"Financially literate" more likely to be positive on immigration

[TheOddity]

The more you understand things like inflation etc, the more likely you are to support immigration. Interesting study, but I don't think the financial worries in Europe are really the nub of most people's objections any more so much as a fear about retaining national cultures and sometimes even languages in each country, and of course the other fear right now of home-grown terrorism.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/22/immigrants-role-in-recovery-ukip-beckons-uninformed

Are you financially literate? I'm really not, but I do see that as the UK based its economy on the service industry, we probably are going to need some people to do those jobs. But I'm sure there is another way to look at it!

Yes, particularly if you're going to ignore the fact that the income tax threshold would have gone up by CPI anyway. This is well documented by the IFS and others.

According to the the IFS, the average household gained £321 a year from cuts to direct taxes (remember this includes abolishing the top rate, as it's all households) and a loss of £333 a year from increases in indirect taxes such as VAT.

It's well documented that the lowest income households pay the most VAT as a proportion of their income. The combination of fiscal policies, even absent any other changes, hit the poorest the most. Given that it's also well documented that these very people are more likely to spend every pound that goes into their pockets, that's money the Government has taken out of the economy.

The richest 10% pay £1 in £25 of their income in VAT, the poorest 10% pay £1 in £7 (from gross income).

The policy combination has a particular bias against single income families for whom the VAT bill is higher but the impact of the income tax threshold increase is lower.

I'm not an acolyte of any political party so you'll get no party political talking points or spin from me. I'm not particularly interested in the usual unnuanced talking points and hyperbole about whose fault the crash was, and how the other side were nothing but pure and white. You get it from both sides (with or without unnecessary bolding and underlining) and it's both boring and woefully uninformed.

Labour fucked some things up, the Coalition has fucked some things up. One of the things the Coalition fucked up was pretending that raising the income tax threshold while raising VAT was either progressive or wasn't going to leave most people on low incomes worse off.

Jassy ..... you have gone from "the poor" on the previous page, to single parent family, and an 'average' that includes the top 50p rate of tax that the IFS says brings in zero to £2 billion, on this page.

Was this instead of repeating "the average family £1,600 worse off", Labour mantra that does NOT include the tax codes taking people out of tax to £10,600 (whatever), any benefits received or includes any pensioners???

How the hell can you compare "fuck ups" between the Labour & Conservatives, based on the relative excellent economy/finances/homes/migrant/private pensions/education etc etc etc that Labour inherited, with what they handed back to the Conservatives in 2010 - with an annual £157 billion government overspend, the highest in Europe, to sort it? LOL

The Coalition without the OBR they set up after the election, inherited tax receipt projections lies from Labour, so had to raise VAT before taxing the rich more and getting back more evaded taxes than Labour, over the next 5-years.

In 1997 with our budget deficit budgeted to be paid down by 2001, Labour's Brown, advised by Balls sold 40% of our gold, raided Private Pensions to near Final Salary destruction, and put up the governments take from selling a home in raising Stamp Tax from a flat 1% - and NONE of that was in their 1997 manifesto.

With the deficit gone by 2001/2, Labour were STILL raising taxes, so PLEASE don't even try to tell me that the UK would have been better off under a Labour government from 2010, not wanting to cut government spending in their fat quangocrat, non job State - and hardly shy in taxing the bejezus out of the masses - including by the use of Fiscal drag on under indexing tax allowances - yet lowered Capital Gains Tax (the real millionaires tax?) to a 10% tapered low, before leaving a flat 18% rate.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

Was heaping tax after tax on the masses e.g. Council Tax, and lowering Capital Gains Tax, Labour's idea of 'progressive'???

No wonder inequality GREW under 13-years of Labour.

P.S. As I've said elsewhere, Labour TALK a good game on helping the poor (and on immigration), but their record seriously sucks, and won't give ANY details on what they'll do after 2015, other than it will be "fair" - yeah right, like last time.

No, it was because it was late and I was grabbing figures to demonstrate my point (they all do, by the way despite your attempts to pretend otherwise - or don't you understand them? Where did you get single parent families from?) that the raise in VAT was not in the least progressive, and that the slightly-above-CPI increase in the base income tax threshold wasn't the help to people on low incomes you had painted it, and was in fact negative for business. If you can't see how the facts I've shared are relevant to that, then there is no point in me digging out more for you to show your lack of understanding of how they apply to my point.

