Labour promise to increase minimum wage to £8 by 2020

[Cherrypi]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29299230

Seems reasonable but 2020 is a long way off. Who knows what food prices will be by then. Greens are saying £10.

HeeHills ….. so what companies and shareholders are you talking about, the usual richest/top 100 in the FTSE, over half foreign owned, with shareholders heavily made up of pension funds that the Directors on the top rate of tax are paid to represent – and have the decision WHERE to locate, and hire and fire depending on the profitability/dividends of the company?

I think there was the same argument in the 1970’s, when British companies back then (and still making British goods) had to compete with Japan and Germany etc with a 15- 20 odd % inflation/prices/wage spiral and they paid around 50% Corporate Tax on any profits, well right up to the day when they went b**bs up.

Or are you talking about the many thousands of small-to-medium sized businesses, many of whom had very low interest rates THIS recession to help survive/retain staff who need to plan ahead to invest/hire, and know if Ed Balls budget reduction plan don’t add up – they will be told about more tax rises e.g. National Insurance, after the next General Election? Have all those tens of thousands High Street shops across the country closed because they could pay higher wages and other overheads?

The Coalition have put in several measures to financially help small to medium sized businesses, including cancelling most of Labour’s tax increases to come in after the 2010 General Election e.g. National Insurance, and gives them NI holidays hiring youngsters.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

By cutting fat government, the coalition also raised the rate people pay tax to £10,500, while Labour’s ‘help’ to the low paid soon after the financial crash started, was to TAKE AWAY the 10p starting rate of tax.

FYi there were more Council Homes built in the first 3-years of the coalition, than under the last Labour 13-year administration, which wasn't hard to beat, but it was acknowledging the problem from 2004 and starting to do something about it - but I suspect you don’t want to hear it.

Got to rush off but Green policy to reduce debt is the Robin Hood tax

Council houses - where are these homes being built? Not in my borough where the council are hanging on to millions of backhanders from property developers to build 'social housing' elsewhere! Plus they are selling CH quicker than building them here's a recent example labourwestminster.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/first-1-million-ex-council-flat-in-westminster-gets-closer/

Will try and respond to other points later itsmebut
But you can't say Tony Blairs New Labour was a socialist party - I keep hearing Ed is a socialist but see little evidence and think he's another Tory looking for glory!!

HeeBees

1. Who pays 'The Robin Hood Tax', when all financial institutions will do is widen their bid/offer dealing spreads (often as narrow/competitive as 1/64th to pension funds etc), as they won't pay it? If someone buys Euros for holiday, who do you think will pay for the tax, the bank?

1. The council and other homes stats are there, if you can't find them AWAY from Westminster council, I will. You are correct the sell off of council homes may have not been too smart in the 1980's plus when 'aspiration' was still alive, but 50,000 a year back then were being built. From 1997 to 2007, less than 25,000 social homes were built per year, with 2.5 million new citizens arriving.

1. I can say and will prove Blair's Labour was socialist if you want, even thought they tried to suck up to the City,to 'end boom and bust'. They only lasting longer than post before crashing the economy under debt/spending as they lucked into a 1997 Conservative economy in good shape, and a global boom fueled by relatively low interest rates from decades before.

How do you think a 1997 New Labour would have fared if they had inherited a 1979 Old Labour economy, if they couldn't have doubled/trebled spending from 1997, funding the indigenous unemployed (including 16-24 year olds trending up from 500,000 in 2004 to 900,000 in 2010 - while finding jobs for 2.5 million new citizens?

Where were the socialist or other ideas to fix the economy in 2010, look at the Macawber 'something will turn up' manifesto - the tax rises to growth were to come after the election.

Miliband is your real socialist deal, as he will get as close to a 1970's Labour Party as the faithful want, similar to what France tried, before the Conservative come back AGAIN to fix what they've done, and be told THEY are 'out of touch' with the people. lol

BTW ... are the Greens going to spend the Bankers Bonus taxes 30 times like Labour?

The funny thing is the last time I heard about them, very little cash could be paid, many would be paid bonuses in their companies shares they can't touch for years and/or money would be retained to be clawed back if the person/bank screwed up - where is the cash/tax flow in that to base annual spending on?

We have no idea if £8 will buy an apple or an Apple in 2020 - it's a completely meaningless remark.

