h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Following on from a pretty one-sided "debate" on Channel Four, I'd like to pose the question "How do we tackle inequality in society" here.

Under New Labour, inequality has grown in the last 12years. The gap between rich and poor has widened.

Labour's approach to social inequality has been to tax the middle classes. The rich have benefited from a massively over-complex tax regime designed by Gordon Brown that has been a boon for accountants and lawyers. Not only do the middle classes pay for the poor, they pay for the rich.

But, the poor haven't got poorer really. The govt stopped talking in absolute terms about poverty and adopted the Rowntree Foundation approach of measuring poverty in relative terms. I think you're officially poor in the UK if you earn less than 60% of the average wage. Using this method of course means that it is impossible to eradicate poverty.

However, if we go by absolute terms, there is zero poverty in the UK as the Welfare State guarantees a minimum income sufficient to cover basic needs.

Needless to say, there is obviously inequality.

Question 1 - Is social inequality the natural order of things and Quixotic attempts to end it doomed to failure?

Question 2 - If the rich are untouchable and the middle classes squeezed too tight already, how do we help those at the bottom?

Question 3 - Any debate about the poor inevitably polarises into those that are there through no fault of their own despite their best efforts and those that are too lazy to work. Both exist. How can we target the former without encouraging the latter?

Blimey!

You don't want much, do you?

>However, if we go by absolute terms, there is zero poverty in the UK as the Welfare State guarantees a minimum income sufficient to cover basic needs<

I can say with complete conviction that this "truth" is an optimistic bit of government spiel. Even with my 4 weekly DLA payment -

(I being one of those who don't work but would kill to find a job that could accomodate frequent Outpaitents Appts, "Bad Days" when I can't move and the painkillers turn the brain to cream cheese in any case, AND pay a living wage)

- I struggle. Infact if it wasn't for the handy wee overdraft I have I'd be up that creek without a paddle to my name. Welfare doesn't even cover *basic* living needs; at best it offers less than a sort of hopeless survival. It can't be called "living" because one needs money in order to buy fun, once the bills have been paid. Or paid enough not to get cut off, anyway.

Sunsets may very well be free, but after watching a number of them, the appeal wanes a little. Trust me on this.

Q1 - I think social inequality is the natural order of things. I don't like it much either, but there will always be those who can make money breed, and those who let it slip thru their fingers. It's a nice dream to think we can eradicate poverty... but first, define what true poverty *is*.

Q2 - Stop dreaming up government "Poverty Traps" Anything over (I believe) 3 days work is now classed as "full time". Unless you're earning in excess of £25.00 an hour you are stuffed coming and going and even sidling in quietly. Thank god for E Bay and barter.

Alternitavely, grow a lot more trees and print an awful lot more money and share it around!

Q3 - if the minimum wage guaranteed that anyone working over 16 hrs a week could take home after tax *at least* £150.00 more a week than the dole gatherers then it would sort out the lazy from the genuinely industrious. But we're stuffed at the moment due to the restrictions of the number of hours worked (see Q2) Plus there are less jobs around than people desparate for them.

I probably haven't expressed the points as well as I'd have liked, but it'll do for the time being.

SWL,

"Labour's approach to social inequality has been to tax the middle classes."

Sorry to be tedious, but I'd be interested in seeing a source on this. "Middle classes" is, for a start, a very poorly defined term. Do you mean median income earners, or more social middle classes (who are typically above median income earners)?

"Not only do the middle classes pay for the poor, they pay for the rich."

Depends what you mean by middle classes again. This office of national statistics (ONS) data http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=334 shows that after factoring the value of tax and benefits in, the first, second and third quintiles all have a net benefit, so really only the top two quintiles (40%) are paying for the bottom three (60%). So if by 'middle classes' you mean the median income earners, then this is just wrong.

"I think you're officially poor in the UK if you earn less than 60% of the average wage."

It's less than 60% of the median income rather than the average income - the median income is the income which 50% earn less than, and 50% earn more than. The median household income (i.e. total income for a household, often consisting of two earners) is around £25000 before tax, and the average household size is 2.4 people (of which 1.2 economically active). The 'poverty line' for a household then is total earnings of around £15000 before tax.

