Structural inequality, not immigration, is the UK’s problem

[ttosca]

The answer to poverty isn’t to pitch one worker against another of a different nationality; it’s to combat the systems and structures that lead to such inequality

Inequality 2jIn light of the European election results, it is clear that UKIP’s rhetoric has resonated among the public. With more MEPs than any other party and over 27 per cent of the vote, fear about immigration and the harmful effects of EU membership is widespread. UKIP’s popularity, however, means that it’s now more important than ever to scrutinise their rhetoric.

Of course, much has been written about the economic benefits of membership to the EU, and specifically, immigration. Reports have highlighted that migration increases the UK’s GDP, and aids public finances. Yet it’s been claimed that these economic benefits aren’t felt by low-paid workers, a viewpoint that may indeed be valid considering the worrying increase in inequality within the UK over recent decades.

cont'd

www.leftfootforward.org/2014/05/structural-inequality-not-immigration-is-the-uks-problem/

Carol, dear me. All you have to do is Google "Walmart mark-up" To get hundreds of pages explaining their average mark-up of 32%. Where are you getting your info from?

"Capitalism is the only proven way to solve global inequality" ??! I would love to see that theses.

JaneParker,
The choice to live on a low income in the constraints of a society designed to impoverish and exploit you is not a free choice.
Sadly it seem you are another denier happy for things to continue exactly how they are while your children's prospects turn ever bleaker.

Oh,
Thanks Ttocsa!

I couldn't resist either.

Jane-

I agree that poverty can make you unhappy which is why I and the lady I linked to above who is speaking about this on Radio 4 tomorrow would argue the aim is to feed the poor. If benefits are wrongly help up and people are hungry I am as much against that as anyone. The benefits levels themselves however are currently enough to let people eat. We hvae one of the most generous systems on the planet.

The UK benefits system is about average for europe, depending on how you measure it:

fullfact.org/factchecks/is_the_uks_welfare_system_the_most_generous_in_europe-27368

I think what our parents all told us when we were children tat life isn't fair is wise. It isn't.

Did your parents also tell you to not steal from others? To be kind and generous? To share? To be concerned about the welfare of others?

Some will be miserable however they live because of their genes or upbringing or personality. Others will be beautiful in looks etc etc. We are all different.

This is a very individualistic view of social problems. In reality, it is social and economic context which most strongly determines how a person will fare in life. Those born in to a rich and educated family are much more likely to end up rich and educated themselves than someone born in to a poor and uneducated family.

Yet this is something which can be solved by political will. In the same way that we no longer put poor children in to workhouses and to sweep chimneys like they did during the Victorian era, we are perfectly capable of structuring society so that there is opportunity for all. This will strongly affect outcomes.

As long as those at the bottom are fed and housed (I am not advocating having no welfare for people to fall back on) it does not matter if someone earns in an hour what someone else earns in a week of work.

Except they're not. And absolute poverty is a big problem in the UK.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-real-costoflivingcrisis-five-million-british-children-face-life-of-poverty-thanks-to-welfare-reforms-9442061.html

squidstirfry My info came from thier annual report page 36, net income $16-$17 billion, as per ttosca above on revenues of around $470bn - 3% net margin.

What other system other than capitalism has proved better - look at where the wealthiest poor people live, it is all in capitalist societies. All other methods have reduced standards for the poor as well as the rich.

The independent link talks about relative poverty.
the report on Walmart only included the 1.3m US workers - they have another 1 million not in the US, which skews the figures somewhat.

Carole-

Please read the article:

"A significant proportion of families across England – as high as 28 per cent in London – are skipping meals in a bid to make ends meet. And in many areas, more than one in 10 families cannot afford to buy children new shoes when they need them."

Furthermore, we've seen a 5x rise in the use of food banks under the Tory scum government. Many people in the UK simply don't have enough money to feed themselves or their family. This is absolute poverty.

Carole-

What other system other than capitalism has proved better - look at where the wealthiest poor people live, it is all in capitalist societies. All other methods have reduced standards for the poor as well as the rich.

I don't think the people you're discussing with want to overthrow Capitalism with a better system - although I do. I think they're simply saying that the type of neo-liberal Capitalism which we are currently experiencing is leading to wealth inequalities not seen since the Victoria era, absolute poverty, and perpetual job insecurity and debt for the large majority of households.

