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?

Shelly - you are obviously confused about how things work. Paying people a decent wage and not having them work for free is an engine for economic prosperity. People, and companies invest in their interest, not when they are being shafted, and they earn enough t opay good tax rates. You are sounding like a very weakly thought-out apologist for some predatory, short-term thinking multi-national.

thefrsh - i'm not an economic expert, but what you suggest sounds to be like a recipe for massive inflation and historically we are told thats bad for the economy and hurts the poorest most

You are sounding like a very weakly thought-out apologist for some predatory, short-term thinking multi-national.

Fuck off.

In fact no, I won't just leave it at 'fuck off' which is my response to your patronising snipe.

I'd love to hear more on my confusion 'about how things work'.

So come on, let's hear how the economy works, in your opinion. Obviously inflation doesn't matter anymore, so what else?

Not counting the 'Fuck off' I thought Shellys post made a lot of sense.

If the government forced the NMW to become higher, companies would employ less people, and put their prices up. We would end up paying more for our basic bills, and get a worse service for it, at the same time as the unemployment rate going up.

But on the other hand, people earning more money, spend more money - hence increase in demand for products and services, hence more jobs....

There is a big balancing act between doing that and increasing inflation.....

Also there are many jobs available that may be temporary, seasonal, or zero hours contract. People who are unemployed COULD do these jobs but they are disincentivised by the current system - ie they could work a seasonal job, but the sheer hassle of signing off/losing benefits for weeks, then having to start from scratch when the job ends is so soul destroying/risk of having NO money, understandably they decide it is simpler to not bother.

This is where the immigrant work force comes in - they have little to lose. I am in big favour of being able to work as and when you can, without total cut off of benefits....Is this what the new Universal credit proposes?

YANBU. They keep on about helping "middle income" people, and the figures they quote always sound like a really high income to me!

Shellyboobs. Isn't the system your talking about called a co- operative like John Lewis who have successfully managed to run a business without fatcat bonuses for over a hundred years?

Pinktrees . My opening post is not 'idiotic'. It's a shame some people can't have a debate without turning to insults. I am a well qualified working mother who is dismayed at the way the government seem to be handling this mess. Yes people should not be able to live off benefits their whole life but at the same time people who genuinely find themselves on temporary hardship should be able to access help. There needs to be a fairer system for all.

But people who genuinely find themselves on temporary hardship can access help. And rightly so.

I think we are sometimes guilty of thinking we deserve more than we really are because of the wealth we see all around us, and that leads us to forget how lucky we really are in this country.

If One of you works & the other doesn't jsa is calculated at a couples rate which means you might not get anything.
You have to be 'available for work' so if you do find a temporary job your jsa is gone & you will have to reclaim once that job is finished. Alot of people would rather stay on benefits then go through this system.

I agree with thefresheggnoodlePan.

For example... Tesco's made profits of £13,000 per employee.

This means they could well afford to give every employee a £5,000 pay rise, and still make substantial profits.

Result: Employees can pay their food and utility bills comfortably, AND still have plenty of disposable income to spend on the high street, in restaurants etc creating demand for good and services and therefore
CREATING JOBS!

you fuckers.

Thought I'd join in with the swearing

Chicken.

Quite a bit of naivety (or disingenuousness) on this thread.

Quote from BBC Business, May2011

The report says the top earners, many of whom are company directors, could be receiving 10% of all income by 2025.

"This is the clearest evidence so far that the gap between pay of the general public and the corporate elite is widening rapidly and is out of control," said Deborah Hargreaves, chair of the High Pay Commission.

The commission analysed income statistics gathered regularly by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
It found that between 1996-97 and 2007-08:

the earnings of the top 0.1% had risen from an average of £328,000 to £538,600
the earnings of the bottom 50% had risen from £16,000 to £17,100.

Extrapolating, the commission says that if those trends continue, then by 2019-20 the top 0.1% will have average incomes of £901,600.

By contrast, the bottom 50% will see their incomes rise to just £18,700.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13410095
The HPC report is here.

Quote from Moneyweek, Jan 2010

According to the latest survey from Manifest and MMK, respectively corporate governance and pay specialists, between 1999 and 2010 the median remuneration for a FTSE 100 chief executive rose by an average 13.6% a year, from £1m to £4.2m.

Over the same period the average annual rise in the FTSE 100 index was 1.7% and average employee earnings increased by 4.7% a year.

The upshot is a widening pay gap: in 1998 the CEO earned 47 times more than the average worker; by 2010, the figure was 120 times. This system might make the ?most committed capitalist? feel ?queasy?.

www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/uk/what-can-be-done-about-executive-pay-57119

Let me run that by you again.

? Top CEOs gave themselves a 13.6% pay rise when their performance had only improved 1.7%.

? The CEOs' pay rises were nearly three times as big as their workers'.

• They got 13.6% while workers got 4.7%.

? The gap between CEOs' pay and workers' pay has more than doubled in 12 years.

• They have gone from earning 47 x average pay to 120 x average.
• This is despite rotten performance (recent results show losses at half the companies.)

If anybody still thinks top bosses deserve every penny, they should look again.

If anybody thinks we are not creating an overclass / underclass situation, their head is too far in the sand. Even the fucking Economist and Torygraph see the problem.

Moneyweek Jan 2012, doh.

If you raised the minimum wage to £10 an hour than a lot of low-skilled roles would just be eliminated. Checkout operators for instance.

You don't think they're being eliminated anyway, Grag?

It would be much more useful to bring house prices down than put minimum wages up. One of the reasons the UK is structurally screwed in terms of trying to generate growth is housing costs, which form a very large proportion of people's outgoings and mean that wages have to be uncompetitive (by global standards) so people can survive. Although people are saying "oh thank god we didnt have a housing crash like the US" it might have been better mid-term if we had.

Hasn't helped the US.

I think it's slightly insane to be trying to "compete globally on wages." Our workforce is much better educated, and physically healthier, than the cheap ones. If we hadn't shut down manufacturing, we'd be putting all that talent to profitable use. As it is we're trying to compete on poverty levels, in a manner of speaking. Way to grind a nation down.

But you dont need a massively educated workforce to succeed in manufacturing- many manufacturing jobs are pretty low skill- and we couldnt compete. That's why the factories closed. People in the UK didnt want to buy what other people in the UK were making. The only way around it is to put massive import taxes on foreign made goods but then everyone complains that TVs cost too much.

I'm not convinced that we are better educated than the cheap ones.

The bottom line is that all the people queuing to get their Ipad 3s on Saturday would not have paid another #150 for them so that they're made in the UK.