It's not a great measure - I mean it's one thing to be a single person or couple on £15000 and quite another to have a family of 4...

"Using this method of course means that it is impossible to eradicate poverty."

Nope. For example, if everyone earned the same nobody would be below 60% of the median. And it doesn't need to be completely equal for that to work - you can have some inequality and still have nobody below 60% of the median. The incomes of those in the top 49% of earners doesn't affect the median at all, so you can actually have extremely high inequality and still have no relative poverty.

"However, if we go by absolute terms, there is zero poverty in the UK as the Welfare State guarantees a minimum income sufficient to cover basic needs."

Obviously not.

"Question 1 - Is social inequality the natural order of things and Quixotic attempts to end it doomed to failure?"

I guess there'll always be inequality. Even if there were equality of income and wealth, there'd still be inequality of other things. It's unlikely that there'll even be equality of income and wealth though, at least not for a long time. And it's not clear that complete equality is a good thing to fight for. But, we can certainly do much, much better on equality. One way of quantifying it is to talk about the ratio of the earnings of the head of a company to the average worker. Rather than having earnings in the ratio of 100:1 or 500:1 (I think these are roughly the figures for the UK and US respectively), maybe we could get it down to 5:1 or 2:1?

"Question 2 - If the rich are untouchable and the middle classes squeezed too tight already, how do we help those at the bottom?"

By challenging those assumptions?

"Question 3 - Any debate about the poor inevitably polarises into those that are there through no fault of their own despite their best efforts and those that are too lazy to work. Both exist. How can we target the former without encouraging the latter?"

I'm not sure that the debate goes inevitably where you say it does... Do you classify someone in a poverty trap as lazy or there despite their best efforts? The citizen's basic income scheme is pretty good for getting rid of these.

The problem with those ONS figures Dogster is they assume 100% take up rate of benefits, which isn't the case - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/personal-tax-credits/takeup-rates2004-05.pdf The Tax Credit system (whereby the state takes excessive taxes and then makes claimants jump through hoops to get some back) would, if I were being cynical, almost seem designed not to work.

In fact, all of those figures appear to me to be theoretical.

From the link - "Cash benefits such as Income Support, Pension Credit, Child Benefit, Incapacity Benefit, and the State Retirement Pension play the largest part in reducing income inequality. They go predominantly to households with lower incomes." Child Benefit is universal. Doesn't matter if you're on minimum wage or if you're Richard Branson. Same with things like the cold weather allowance. From the figures, the take-up rate declines as income increases so those who are entitled in the middle to higher bands actually claim less than those in the lower bands.

Earnings ratio - <>

Ri-ight. So in what way is it equitable for someone who has spent seven years training to be a Dr to earn just twice as much as someone who rolled out of school with no qualifications and took a job flipping burgers? Once the huge debt incurred in gaining that education is factored in, where's the financial reward?

Good topic.

I agree with Evadne, Welfare doesn't guarantee a livable wage. Social welfare was set up as a solution to what was considered short term high unemployment. As such it doesn't work for the chronically ill, disabled, people raising children on their own, the intergenerational unemployed etc. In NZ benefits are intentionally set below a livable wage, even medical benefits.

The dole has to be lower than the minimum wage (otherwise why would anyone do the shit jobs?) and the minimum wage has to be kept low because otherwise rich people can't make a profit.


>>
Question 1 - Is social inequality the natural order of things and Quixotic attempts to end it doomed to failure?
<<

I'm not sure about natural. There will always be differences in wealth and standard of living, but that is a different thing from societies that are constructed to need poverty.

>>
Question 2 - If the rich are untouchable and the middle classes squeezed too tight already, how do we help those at the bottom?
<<

You can't have rich people unless you have poor people. There is no real way to change this except by applying charity bandaids. The only solution is to change society so that the rich can't live off the poor. Governments will never do anything about this. Solutions lie at the community level.


>>
Question 3 - Any debate about the poor inevitably polarises into those that are there through no fault of their own despite their best efforts and those that are too lazy to work. Both exist. How can we target the former without encouraging the latter?
<<

I'm sure there are lazy people on the dole, but I think the numbers of genuinely lazy people is small enough to not really be an issue. Most people I know who are on the dole (as opposed to medical or sole parent benefits) have social contexts that are relevant. I'm not saying the social context is the whole story, but things like class, depression, low grade chronic illness (really common amongst unemployed beneficiaries), illiteracy, cultural barriers, low self esteem, poor communication skills, despair, low resilience, etc etc all contribute to people finding it hard to get off a benefit. That and the fact that there are more people than jobs of course.


