To think the govt are purposefully trying to keep the poor down?

[Alltheseboys]

Seems like with all these cuts the govt are deliberately trying to keep the working class down?

YY ariadne. Why the fuckity fuck are corporations allowed to make profits in our towns, but not pay tax on them because their head office is in Switzerland? I know it's legal but the law needs changing. So does the law that allows Philip Green to escape UK tax as Arcadia Group is owned by his wife, who doesn't live here.

They won't all pull out. A percentage of a huge profit is still a profit.

Wrt your second point, public sector job creation has traditionally been used to cushion the gap between haves and have-nots. It keeps the economy moving, stimulates consumption and improves the nation's mood. An energetic home-building programme could mitigate several of our problems at once. So could reopening the mines, imho, but that's a thorny topic!

I live in Switzerland at the moment. Here you can purchase two chicken breasts, bred in Slovenia, for approx 8CHF or two chicken breasts, bred in Switzerland, for approx 12CHF. They are packaged the same and appear no different. Infact the Slovenian chicken breasts are bred to EU welfare standard, thus not inferior in quality in any way.

Swiss people buy the more expensive Swiss chicken breasts because they are bred in Switzerland, thus they are supporting Swiss farmers. This ideology is common place in Switzerland. People buy local, are happy with less choice in supermarkets and are proud to support the local economy. People have tut'ed at the contents of my shopping basked because i don't buy Swiss, i buy what is best value. I am in the minority here.

If people back home in Britain shopped like the Swiss then our economy would receive a huge boost. There is little shame in buying cheap foreign imports in Britain thus our manufacturing industry has been in such decline and will not improve unless British shopping habits change.

It wasn't me who said call for a GE ariadne.

You are not being unreasonable. They are making the poor poorer and vilifying them for it. The minimum wage will be gone and the public sector made minuscule before the next election. They have no democratic mandate for any of these changes.

Yellow- I really noticed that in Australia as well. The focus of a lot of advertising (Big Kev's cleaning products sticks in my mind) was "Buy Australian". I guess as a small country, they're not going to have any manufacturing unless people are prepared to buy locally produced goods.

Ariadne- wealth is largely transferred out of the UK because people buy imported goods, not becuase a few non doms have a Swiss bank account. How about we ban that? You can only buy things made or grown in the UK? Maybe we should actually put a massive fence up around the whole UK and just become self-sufficient. Whilst I agree that the public need to realise the consequences on the UK economy of continually preferring imports,I dont think it should be forced on them.

garlic seriously, you dont want to re-open those mines. Other than the little surface mining done by UK coal, there are no economically feasible coal deposits left in the UK and the deep mines are dangerous (by modern standards) and unfit for modern mining equipment used by large scale mining economies like RSA and Australia where a massive machine called a longwall miner sheers off tonnes and tonnes of coal in a single movement (mining not very labour intensive anymore). Uk mines are just a money pit (no pun intended).

Ok, I assumed there would be humungous capital investment needed to modernise our mines. Just thought it might work out more economical than going to war with oil-producing countries all the time Crap 'pit' joke, but it made me smile.

wealth is largely transferred out of the UK because people buy imported goods, not becuase a few non doms have a Swiss bank account

I dunno, the £25bn of taxes not paid by non-dom corps and individuals would make quite a difference (conservative estimate.)

It would be nice to see an incentive for buying British, Didn't we do that in the 70s for a while? This govt would be ideologically opposed, though, as it thinks competition is a universal panacea.
Wrongly, I might add.

Garlic- i think the problem is that all countries in the world are very nervous about protectionism in all its forms these days because they're worried about import tariffs being imposed on their own goods in retailiation (although the CAP is a massive bit of protectionist legislation which is hugely detrimental to e.g.African producers).

I agree it would be nice if people felt some sort of loyalty to British goods, even though they are more likely to be more expensive.

YABU and YANBU. I don't think government cuts to welfare are necessarily evidence of a government trying to keep people down. Perhaps and in all probability, they simply can't afford to run those programs anymore. That said, there has always been a concerted effort by some to ' keep people in their place'. This is nothing new but I think it is possibly a little more dangerous now because the middle classes have been so gutted. The top 1% of income earners may earn 10% of the wages but that's a far more equitable situation than, say, the U.S. What really counts is asset ownership rather than wages ... there you will find wealth much more concentrated in the upper 15% or so. Starting wars is often a favourite way of releasing the pressure valve but I am dubious as to it's success this time because those who would have once fought feel so betrayed and know from bitter family experience that they will, in all likelihood, come back to nothing. I think the only thing one can really do to alleviate the situation is to give up in terms of procreation and never, ever believe a word they say because they are never, ever acting in your interests. Only their own.