Not surprised Miliband would come up with this crap. His party support was polled at 36% or something last week by YouGov (compared with DC who has 90% of Tory voters in support). He is a liability.

The problem for Miliband, Balls, et al is their rhetoric - as when the Coalition inherited a £157 bill annual spending deficit and looks to address it, it is 'austerity' by 'out of touch' people.

So now they believe they will inherit a £75 billion annual spending deficit in several months, all of a sudden they realize they will need cuts of their own, that can't be seen as austerity, hence the cuts vs deficit figures don't stack up beyond the usual 'attack the rich' ones.

The truth is that arguably the majority of the 'painless' cuts have been made, so if no serious trimmings, large tax rises loom.

£1,400,000,000,000 national debt

This is up from the £750,000,000,000 that Gidiot 'inherited' in 2010. He's also increasing the deficit hand over fist. Their answers, austerity and privatisation won't work. Japan is proof that austerity is a useless ideology. They've used it as their financial policy since 1992 and their economy is only kept going by constant money printing. That's our future under the three main neoliberal parties.

As for privatisation, why do you think so many foreign governments are buying our services and utilities. It's because they're seen as a cash cow. East Coast, the only rail franchise to be run as a state run service, returned over £200Mn to the treasury last year. The other franchises cost well north of ten times that in subsidies.

DoctorTwo …are you SERIOUS about the National Debt accumulation since 2010, when the Coalition ‘inherited’ a £157 bil annual budget deficit – as the only way NOT to increase the annually accumulating National Debt from the plans for a balanced budget Brown inherited (and happened around 2000/1, was to SLASH £157 bil from the UK’s spending from day one – is that what you wanted, as PMQT to date would have been a lot less like a chimps tea party if you (and opposition MP's) did.

And who started the serious ‘money printing’, firstly relying on a 1997 on economy built on tax/consumption from City profits, excessive high street lending, government/personal spending and debt funding a fatter state of a few million new employees - then Quantitative Easing (QE) via the Bank of England and a UK bank nationalisation that NO OTHER country had to conduct in 2007/8.

Please check Labour’s (or any one elses) 2010 clueless manifesto of what to do re the debt, lack of housing, lack of doctors & nurses to treat a population several million higher than they came in, lack of energy - and lack of everything really DESPITE all that tax payers money spent, and debt accumulated in our name, for future generations to pay..
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1983467-UK-Energy-Policy-Price-scandal-outages-due

As for what ‘other governments’ are doing, look at the French economy, who cannot shift an annual deficit of around £50 bil Euros, versus our £157 bil annual overspend that according to Mr Balls, will be £75 bil in 2015, when Frances will be the same with a basket case economy with over 10% unemployment (versus just over 6% here now and still falling) and flat growth – when most countries always need close to 2% economic growth just to stand still e.g. employ new workers leaving scholl etc.

Yet to hear anything about Council Houses being built and stopping huge companies using tax credits to top up crap wages. I don't mind small companies using tax credits to help growth but why are massive profit making companies using the system when they have more than enough profits to pay their staff a decent salary?

Firstly you won't hear any of the main parties talk about building council houses because quite simply the country cannot afford it. We're up to our eyeballs in debt already so finding the billions needed to build new houses simply won't happen.

You definitely won't hear Labour do any trimming of tax credits because they were the idiots who brought it in, in the first place. You can't blame businesses for employing more part time staff nowadays knowing tax credits will subsidise the rest anymore than you can blame the worker for preferring part time to full time work. Remember, before Labour tax credits (in it's current guise) didn't exist so employers had to either take their chance with finding the few people who could afford to work part time or pay full time wages.

Plus you can't distinguish between large companies and small companies and say it's OK for smaller ones to be "subsidised" but not large. Why? Because it's the individual who gets paid the credits, not the company.

Tax credits were an ill thought out, unaffordable bribe by the last Labour government that has got large parts of the population hooked on benefits that they can now no longer live without.

Even the Tories will baulk at scrapping it because it would be political suicide. Best we can hope for is a gradual trimming of the amounts paid.

They won't build more council houses. Far far too expensive to build and for local authorities to maintain. As for tax credits. Well done there for encouraging companies to pay wages people can't live on. Never mind. Tax credits will top it up. Labour has no answers to this country's problems. In fact they created a lot of them in the first place.