Paying people a living wage is not going to bring down Capitalism or prevent companies making a profit. Furthermore, it would reduce the cost on the taxpayer in social security since the majority of payments are to families who are in work. In effect, the taxpayer is subsidising companies by topping up low pay packets.

Paying higher wages, as I see it, leads to a potential number of consequences:

1. Reduced profitability
2. Increased investment in mechanisation/technology to reduce the workforce as it become more cost effective than people
3. Off-shoring to countries where a lower wage is a living wage
4. Prices increases

The only answer which gets you what you want is 1, so how do you force companies to do this?

Also given 1 in 5 workers are public sector, this drives out private companies and raises taxes (as is true in much of the North)

ttosca - but if it is true your economic circumstances as long as you have enough to eat etc do not determine if you happy then why does it matter if some people have more?

In more primitive countries as long as there is no war/starvation people happiness is often better than the UK as they have those things that in your brain make you happy like exercise and sunshine and absence of a Western diet/sugar.
In a sense your argument that it is not fair we are not the same is espousing capitalist values - the value that it is better and you are happier if you have loads of filthy lucre or as much the Jones's next door. We can get the Jones's not to care if the people next door have more we can raise happiness levels.

Jane

Unfortunately the disappearing middle class is not content on living 'fed and watered' and being happy 'on sunshine' like in primitive countries as you put it. We live in the UK.

Is it envy that has caused an entire generation to lose faith? Your interpretation "It's not fair that we're not all filthy rich" and the commonly used phrase: "The politics of envy" is a convenient dismissal to a more serious problem.

You think that being left with picking up the debt of your parents and a lifetime of renting, no hope of ever having the security of home ownership or savings, a secure career, or ever being ale to provide for your own children is envy.

These are real concerns based on real experience of young adults growing up today.

"Generation rent". There have always been people who looked to lifetime of renting/no career and fine for them, but this has been the minority until now.

Over the last few decades less of what our economy produces has been paid out in wages and more in profits.

This is unsustainable, and is causing a gradual breakdown in society.

Carol
You believe that the solution to accelerating poverty experience by the majority is more profiteering, more capital, more exploitation, more division, and more crisis.
It's like someone who believes in creationism even after Darwin. Fair enough to believe what you want but it won't help anything.

Squid I did not say that, I laid out some consequences of higher wages and asked how you force companies to do what you want and reduce profitability?

SquidStirFry …. Caroldecker has a point that I raised before on ££$$billionaires, whether they own multi national companies and employ thousands of employees or not – how do you FORCE billionaires and companies to stay in the UK and put up with THEM bearing the cost of often incompetent government and bearing the responsibility of many who just waste their lives, and not thinking of the consequencies?

I can see your simplistic world in your comment to me below; but you are clearly not aware what drives investment into a MATURE company by the likes of Pension Funds (most of which on behalf of individuals WITHOUT a Final Salary defined pension) is the prospects of higher company growth/profits/dividends.

“Isitme, your classic neo-liberal threats that increasing labour wage will push up the price of said widget, plunging all into poverty. Reducing margins never occurs to you.”

And it is the shareholder appointed Directors that have entrusted to make large and small decisions on their behalf FOR THE GOOD OF THE COMPANY e.g. downsize the workforce or relocate to another country, if they feel it is right to get back to higher profit growth over the medium to long term.

But as I have pointed out elsewhere, it is not just WAGES that can reduce companies profits, it is a combination of the following, ALL OF WHICH ARE TYPICAL LABOUR TARGETS TO INCREASE over their administration which cumulatively kills many private sector jobs, and eventually the company.

• Higher Corporation Tax.

• Higher Business Rates (local).

• Higher Income Tax compensation (via salary) for senior staff, using international remuneration scales.

• Higher regulatory/red tape costs.

• Higher National Insurance costs.

• Higher raw material costs.

• Higher Fuel Escalator costs,

• Higher costs of government intervention e.g. Energy Company ‘price freezes’.

• Higher Interest Rate/Borrowing Costs as they ‘normalize’, with or without a Labour policy premium.