I sometimes wonder if there's a long term goal of creating so much unemployment, poverty and desperation that the minimum wage will end up being abolished and businesses will eventually be able to get staff for extremely low wages, ie £2-3 pounds per hour.

It sounds insane but I saw a tv interview with Kelvin McKenzie, the former Sun editor, where he was saying that the UK's economic problems are down to the fact that we can't compete with the likes of India and China because they have extremely low wage economies and virtually no welfare provision. He spoke of these countries' lack of social security and virtual slave labour as though it were a good thing . I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he's not the only influential right winger who holds these views.

More than their supposed lack of welfare ( not true especially of Communist China) and low wages ( they have minimum wage policies in India too - it's just that it's so much lower than ours), it's the way the entire global economy is structured. If our currencies are worth so much more than theirs, then someone in India or China can be earning an excellent wage by Indian or Chinese standards but be earning less than the minimum wage for someone in a Western country. It may be a right-wingers dream to see people reduced to that but it has very little to do with economic competitiveness. It would lead, over the long term, to a catastrophic drop in the birthrates which is already at historical lows ( because of past policies of trying to achieve this).

'Ariadne- wealth is largely transferred out of the UK because people buy imported goods, not becuase a few non doms have a Swiss bank account. How about we ban that?'

Not ban it but impose a higher duty on imports.
Also lots of wealth has been sucked out of the economy by migrant workers .Everyone says 'yay! cheap labour good for the economy!' But not when they are living as cheaply as possible (10 to a 2 bedroom house ) sending every penny they can back to Poland or wherever.That wealth has now gone out of the uk economy

...he was saying that the UK's economic problems are down to the fact that we can't compete with the likes of India and China because they have extremely low wage economies and virtually no welfare provision.

Previously it wasn't necessarily an issue for us (economically) that some countries have extremely low wages and non-existant welfare states which means they can support cheap manufacturing.

All it meant was we had to specialise in what we could compete well at (hi-tech industry and financial markets, etc) and let others do what they are good at (mass-manufacture using cheap labour, etc).

The problem is that India, China and other emerging economies now have incredibly efficient and succesful education systems so they can compete with us in the areas where we specialise.

FFS, does that mean we just curl up and die? (current, inexperienced, govt answer: yes!) What a load of toot.

It's really hard to draw contemporary examples, because the UK has spent the past 30 years selling everything we owned and everything we're good at. The only thing we excel at, currently, is bullshit. Last stand of a frantic debtor. But we still are who we are, maybe it's just that we need to work a bit harder.

Looking at my home nation now, I'm constantly reminded of the fall of the roman empire. Dunno how many historians there are here - mumsnet being what it is, there'll be a good dozen who will shoot me down! But, in macro-summary, it got smug and entitled.

They had everything they needed to forge ahead - they nurtured engineers, but didn't rate them because manual slave labour was cheaper. They had brilliant economists, but ignored them because they 'owned' the world, or at least the world parts they cared about were scared of them. They were smug. Resting on their proverbial laurels.

So in history, so in the present day. We are the past owners of an empire that made us great. We gained the privileges of wealth and got a bit lazy. Like previous empires before us, we thought "We know the game" and couldn't be arsed to change the game. Like the predecessors, we learned too little too late and lost the game.

How come other european countries are ding so much better than us? The Scandinavians who, despite much greater costs and fewer resource, run more functional societies than ours? The Netherlands and Belgium, whose people are better educated, and better protected than ours, despite fewer resources and tiny mineral fuel resources compared to ours?

I don't pretend to have the answers but am fairly desperate to raise the questions. Don't give me glib quotes from The Economist, try and think why one of the most functional nations in the world is trying to compete with Bangla Desh??!

FFS, does that mean we just curl up and die?

Not sure who that's aimed at, but if it's me, I was pointing out to Celia what's changed.

Last stand of a frantic debtor. But we still are who we are, maybe it's just that we need to work a bit harder.

Looking at my home nation now, I'm constantly reminded of the fall of the roman empire. Dunno how many historians there are here - mumsnet being what it is, there'll be a good dozen who will shoot me down! But, in macro-summary, it got smug and entitled.

I could not agree more Garlic. we've completely priced ourselves out of the market on just about every damn thing, we have very little to offer anyone any more and yet we still live in some kind of deluded, entitled bubble where every government cut represents the unforgiveable oppression of someone or another. It's a bloody joke. We are a joke.