As for absolute vs relative poverty, I'm not sure that relative poverty is as straight forward as you have described. I get the argument you make about relative poverty never being able to be eradicated, but that doesn't inherently mean that that bottom percentile are not genuinely poor. The current economic systems need poor people (low wage rates) for both economic reasons and political reasons.

Also, you can't measure poverty by income alone. It's all relative to what other resources people have.

>>
Ri-ight. So in what way is it equitable for someone who has spent seven years training to be a Dr to earn just twice as much as someone who rolled out of school with no qualifications and took a job flipping burgers? Once the huge debt incurred in gaining that education is factored in, where's the financial reward?
<<

I think a better question is how is it equitable for that doctor to be paid many times more than the person who cleans the toilet in that practice? Both those people are needed to maintain a health system, why should one get a barely livable wage and the other make enough money to have a standard of living well above what is necessary? I'm not saying they should be paid the same, but maybe one of the solutions there is to make medical training free, and/or reintroduce systems where you work off your debt instead of paying it off.

The only thing that jumped out at me there was - <>

Hold on. Not every employer is rich. In my business, my wife and I often didn't draw a wage whilst ensuring the staff always got paid. Small businesses are actually the backbone of the economy now the mass industries have gone and the wage differentials are a lot closer. The finance sector and the multinationals are the exceptions rather than the rule. If you raise minimum wage too much, these businesses (especially in the service sector) simply fold.

The rest of it is fair points, although I'd argue the numbers of people abusing the system

How many employees do you have, SWL?

I hear what you are saying, but I think your argument is based on the idea that if individual businesses raised their wages they wouldn't survive. That's probably true at the moment. I'm talking bigger picture.

Union people can argue the point better than me about why raising the minimum wage is better for business (via the overall economy, I guess the more money people have the more they can use business services).

In the doctor example, if the cleaner was paid more the doctor would have to be paid less. So I'm talking about people that earn much more money than they need.


There are other factors too. For instance home rent and mortgages figure largely in poverty. But property prices are being determined by rich people (and by rich I am meaning people that can afford to pay much more for a house than previously, or people that have more than one property for personal use). So rents go up and wages don't. That's a problem with wealth not the wages paid by small businesses.

I'm also thinking about the culture that pays some people over $100,000. Sorry, but no-one needs or deserves to be paid that much. No-one can work that hard. People getting paid those kinds of salaries are usually completely divorced from the reality of poverty.

Speaking of the service industry, MacDonalds in NZ, notorious for paying crap wages and breaking employment laws, has just been subsidised by the National Govt to pay wages

We had up to eight staff at any one time, two of whom earned considerably more than me.

<>

No, the surgery would make less cleaners do more work.

It's supply and demand. Take 100 ordinary people at random. A Doctor needs to be above average intelligence, yeah? Let's say in the top 20%. Now, not only does he (or she) have to be smart enough, he has to have the dedication and the desire to spend seven years in training. I think you'd be lucky to find one in a hundred that would meet those criteria.

Now, what skills do you need to clean a toilet? Is there any university training required? Do you have to be above a certain intelligence to do it? No. All 100 of our average sample could do it.

The same applies in business. Oh I know there are untold numbers of people who look at a top manager and think "I could do that", but how many actually could? Look at the huge number of businesses that fail and you'll see that not everyone can do it. And there has to be a reward element.

For our business, we started with an old farm building that we had to renovate and spend money on. We then had to borrow money for stock. For the first two years we took no money out, relying on my wages as a farm labourer and going without. When I had to give up the labouring, I still drew the same wage even when we expanded into two, three shops and a factory. Yes, I ended up paying myself a lot more than some of the staff but I had done a lot more than just answer an ad in the paper to get there.

It's all too easy to point at business people and their salaries and compare them with the lowest paid staff, but you have to consider what both have done to be in their respective positions.

Of course, they could both do nothing and get the same reward.