And what do we hear today, the next Labour government is once again thinking of hiking National Insurance (a jobs tax) to fund NHS spending THAT THEY KNOW COSTS JOBS, that Osborne corrected in his first budgets.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-labour-plans-big-risein-nhs-spending-9468344.html

“Labour's planned National Insurance increase (to come in after the 2010 General Election) will cost jobs, Alistair Darling admits”

(2010) “Labour’s plans to increase national insurance next year will cost jobs, Alistair Darling has said.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html
“In his evidence, Mr Darling defended his plans to increase national insurance, saying it was necessary to raise extra money to reduce Government borrowing, which will be £167 billion this year.”

The Uk Trade Unions and socialism in general have never understood all the problems/costs of doing business, until it is too late, and then they blame someone else for their unemployment.

Nobody cares, isitmebut.

The ar$eholes running the trade unions in 1970's British companies certainly 'didn't care', and ran British industry into the ground and now their grandchildren play 'spot the British company built on trade union 'equality', before they realise that there aren't any.

New Labour economic and social incompetence and having thrown £150 billion at benefits and Tax Credits during times of plenty will look like a huge job fare, compared to the damage Miliband's Old Labour will do to jobs and inequality - with a UK that will still have a £100 biil annual budget deficit, £1.4 trillion of accumulated National Debt, interests rates going much higher as foreigner refuse to buy our government bonds - as the Private Sector paying for our 'long term plan' shrinks.

Those still full of your failed ideology don't care, as it's a sickness that doesn't allow you to understand the basic consequencies of keep taxing and pricing the Private sector to death.

And although after a 2015 Miliband 5-years it may take the people to realise it is another 1979 moment and need the pro business/jobs party back in again for nearly 20-years, this time it will be too late, the damage will be too great, with no money left for welfare or anything else.

isitmebut you are not helping any conversation or discussion - either try and understand the other view through discussion or blog your ranting elsewhere

Caroldecker ….. please excuse me, my previous post was a rant to someone who maybe, just maybe, can often be accused on the same, who refuses to even try to see rational debate and hides behind ideology, slogans, insults and numbers – so I lost it.

Away from your America’s Walmart posts, their pre tax profits and margins and heaven knows what else, which I’m sure was going (UK) somewhere, I would just like to add part of my answer on the ‘News’ board, which adds some reliability and real poverty perspective to ttosca’s link, that also blames “the bedroom tax” on homes with spare bedrooms for childrens poverty, rather than the millions in NO social or substandard homes, prior to the Coalition coming in.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-real-costoflivingcrisis-five-million-british-children-face-life-of-poverty-thanks-to-welfare-reforms-9442061.html

Firstly it appears that this report by the Save the Children researchers accepts the Institute for Fiscal Studies CURRENT figure of 3.5 children in poverty – but then predicts there will be an increase to 5 million in 2020 during a strong recovery – surveying just 1,500 children plus aged eight to 16 and more than 5,000 parents, focusing on the lowest income groups.

Secondly, and is not made clear in the link or posts, the charity defines living in poverty as having a family income of less than £17,000 a year.

Carol to your Q,

It is possible for a business to dramatically increase income for it's employees without making a dent in profitability.

The employee-owned sector.
It only represent 2% of the British economy but is growing.
John Lewis is owned by those who work there, each receive an equal share of profits. John Lewis is thriving, even through a double-dip recession that sees M&S struggling. Employee-owned business operate for the benefit of those who own them, decisions are make by owners who vote them through. Innovation and investment projects are also voted through.

Social Enterprise (co-ops etc)
Oxford University have frequently called on the government to promote and encourage social enterprise, including cooperatives and the employee-owned sector as a solution to present day crisis.

It is possible for a business to thrive with socially responsible principles at it's core. The cooperative has been around since the mid 19th century. Fair Trade has become a core principle and environmental issues are tackled. All profit goes back into the business, it is not syphoned off by parasites.

Theoretical and ideological, but you could turn all businesses in the UK into a social enterprise and hand over ownership to employees tomorrow.

The businesses wouldn't be able to just "piss off" because all owners would need to vote on this decision.

As for child poverty, social enterprise exists to support the local community, as well as it's own operation. Investment into local schools, libraries etc could be agreed upon and implemented by these enterprises in agreement with the Local Council.

Isitmebut-

Your arguments have already been debunked several times.

1. Lack of housing is something which has spanned over decades.

1. The large increase in poverty and inequality in the UK is driven, in a large part, by the Tory scum cuts to social security.

1. People in the UK are suffering absolute, not just relative poverty; families are going without enough food. Parents are skipping meals to feed their children.

