Driving back to London, in a service station I noticed the Sunday Telegraphs headline, How top 3,000 earners pay more tax than bottom 9 million and associated comment piece, Bashing the rich isn’t going to save the British dream’, and the Observers diametrically-opposed headline and lead story, Revealed: how coalition has helped rich by hitting poor. Having now read both, Im more convinced by the Telegraphs analysis, but what is abundantly clear is that readers of both papers are getting completely different views of the challenges facing the UK, and the possible solutions. Which do *you* find more convincing? (links below) Telegraph: We...discovered an unequal distribution of fathers, a direct correlation between wealth and kids having dads at home. Fatherless households are three times more common in the poorest neighbourhoods than in the richest. In theory, wealth should have no bearing on family cohesion, but the economics of British family life are complicated. And made more so by the “couple penalty” whereby the welfare state can make families better off if the father leaves. If all households were promised the father’s income without his presence, how many middle-class marriages would survive?... A rising tide should, in theory, raise all boats – but in Britain, that’s just not happening. We’re seeing a polarised recovery, creating more riches at the top and more low-wage workers. Low interest rates have sent asset prices soaring, but crushed ordinary savers. All of this gives weight to Ed Miliband’s claim that Britain is becoming a less fair society, but the problem runs far deeper than he seems to appreciate... Much time is wasted blaming private schools for inequality in Britain. The state sector teaches 93 per cent of pupils, and it is here that the harm is being inflicted. If you can afford a house near the right school, the state will educate your children so well that you’d never need to go private. But if you’re in a council estate, your children are far more likely to be failed by school – and so become poor as well. It’s hard to think of a surer recipe for ingrained inequality... All this mattered less in the days when boys could drop out of school and walk into a factory. Now, when what you earn is increasingly dictated by what you learn it matters more than ever. For the highly skilled, there wasn’t much of a recession; their pay has been rising at a decent clip for years. But the lowest-paid 10 per cent are almost back to levels of real-terms pay last seen in 1997. This is quite extraordinary: after all those years of minimum-wage increases, the lot of the low-paid worker is not much better than when Sir John Major left office. telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11232501/Bashing-the-rich-isnt-going-to-save-the-British-dream.html and telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11233686/How-top-3000-earners-pay-more-tax-than-bottom-9-million.html Observer/Guardian: A landmark study of the coalition’s tax and welfare policies six months before the general election reveals how money has been transferred from the poorest to the better off, apparently refuting the chancellor of the exchequer’s claims that the country has been “all in it together”. According to independent research to be published on Monday and seen by the Observer, George Osborne has been engaged in a significant transfer of income from the least well-off half of the population to the more affluent in the past four years. Those with the lowest incomes have been hit hardest... theguardian/politics/2014/nov/15/coalition-helped-rich-hitting-poor-george-osborne
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 16:14:01 +0000
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