Yes, but obviously I'm not talking about people in your situation SWL, although I have no idea how wealthy you are. I'm talking about rich people, not business owners.


I disagree that the cleaning job could be done by all 100. For a start cleaning is actually a skill, and some people just don't have the skill or the aptitude. Also, it takes further skill of the psychological kind, to clean up other people's shit 40 hrs a week and get paid minimum wage for it. Not everyone could do that competently. I do agree that doctors need a certain inherent skills, but so do lots of other jobs that are marginalised because we think doctors are special and cleaners aren't. I can tell you as someone with a long term disability that I am more dependent on the women that clean for me than I am on my GP and if I had to choose I'd choose the cleaner. Other people would choose differently. My point is that there are values being expressed here beyond the monetary ones.


I don't have a problem with someone who sets up a business eventually paying themselves more than their workers. Some people don't want teh responsibility and are ok on a lower wage. But that's a different issue than a class of people not being paid enough to live on well. Also, when the business owner gets more and more successful and then sells shares in their business and starts making shit loads of money, that's the problem I'm talking about. I'm not talking about profit to make a decent living, I'm talking about making excess profit so that one has more money than one would ever need. THAT is being done at the expense of low paid workers.

The man who used to run NZ Telecom (after it was sold by the govt) infamously once said that his 1.5 million per annum salary was entirely his own doing i.e. it had nothing to do with anyone else. I was wondering why in that case my phone line cost me much more than it would have otherwise. There is no way he would have been on that salary if poor people had affordable phone services. That is what I mean, rich people live off the backs of poor people and are often dishonest about it.

SWL,

Yeah, it's a tricky issue whether and to what extent the UK state is redistributive. I've seen people argue that taxation is regressive overall, and things like that ONS stuff that suggests it's broadly progressive, but I've not seen an analysis that suggests the middle classes are paying for everyone else. And we didn't settle the issue of what counts as the middle classes.

"Ri-ight. So in what way is it equitable for someone who has spent seven years training to be a Dr to earn just twice as much as someone who rolled out of school with no qualifications and took a job flipping burgers? Once the huge debt incurred in gaining that education is factored in, where's the financial reward?"

I did eight years of training to get my doctorate (not in medicine), and I can certainly say that prospective earnings wasn't why I chose to do it. If it had been, I would have left after I finished my first 3 years at university and got a city job. The sort of people who want to become doctors don't need to be encouraged to do it most of the time, they just need to be given the option. More and easier access to education would increase the supply of doctors even if there were no great financial rewards attached to it.

Also, in a society where nobody earned more than twice as much as anyone else, earning twice as much as someone else would be a lot more significant than it is in a society where some earn hundreds or thousands of times as much as others.

Actually though, I agree with kea about the relative importance of doctors and cleaners. One of the biggest advances in Western medicine has been the realisation of the importance of keeping things clean.

"It's supply and demand."

To a certain extent this is true, but not entirely. Income inequality is very different in different countries. Even among rich, developed nations - witness say the difference between countries like the USA and UK, and Sweden (it's always Sweden!). But supply and demand exists in all these countries, so that doesn't explain why inequality is so high in the USA and UK. In the case of doctors in the UK, it's partly because when the NHS was introduced, the government of the day faced strong opposition from the British Medical Association and the only way to get them to agree to it was to secure big incomes for them. (Thus Nye Bevan's famous quote that to secure their acceptance he had to "stuff their mouths with gold".) In the USA I believe, the AMA had and still has a policy of restricting medical training in order to decrease supply and artificially increase wages. (A form of activity that is tolerated for professional associations but not for unions...)

So yeah, there is supply and demand, but there are also hundreds of other factors that contribute to inequality, and we could certainly be doing better. The proof of that is that other countries do.

You talk about inequality like its automatically a bad thing. The government have a simular problem they say they want to 'end discrimination',; they're worng waht we all want to do is increase discrimination, but put an end to predjucice...