Promising an above inflation wage increase will increase inflation making the increase meaningless.

Silliband is grasping at straws and promising the earth hoping the English won't vote on the matter of English Votes.

tax credits are what stops families starving to death and makes it possible and worthwhile to work rather than stuck in a permanent benefits trap.

no we shouldn't need them but the reality is we do. just advocating doing away with them would devastate the economy without a solid, in place, working solution to low wages, high inflation and rocketing costs of living.

I agree Tax Credits have to be maintained, but IMO they are a result of Mr Brown’s typical ‘give here, take more there’ type budgets, trying to micro control, taking up a rainforest every budget day to explain – which become ingrained within an economy and literally PUT UP the ‘cost of living’ e.g. the monthly rent ‘cost’ legacy of not building enough homes, and a Council tax that rose over 110% under Brown.

But they were just some of the tax RISES in a time of plenty, when the economy was growing, and with a balance annual UK budget in 2001, based on Conservative budgets Brown adopted in 1997 – here is a flavour from 1997 to 2006 of the rest.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

If we take away the cost of fat quango’s government, take away the continual ‘drip drip’ of tax rises, build the homes/reduce the rents mortgages the Barker Report told Labour we needed in PRE immigration 2004, control local council costs, all contributing to higher inflation – and arguably, we would not have NEEDED tax credits.

The Coalition in a time of bust, have done what they could to lower the Labour legacy hiking the ‘cost of living’, during a recession, any recession, when salaries and job numbers always fall.

Miliband has disingenuously told people that they had the answers to the low wage growth of a recession and the ‘cost of living’, absent from a 2010 manifesto - yet they told us prior that they would RAISE taxes more than the Conservatives and Lib Dems to finance fat government spending.

Either Labour was clueless what to do in 2010, or as a government of 13-years refusing to tell the country even an outline of their tax and spending plans, they were being deceitful, keeping the tax rises secret until after the election, as they did in 1997.

You cannot tax a wasteful spending country to growth or offer widespread taxes to raise people’s take home salary e.g. keep raising National Insurance, which makes every speech about higher wages and a low cost of living for over 4-years, a political opportunist disgrace.

Apparently Mr Miliband has a new 10-year plan, to compensate for their 13-year one.

I wonder if Rachel Reeves sub £100 figure was quoting Labour’s State Pension after their first 13-year plan, giving 72p I believe one year around 2000, as Council tax was going through the roof, or after the Coalitions ‘triple lock’ State Pension reforms? I don't get to claim, yet.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2766383/Whoops-Labour-s-shadow-pensions-minister-Rachel-Reeves-does-not-know-state-pension-worth.html

An examination of Gideonomics with links supporting the hypothesis.

Re the RHT - I'm no economist, nor a politician but when the likes of Oxfam, Barnardo's, Friends of the Earth and The Salvation Army plus Nobel prize winning economists - those who are committed to ending world poverty support the cause I will listen to them - not a bunch of Tory loving posters who twist stats and quote Tory papers to prove their point!

So we can't afford to build more council houses? Yes we could if we bring in the RHT - Plus the money saved on HB bills will be reduced, it will take the pressure off the rental market, which in turn will take the pressure off the housing market, providing families with homes is a win win in my world.

Itsmebut I was born in Westminster, educated in Westminster, worked in Westminster - I know and love Westminster so can't really give an informed view on any other borough.

Niceguy say it's OK for smaller ones to be "subsidised" but not large. Why? Because it's the individual who gets paid the credits, not the company......

Pretty obvious to me but large profit making companies can afford to pay decent wages, a small business, such as mine can't.

Re Rachel Reeves......Who was that Tory who thought we were all earning £80k???? They are all out of touch with everyday people's lives - Tory and Labour - Green's are the only party who are saying what I want to hear. I am sick to death with all the main parties tinkering around the edges of this countries problems - we need the Greens to bang their heads together and show them how to build a fairer more equal society.

HeeHiles …… why is it with socialists, all their grey cells go into trying to TAX an economy to prosperity, never the means to EARN economic growth e.g. 2 million jobs since 2010 (apparently for ‘the few’ ).