-----

In denial: charities line up to link good bank use to benefits regime

Ministers have been told they are “in denial” after a series of charities told a committee that harsh changes benefits regime is driving food bank use.

Written submissions from bodies such as Oxfam and Barnardos to a Scottish Parliament committee, whose report on food banks is published today, emphasise DWP’s culpability. But heartless employment minister Esther McVey still claimed three weeks ago that there is “no robust evidence linking food bank usage to welfare reform”.

“No robust evidence” apart from that academic study commissioned by the Scots Government …

“Providers who participated in the study were in agreement that welfare reform, benefit delays, benefit sanctions and falling incomes have been the main factors driving the recent trend observed of increased demand for food aid”

… and what everyone involved with provision of emergency food aid told the committee:

“An increasing number of people are being referred to foodbanks because they have been sanctioned for what some frontline professionals have described as ‘trivial reasons’” — Trussell Trust

“Cuts to the levels of welfare support such as cuts to housing benefit entitlement … Delays in getting benefits, combined with a stricter sanction regime for claimants” — Barnardos

“Since the changes to the benefit system, requests for food parcels have increased by more than fifty per cent” — Christian charity Loaves and Fishes

“Bedroom tax causing people to have debt problems because they cannot afford the additional costs … Sanctions on benefits causing people to seek additional help” — Community Food Moray

“More people are coming to food banks as they are subject to delays in payment of benefit, sanctions by Job Centre Plus, have exhausted their savings to pay the bedroom tax …” — Community Food Initiatives North East

“It is clear that many people turning to emergency food banks are experiencing some sort of benefit delay or sanction.” — Oxfam Scotland

McVey has turned down a request for a public meeting with the committee.

politicalscrapbook.net/2014/06/in-denial-charities-line-up-to-link-food-bank-use-with-benefits-regime-scottish-parliament-welfare-committee/?utm_source=politicalscrapbook.net&utm_medium=psbook_featt&utm_campaign=psbook_featt4

squids turning all businesses into co-ops is theft - like someone taking your house with no compenstion and leaving you with the mortgage.

Also, coops do not necessarily pay more than NMW

Also John Lewis does not pay contractors (cleaners etc) a living wage (from the Independent: A spokesman for John Lewis said: "We completely share the living wage campaign's objectives to pay employees fairly and we have been in constructive dialogue for a number of years ... but we do not believe it is appropriate for us to insist on [our contractors] paying wages well above market rates.")

Extracts from Coop AGM:

The NMW is currently set at £6.08 per hour. The current Food Customer Services Assistant (CSA) rate is £6.25 per hour. The NMW is consistently enforced, has improved the incomes of the lowest paid by providing an effective floor under wages and, as a consequence, workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution have seen their relative position improve.

If the Co-operative Group were to adopt the Living Wage unilaterally, the annual additional associated cost in base pay would be c.£52m. The Group would also incur further costs in respect of employer on-costs (eg. pension costs and currently unquantifiable costs due to the erosion of pay differentials with jobs that are currently paid above the level of the Living Wage). Such additional costs would have significant implications for the Co-operative Group.

The Co-operative Group believes that continuing with – and further developing – the above approach will serve the long-term interest of its employees effectively and sustainably, whereas the unilateral adoption of the Living Wage, as currently defined, could prove detrimental to the interests of the Group and ultimately the employees it seeks to benefit.

Thanks for your reply,

All profit is theft

It's easy to pick holes on actual conduct within these organisations, as nothing is ever 100% in practise. Principally, these organisations address the fundamental problem of profits being syphoned out of the economy, rather than circulated.

At my university our anti-capitalist discussion group is the fastest growing with over 1,000 members already, in a short time. I'd invite you but you have to be idealistic and beautiful.... Thank you....

Why is all profit theft? Anyone with a pension scheme benefits from profits, which are not syphoned out of the economy, but spent/saved by the owner.
You exchange your labour for money. You can then exchange your money for goods or allow someone to use your money to create value (either lending or investing in a business). If that person creates value, you get a share (profits), if they fail you lose your money, so profit is a return for risk and generates wealth for more people.
I am idealistic - I want exactly what you want (economically speaking), but believe the way to get it is different.

ttosca ….. re your following statements, that I have replied to and you then go M.I.A. every time, IF YOU ARE GOING TO POST ON THE BENEFITS OF IMMIGRATION, THEN ‘OWN’ THE POLICY AND THE CONSEQUENCIES – rather than deny that a net 2.5 million new citizens who have come here to live and work, has any homes/jobs/rates of pay effect on our own multi cultural unemployed/poor, suffering from a lack of homes – as you sound like a Labour politician, stupid, or both.