As I've said, I'm not remotely interested in party political talking points or hyperbolic angel/demon characterisations, I'm interested in facts (and, er, basic financial literacy). You are trying to ascribe to me things I haven't said, and that I in fact don't think, and extrapolate from what I've actually said to what you think that means about what I think about various political parties. It is lazy rhetoric to avoid my actual point, and makes it look like you're not willing to discuss what I've actually said as it doesn't fit your narrative. It also ignores the fact that a lot of people don't see politics and in particular economic policy in the black and white terms you seem to.

As you don't seem to be up for a discussion on the facts, rather than about the not-even-relative merits of two political parties, I'm out. As I've said -dull, pointless and inaccurate.

JassyRadlett ….. a nice speech there, but all I see from you (and others) , is that you are clearly in budget deficit and every other pre May 2010 ‘denial ‘, and that you’d rather pick holes in what has been achieved by the Coalition, when either THERE WAS NO PLAN from the previous government of 13-years, electoral cowardice prevented them telling us what they were planning - or a combination of the two.

So if you want to talk facts, then lets talk facts;

The 2010 £157 billion annual budget deficit (government overspend).
The time to worry about labels like “progressive” is when you have £hundreds of billions to spend of fat government from the proceeds of a financial bubble within a global boom and can do something about it, not when that fat quango/non job government is a large part of the £157 billion overspend during the BUST - when even mother of fat government France, ‘only’ had an overspend closer to £60 billion a year.

Especially when around £70 bil is ‘Structural’ (explained on the previous page) and won’t even go away in an above trend GDP recovery. A rise in VAT may not be “progressive”, but it raises ££billions a year more from the ‘broader shouldered’ and rich 1% socialists worry sooo much about over all else, spending FAR more in nominal terms, to help SORT OUT the budget deficit problem inherited.

Please tell me any other firm alternative measures in place or planned, to a trending upward government budget deficit problem that YOU saw from Labour (or any other party), prior to May 2010?

The truth is there is NOT a painless way to reduce a trending up £157 billion government overspend as it involves spending cuts, tax rises(?), and economic (GDP) growth no government can guarantee, otherwise those that HAD the UK’s books for 13-years would have attempted it - and socialist France would not be stuck on a similar nominal budget deficit they had in 2010, and STILL near 11% unemployment and flat growth.

_Income Tax Allowance and “slightly-above – CPI increases”.

The Coalition raising of the Income Tax Allowances from where you pay tax from £6,475 in 2009/10 to £10,000 in 2014/15 and £10,600 in 2015/16, helped over 25 million people, hardly the “few” we hear about and if that was “slightly-above-CPI”, lets us look at what Labour did when inflation was far higher and Council Tax rises were going up at 4-6% a year.

In 1996/97 the Income Tax Allowance was £3,765 and in 2007/8 with tax increase upon tax increase (see the 1997 to 2006 “80 Tax increases” link) the Allowance was £5225, and to help the poor, what did Labour do, they abolished the 10p income tax rate – so how do THOSE “progressive” apples look to you during a time of plenty, and what was their encore after 2010?

Well one of the last thing Labour’s conscientious Chancellor Mr Darling was ALLOWED to show the electorate, by the Labour ‘attack dogs’ trying to muzzle him, was a pre election rise in Fuel Duty and National Insurance - to COME IN AFTER the 2010 general election they expected to lose – *now was this designed to be “progressive”, help with the ‘cost of living crisis’, or an alternative to deficit denial by those who had cooked the UK books to badly - that stuff was boiling over into a national emergency and needed to be cleaned up?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

The fact is the ‘cost of living crisis’, where earnings in ‘real’ inflation adjusted terms fell BEGAN in 2008, with the worst fall between 2009 and 2011, and as the fall in earnings in ANY recession (never mind the worst one in over 80-years) is NOT under direct government control – so one has to judge what HELP governments gave to the citizens and businesses during there time in office.

Labour saw in 13-years a net 3-4 million new citizens come in as domestic unemployment grew e.g. 16-24 year olds, dumbing down the educating our children away from basic work skills, built too few homes and left 5 million queuing for council/social homes - and as far as I see did nothing to offset the FALL in ‘real’ earnings in their last 2-years, while still raising Council Tax above inflation, in 2008/9 for most it rose between 3% and 5%, and 2009/10 it averaged a rise of 3%.

