers - want to abolish state provision of anything except tax breaks.
This Bill isn't a scheme to help the poor escape some imaginary poverty trap: it's a scheme to help the government escape its duties towards its citizens, dressed up as a noble crusade to liberate those trapped by the bonds of welfare dependence (see also Reagan's America). They're cutting unemployment support, and massively cutting housing benefit, which will clear swathes of London and other cities of families who may have been living there for generation, destroying family and community cohesion and shifting insecure, unhappy people into unfamiliar and deprived places leading to more misery.
It's all very well pontificating about 'living within your means' if you're a millionaire speculator, but it doesn't work in the real world. Consider London's working poor: millions of people on the minimum wage (£5.93 if you're over 21): the actual minimum living wage needed to stay afloat in London is £8.30 per hour, or £7.20 elsewhere. Raising this would actually help the economy: workers with money spend it. Those without, don't (doh!). Paying the poor more and the Captains of Industry (or rather Finance) less would actually be very good for the economy.
Uppal is, to be blunt, a liar. The UK economy is deliberately organised so that those at the bottom are kept poor, while those at the top ascend into the stratosphere. Paying people nothing and shifting the burden to the state (while avoiding paying the taxes which fund services) is the capitalist way: and now Uppal and his friends want to remove even this prop.
What happens next? If they get their way, displacement, resentment and (hopefully) civil unrest. Or, a descent into banana republic oppression.
If this Public Bill Committee is genuine in its aspiration for people to escape from poverty, an essential part of the Bill and the principle we are talking about is that people should live within their means. I appreciate the points that he has made about the message we send out about the welfare system and how it works. However, if we are genuine in our aspiration not just to make work always pay, but to enable people to escape poverty, that is an essential message we should send out in the Bill.
What tired, hackneyed rubbish. I could produce hundreds of identical speeches… from the Victorian period. These are the origins of this line of thinking: the moral division of the working classes into the 'deserving poor' and the 'undeserving poor'. To such commentators, economic poverty is a function of your individual and spiritual poverty. If you're poor, it's because you're feckless, lazy and degenerate.
Back in the real world, economics and sociology have revealed a number of points which really shouldn't need exposition. But I'll do it anyway because I'm a teacher and Mr Uppal seriously needs some remedial classes.
Poverty isn't an individual choice. It's structural. All our governments recently - New Labour as well as Tory - have opted for a low-wage economy for the masses and a high-wage economy for the golden circle. Basically, they've accepted big business demands that the workforce be screwed in the name of higher profit margins. Labour, to be fair, squared the circle by providing welfare, tax credits and state services to some extent because they understood that their system built poverty into the economic structure. The Tories - because they genuinely do not care about the poor and view them as atomised scroungers - want to abolish state provision of anything except tax breaks.
This Bill isn't a scheme to help the poor escape some imaginary poverty trap: it's a scheme to help the government escape its duties towards its citizens, dressed up as a noble crusade to liberate those trapped by the bonds of welfare dependence (see also Reagan's America). They're cutting unemployment support, and massively cutting housing benefit, which will clear swathes of London and other cities of families who may have been living there for generation, destroying family and community cohesion and shifting insecure, unhappy people into unfamiliar and deprived places leading to more misery.
It's all very well pontificating about 'living within your means' if you're a millionaire speculator, but it doesn't work in the real world. Consider London's working poor: millions of people on the minimum wage (£5.93 if you're over 21): the actual minimum living wage needed to stay afloat in London is £8.30 per hour, or £7.20 elsewhere. Raising this would actually help the economy: workers with money spend it. Those without, don't (doh!). Paying the poor more and the Captains of Industry (or rather Finance) less would actually be very good for the economy.
Uppal is, to be blunt, a liar. The UK economy is deliberately organised so that those at the bottom are kept poor, while those at the top ascend into the stratosphere. Paying people nothing and shifting the burden to the state (while avoiding paying the taxes which fund services) is the capitalist way: and now Uppal and his friends want to remove even this prop.
What happens next? If they get their way, displacement, resentment and (hopefully) civil unrest. Or, a descent into banana republic oppression.
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