'we still live in some kind of deluded, entitled bubble where every government cut represents the unforgiveable oppression of someone or another.'

if expecting there to be enough jobs paying sufficient to house feed and clothe our families is being entitled, then I guess we are. But this is not the case.e government are not delivering an economy where this is the casethrre isn't the govy have failed us here.
I don't think it is deluded and entitled to expect the govt to support those families who through no fault of their own are unable to do this.
For example the govt could solve the housing crisis in one fell swoop by relaxing planning laws if they really wanted to.The price of housing would tumble, in both the rental and purchasing market.But they won't do that because tory policy is to keep the poor poor and the rich rich.

YANBU at all........

"The poor cannot expect to be immune to cuts, especially as they tend to take the most out of the system."

Are you kidding me?
What bubble are you living in OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos?

Keeping the poor down is how the Tories stay rich- we have seen this all before yes?

We are re-liviing the 80's it seems and it could not possibly be more depressing.

I found the "Let's work out of the debt" introduction so arrogant and misplaced... Just where is all this work available? This country is being run by a bunch of hopelessly out of touch Eton mates who have never had to worry about money or coping on a monthly basis in the same way the majority of those in the UK are now.

I thought it was utterly disgusting. Had hoped that the coalition element may have softened the blow- can MNs imagine how bad it would have been it we had a sole Tory govt?

keeping the poor down is how capitalism works. I am not an economist but even i know that for capitalism to work, you have to have a foodchain/pyramid type thing at work, with the masses or peasants at the bottom, and the rich fat cats at the top. the only difference between captialism and the old feudal system is that with enough smarts, it is possible to move social classes to the top, becuase there is no such thing as a persons station in life any more, and the need to stay where they were born. why do you think communism was so popular? it fought against this nastiness

Garlic Don't know but

• Norway has shit loads of oil and can use it to fund a massive welfare state
• Netherlands about to breach their EU fiscal agreement or have to introduce massive cuts to avoid it, so not sure they are doing any better than us
• Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal are more screwed than us
• Germany is in the Euro and so is benefiting from a weak currency (makes it's exports cheaper).

lequeen - what a crock!
The laffer curve is a theoretical concept sezed upon by right wing US presidents to justify tax cuts for the rich.In practice the 'right hand half' of the curve ie decreased revenue after the theoretical tipping point has never been shown to be true in practice.

The poor have to get smarter and do what many immigrants do if they can't find a job - start a business of their own. They need to rethink their housing needs and cooperate with other poor families to house themselves. If that means two couples in one bedroom each and all the kids in another, that's simply what you have to do.

It is oppressive when a government takes more than 40% of your income, provides no services in return and does everything possible to obstruct citizens from engaging in lawful economic activity which might harm their larger competitors. And there is certainly some evidence of that throughout Western countries. Forced conscription and labour is oppressive. Outright state mandated theft is oppressive. It is certainly not oppressive to withdraw benefits from those who won't work and never have any intention of working. It is not oppressive to make financial cuts when the bills have no way of being paid other than going into more debt (whether that is personal debt or securitized debt like bonds etc). Look at Greece.

Think like someone who has come from nothing. Noone owes you anything.

"Doubleshot* I'm afraid I don't understand your "living in a bubble" logic, perhaps you can explain it to me?

Person A earns 100 pounds and takes hand outs and uses public services with a value of 100.

Person B earns 500 pounds, takes no hand outs, pays for private education/nanny/health.

So it seems obvious to me that person A will lose more if handouts/public services are cut because they are the one using them. Person B is picking up their own bill.

AlpinePony . I think you answered your own question.

How do you possibly imagine that Person A on their income of £100 could possibly afford the private education/nanny/health?

I also very much doubt on their budget that they'd be arranging Ocado deliveries and going to the theatre very often. Person A statistically has a lower education & employment expectation and therefore lower salary expectation ...........

So the idea is, and has been for years that everybody pays proprtionately towards the system supporting us all...... to different degrees yes. But I suppose if Person A doesn't have the funds for a private tutor, then they would be perfectly justified in visiting a library or dare I say it a doctor or hospital when they get sick. I don't think that makes them scroungers on society when they pay tax.

It is also not the case that Person A relies on handouts. Yes there are cases of fraud, and we do need to get tighter on that, but there are also plently of people in a very high-earning bracket who have benefited from funds not due to them. But they tend to refer to it as a "misunderstanding or oversight" instead of fraud.

The minimum wage here does not reasonably cover the cost of living in most of the UK-and in the absence of a rise in employment figures yesterdays budget does as the OP so correctly questioned seem purposeful.