Tory plans for benefit cuts

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How the super rich got richer: 10 shocking facts about inequality
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/15/how-super-rich-got-richer-10-shocking-facts-inequality

But the donations from many of them to the Conservative party suggest that they have a direct interest in maintaining the low tax – especially wealth tax – policies of that party. It is not just property that the Russians are buying.

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If the national minimum wage had kept pace with FTSE 100 CEO salaries since 1999, it would now be £18.89 per hour instead of £6.50.

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f the top 1% actually created more jobs as they became wealthier, then ordinary people would be surrounded by employment opportunities in both the US and the UK. Instead, it is in Germany, where the wealthiest 1% receives in pay and bonuses half as much as their counterparts in the US, that unemployment is at a 20-year low. In countries that keep their top 1% in check, the highest earners work more effectively for the good of all, or at the very least create a little less misery.

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Maintaining inequality requires penalising the poor

The coalition government has already reduced the top rate of tax to 45%. Now it plans tougher benefit cuts for the poor. Under current financial plans, it will reward the top 1% even more in future, by cutting income taxes further. The rest of the top 20% can expect slight increases in their net income in the years up to 2016, while everyone else is impoverished. These figures are based on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s own projections. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has produced statistics showing that George Osborne’s plans will cut the proportion of GDP going to the state to the lowest level in western Europe by 2015, and for the first time below that in the US.

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It is children who will suffer most from the spending cuts

The tax, benefit and spending changes now underway will hit households with children hardest. These make up a third of households, according to the children’s commissioner for England, but will suffer around two thirds of the cuts. On average, couples with no children will lose 4%, couples with children 9%, and lone parents 14% of their net income. Yet the 1% with children face no net cuts. Their loss of child benefit is more than outweighed by what they gain from tax cuts.

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In spring this year, Oxfam revealed that some 85 of the world’s richest people now had as much wealth as the poorest half of all humanity. A few weeks later, Forbes magazine updated that estimate to just 67 people. Then, within days, they corrected that estimate on their website to 66 people, so fast was the wealth of the multi-billionaires rising in the world during early 2014. Such rapidly expanding bubbles always explode, and the larger they get, the more messily they end.

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We can see the rising dissent and anger and the changing of attitudes towards the rich, but not the precise event that will come to be labelled as the turning point, just as we could not a century ago. But it is coming. We may even have passed it. Note how pay at the top of the BBC has fallen, and that no banker today is paid what Bob Diamond received a few years ago. The language and moral sentiment is changing. By being angry and disgusted with the current extent of inequality, we make it unacceptable, and its defenders become pariahs. Gross economic inequality is as vile as racism, misogyny and hatred of the disabled; as damaging in effect; and as dependent on a small group of supporters who believe that just a few should have more and more and more, because they’re worth it.

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The government has cut around £20bn from projected welfare spending over the course of the past five years, through a range of measures from freezing payments rates to cutting housing benefit.
They are now going to cut a further twelve billion.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32084722

No one seems to be talking abut the other thirty eight billion quid they said they will be taking from the people.
Fifty billion in cuts they have promised.
Twelve billion from benefits.
Where is the bigger axe going to fall?
Where the hell is thirty eight billion quid being taken from?
With only a few weeks to the election shouldn't we have the right to know?

[Guest]

In spring this year, Oxfam revealed that some 85 of the world’s richest people now had as much wealth as the poorest half of all humanity. A few weeks later, Forbes magazine updated that estimate to just 67 people. Then, within days, they corrected that estimate on their website to 66 people, so fast was the wealth of the multi-billionaires rising in the world during early 2014. Such rapidly expanding bubbles always explode, and the larger they get, the more messily they end.

Ever wondered why the Rothschilds, Rockafellas, Bushes, etc of this world never make it on to the 'top earning/wealthy' lists?

[Guest]

The government has cut around £20bn from projected welfare spending over the course of the past five years, through a range of measures from freezing payments rates to cutting housing benefit.
They are now going to cut a further twelve billion.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32084722

No one seems to be talking abut the other thirty eight billion quid they said they will be taking from the people.
Fifty billion in cuts they have promised.
Twelve billion from benefits.
Where is the bigger axe going to fall?
Where the hell is thirty eight billion quid being taken from?
With only a few weeks to the election shouldn't we have the right to know?

Like the referendum on the EU, we will have to wait until after the election. We just have to trust the Tories to do the right thing and honour their commitments in a fair and balanced way.