Isitmebut-

Your arguments have already been debunked several times.

1. Lack of housing is something which has spanned over decades.

1. The large increase in poverty and inequality in the UK is driven, in a large part, by the Tory scum cuts to social security.

1. People in the UK are suffering absolute, not just relative poverty; families are going without enough food. Parents are skipping meals to feed their children.

---------------

Labour/socialists have to own the consequences of UK immigration on inequality, as they secretly planned it in the early 2000’s, when UK home building was at a very low point.

“Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

“Labour threw open Britain's borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a "truly multicultural" country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

Labour knew there was a huge housing (and jobs) shortage, as they commissioned a report in 2003, that reported in 2004, telling Mr Brown WITHOUT KNOWING LABOUR’S IMMIGRATION POLICY that we needed over 200,000 homes a year, yet they only built an average of 115,000 a year
The (2004) Barker Housing review: key points
www.theguardian.com/money/2004/mar/17/business.housing

And these were the NET immigration figures,that found jobs and homes, with a new home build rate just over 100,000 a year, with hardly any new social housing, to replace the homes being sold – and notice the twice as many NON EU citizens (versus EU citizens not needing permission) the government signed in, despite our unemployed and lack of homes.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-and-uk

New net migration figures has been changed over a decade from just under 2.2 million to over 2.5 million.

Table 1... Inflows (thousands)…...EU……….Commonwealth………Other…...
Average 1991 – 1999……………...60,000………….87,000……………...86,000
Average 2000 – 2003……….…..…62,000………..101,000………… ...120,000
2004………………………………........130,000………..215,000…………...155,000
2005………………………………........152,000………..180,000…………….137,000
2006………………………………........170,000………..201,000…………….143,000
2007……………………..........….....195,000………..174,000………….…131,000

And here is the report that ADDS to the above EU figures.
“Immigration from eastern Europe was massively underestimated, says official report”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10757336/Immigration-from-eastern-Europe-was-massively-underestimated-says-official-report.html
“Office for National Statistics admits it missed an estimated 350,000 in net migration over a decade because of flaws in a key survey."

ttosca …. your shared vision of socialism with the previous government left our indigenous multicultural unemployed, including 580,000 16-24 year olds in 2004, on the welfare dependency scrap heap, with too few homes as a further social insult to injury.

You also share with the current parliamentary Labour Party a pathetic need to blame the Coalition’s long overdue welfare reforms and the so called “bedroom tax” (that affect how many) trying to utilised unused bedrooms, for the HARDSHIP caused by socialist policies like immigration that resulted in the following figures in 2009 BEFORE the coalition came to power;

Shelter (2009)The housing crisis in numbers – and the need for spare bedrooms, never mind homes.
england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/the_housing_crisis/what_is_the_housing_crisis.
• Over 1.7 million households (around 5 million individuals) are currently waiting for social housing
• 7.4 million homes in England fail to meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard
• 1.4 million children in England live in bad housing. [3]
• In 2008/09, 654,000 households in England were overcrowded. [4]
• The number of new households is increasing faster than the number of house builds.

*I reiterate, by all means be proud of your immigration policy, but telling the electorate that Labour/socialism is ‘in touch’ with the people and the Coalition sorting it out are "scum", is frankly taking the piss on a grand scale.

There is no middle ground with the radically different views on this thread.
I know and history has proved that the free market capitalist system works best and will be better for rich and poor alike. No other system is better and we are lucky to have it. Why would my children suffer as people say above? If their happiness comes from love good food and the other things that make for happiness not money then it will not matter if they have less money than others surely.

It's when you fill yourself with sugar and get as fat as a pig or drink too much that you get sad. Secondly the fittest survive as we all know so in general the off spring of those who are fit do the best. So all mumsnetter women who have ensured they do their best and are in that doing better group will ensure the same for their children and thus has it ever been and always shall be.

yes, the biggie is inequality. and it is structural. But if most w,c people think the country is FULL they must be listened to.