So although I say let history judge which main party IN DEEDS, NOT RHETORIC, were more “progressive”, Labour in power for 13-years, or the Conservative led Coalition for the past 5- years, needing to first solves the problems they inherited, with a £157 billion overdraft to do it.

Please feel free to challenge any of these facts, as I hardly see debating them “pointless”, when Labour still BLAMES the coalition for ALL the problems they handed them, yet pretend that in power Labour HELPED the poor and average working person to a better, sustainable non benefit life.

P.S. Jassy ..... on the bottom of the other page you have said;
"However, exploitation of workers by not paying a living wage will never be acceptable to me, no matter how much a business is struggling or if it's a startup."

So are you seriously saying, that governments can keep throwing ever more increased costs of business_ (as I listed in bold on the last page), on top of every other risk of running any type of business, AND THAT IS OK?

Let them go bust DUE to a fat, business incompetent government - choosing to form new quangos and use taxpayers money to give their government employee families a final salary pension, private health and education - rather than promote a SUSTAINABLE private sector investment/jobs whose taxes PAY for all the public sectors and welfare bills?

And that is the problem with socialism, all misplaced class/wealth ideology and anti business views going back to the industrial revolution, with not the first clue on how to build a SUSTAINABLE and balanced UK economy - hence there is not a business in this country who can have the confidence to plan ahead from 2015 to 2020 under a Labour-SNP majority parliament.

On immigration I see that UKIP/Farage is going on again today about Cameron’s pledge to bring it down substantially from when he came in – and pathetically how immigrants stop children playing in the streets.

A fair point based (re Cameron) on the current net figures (that includes returning UK citizens), but again like the Osborne forecast to try rid the UK of Labour’s £157 billion overspend in one parliament, surely politicians deserve a little wriggle room if THERE IS MORE THAN JUST A ‘CUNNING PLAN’ showing a solid direction of travel – but unforeseen external forces (home and abroad) heavily influences ‘events’.

The Conservatives pre 1997 had a pretty solid record of keeping numbers where they needed to be for the economy, whether Commonwealth, EU or those categorized on some stats as Other.

When the Coalition came in the numbers for a decade on net NON EU citizens had grown enormously and as most have no automatic right of entry (unlike EU citizens) under Cameron’s pledge they got to work lowing those numbers e.g. closing several hundred bogus language schools and those figures fell very quickly.

For EU citizen workers Mr Farage (again) says correctly, there is little control over numbers, and few in 2010 thought that the UK economy would be so strong by 2014/15 and the Eurozone’s so weak, so we have been and remain a magnet for the EU workforce.

But IMO the plan Cameron was working too, was to firstly control NON EU citizens, and get our own citizens to take our own jobs, either getting them back to work through the creation of private sector jobs or training e.g. apprenticeships, long overdue benefits reforms - and improve our education system in the basic/core subjects employers had been crying out for over several years, so year after year we don’t get hundreds of thousands annual additions to the 16-24 year olds claiming JSA we saw from the 580,000 that were unemployed in 2004.

And on all that, the Conservative led coalition have delivered on in greater numbers than even they predicted in 2010 – but EU immigration remains stubbornly high, in the main due to our economic success.

Mr Farage has been gifted 24 MEPs and two sitting ex Conservative Westminster MPs on immigration policy trust, and after the General Election as they have far more Conservative voter than Labour, they could be ‘gifted’ up to another 20 MP’s on that same voter trust.

But as that ensures that the same Labour Party with the secret “multicultural” policy from the year 2000 will form the next government, so Mr Farage is truly cares about what he preaches he should worry LESS about the party missing an immigration target policy, than the alternative party that when in government had a secret no limit policy.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324112/Lord-Mandelson-Immigrants-We-sent-search-parties-hard-Britons-work.html

I always find that those in favour of unrestricted immigration are the ones championing the cause of the living wage, they can't see the correlation of inflation that this will cause and the suppression of wages the former has caused.

I always find it interesting to look at the language used by both sides in these debates. Those who are heavily in favour more often than not seem to base their support on hatred of those who are against, often using ad hominem and violent language in the process.

It is rare to see reasonable and sensible posts such as Clashcityrockers.