And what point is several taxes, often costing private sector jobs, when a socialism either supports failing industries that can’t compete, forms fat government Quangos, spending more than that, and now planning fatter inefficient Regional Government?
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html

Re the £80k Tory, I dunno, please provide the link/name or be accused of the baseless and politically divisive shit Miliband only knows and spewed during his content lite ‘big speech’ yesterday , that also nearly lost us Scotland never seeing anything good in a Conservative administration, despite the evidence having inherited Labour/socialist train crashes in 1979 and 2010..

Re the charities, apart from Shelter, did they speak up when 2.5 million new migrants screwed the indigenous population in jobs and housing up to 2010? Did they all speak when Brown cancelled the 10p tax rate, had Zero rate employment, taxing jobs via National Insurance rises and increasing fuel duty and Council Taxes right up to 2010? How many of their senior staff now, were in the Blair/Brown administration, shall we seek to find? This article mentions some I believe.
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2655752/MAX-HASTINGS-Yes-Oxfam-does-great-things-But-does-taxpayers-cash-pump-socialist-propaganda.html

Re the Robin Hood Tax to a City having paid many of our bills since the 1970’s, I have no idea what taxes the City brings in annually now, but in 2006/7 it totalled around £60 billion directly, closer to £100 billion indirectly country wide through supporting industries/ jobs. Now I could go into detail why a RHT is PRACTICALLY a problem to administer, calculate (with the exemptions I’d mention), but apparently I already give too much detail – but I will if you want me to.

But I will repeat, it will be US paying the tax in one form or another, as unless investment banks are trading for their own account (called Proprietary Trading, almost entirely stopped since 2007), the transactions on buying the likes of stocks, bonds, currencies etc are done on behalf of insurance companies, pension funds and governments, whose government bond markets can trade in huge sizes on a bank dealing quote a fraction of 1 penny or 1 cent in the U.S. So as it is the CLIENT instigating the deal, the 1p(?) charge will be put onto the dealing quote, or onto the price after.

Re Housing, so wouldn’t it be nice if we USED the taxes we have had from investment banking (since the mid 1970’s when they came to London) TO BUILD those homes to meet demand, rather that a fat arsed socialist government, now wanting more public sector/union jobs, sprayed around the north in ‘devolved’ assemblies? Every European capital would kill to have the tax receipts from the City there, yet what do we do with those existing taxes?

P.S. Please feel free to challenge the stats, but most are fairly obvious if thought about, rather than conveniently ignored.

£80k basic salary guff Itsmebut

Glazed over the rest of your post no time to answer all your other points - got work to do!

Itsmebut

Please put down the Daily Wail - I won't click on their links as they are mostly made up nonfactual nonsense to suit their right wing agenda.

despite the evidence having inherited Labour/socialist train crashes in 1979 and 2010

We could go on all day ......Do you remember he 90's? I do! Redundancies, interest rates doubled, homes repossessed - That Tory government managed to fuck up the economy all by themselves!

HeeHiles …… why is it with socialists, all their grey cells go into trying to TAX an economy to prosperity, never the means to EARN economic growth e.g. 2 million jobs since 2010 (apparently for ‘the few’ )

Because sometimes you need to speculate to accumulate!

Artificially increasing the minimum wage is a terrible idea. It will simply mean companies either can't afford it and go bust, can't afford it and cope with fewer staff increasing unemployment or increase prices to pay for the wages, meaning the new increased wage buys you the same thing as before but the numbers involved are all higher. "Natural" inflation increases are one thing but trying to force a balance will just push up prices and end up having a negative effect.

the only reason 'we' can't afford to build council houses is because all those tory voters with second homes on buy to let mortgages on artifically low interest rates don't want pressure eased on the rental market. nor do they want rent controls funnily enough and that same little 'business' is what massively contributes to the artificially high price of buying houses.

ban buy to let mortgages, let interest rates start to rise again to pre recession rates (and inflation fall), build council houses and ideally bring in rent controls.

lots of problems solved for the poor and measures taken to bring the housing market into a more stable reality than exists when every numpty with a few grand to throw as a deposit can become a landlord.

not sure if means i'm deemed a socialist (i'd go more for ethical capitalist on this basis tbh) but i'd also introduce an index of max difference top earners and lowest earners can earn within a corporation and max profits (as a percentage of revenue) a corporation can make. there is just too much going out at the greedy top end of everything to allow enough to trickle down. capitalism will eat itself if we don't start that flow downwards of profits.