The welfare state in the UK is quite* good at helping those who don't earn much, or anything at all; unfortunately it is even better at allowing companys to opperate by paying insufficient wages to their staff, as it tops up their wages.
I know first hand of at least two companys who can't get their staff to do overtime; everyone in the entire company is min wage, cept for the small handuful of manages. All* the staff, and I do mean all* recieve either Tax credits, working tax credits, marraged tax credits... etc.... : none of whom will thereby work an hour overtime as it would remove their main income; their main income being the gov subsidys.
Oh no, the people moan, but if we pay them a wage that they can live off then the company won't be able to afford it and they won't have a job.
Bollocks. if they're doing a job that makes money, then they've got a job, by the natur eof the way it works they make more than they earn; if they need to earn more than they currently do then they just have to make* more than they curently do; put up the prices.
No that* company won't go bus, as if its a national change in wage, then its every simular company equally affected. and the tax payer stops paying money directly to private enterprize.

"Following on from a pretty one-sided "debate" on Channel Four, I'd like to pose the question "How do we tackle inequality in society" here.

(oops don't watch TV so didn't se eit).

Under New Labour, inequality has grown in the last 12years. The gap between rich and poor has widened.

(Really?: I thought it was always this wide? wasn't it?)

Labour's approach to social inequality has been to tax the middle classes. The rich have benefited from a massively over-complex tax regime designed by Gordon Brown that has been a boon for accountants and lawyers. Not only do the middle classes pay for the poor, they pay for the rich.

But, the poor haven't got poorer really. The govt stopped talking in absolute terms about poverty and adopted the Rowntree Foundation approach of measuring poverty in relative terms. I think you're officially poor in the UK if you earn less than 60% of the average wage. Using this method of course means that it is impossible to eradicate poverty.

(any measure of poverty which doesn't take accoutn of wher eyou live is wrong. council tax wher eI live, on my own, £1200 per year, my friends shop per year £400. rent here, three bed £800 to £2500 plus, back over 'home' way, £250 to £450... water rates, same, and grocerys here are more expensive too).
I 'survive' at the moment on 'benifits', only because I own this house myself, and because I have (rapidly decreasing) savings.

However, if we go by absolute terms, there is zero poverty in the UK as the Welfare State guarantees a minimum income sufficient to cover basic needs.

Agreed. There oughta be sufficient resources avilible to everyone in teh UK to stop them starving to death... but we have a higher expectation of surviving I thinks...

Needless to say, there is obviously inequality.

There will always be inaquality, either percieved or real....

Question 1 - Is social inequality the natural order of things and Quixotic attempts to end it doomed to failure?

Yes. yes.

Question 2 - If the rich are untouchable and the middle classes squeezed too tight already, how do we help those at the bottom?

Tax more evenly, and tax higher earlers more at the same time; both are possible; simplify taxation and reduce the number of taxes whilst raising basic income tax levels progressively through pay scales.

Question 3 - Any debate about the poor inevitably polarises into those that are there through no fault of their own despite their best efforts and those that are too lazy to work. Both exist. How can we target the former without encouraging the latter?"

Education. Those that are theire 'through their own fault', are there as a result of their upbringing. pure and simple. Educate, educate, then kick arse.



But more importantly. what is this goverment going to do about the sorry state of affairs as regards my nearly running out of cold beer?

No, we never settled what middle class was. Sorry. I suppose it's an amorphous term nowadays. Where once it might have been taken to mean white collar workers in the "professions" and linked closely to wages, when we have train drivers and oil tanker drivers earning 2-3 times the median wage it skews the picture somewhat.

For me it has to be linked to wages though and there's four distinct classes -

the underclass - those that have never worked, although able.
working class - those that work, but can't afford pensions or savings
middle class - those that work, have pensions and significant savings
upper class - those that are wealthy enough not to need to work.

Regarding taxation, I was reading up on flat taxes recently when I came across the snippet (can't remember where) that said there comes a point where reducing taxation actually increases tax income. When Reagan lowered taxes in the US in the 80s he was roundly condemned as favouring the rich, but tax income actually increased. Part of the reason is the perception of what level of taxation is fair, linked to the point where the savings to be made by employing a smart accountant are outweighed by the cost.

And it's the perception of "fair" that's more important imo. I've heard many comments from the wealthy that once the govt starts taking more than they earn, ie more than 50%, that is when they would feel an injustice was being perpetrated. Well, govt is bringing in 50% income tax but with NI factored in, that is effectively 60%. But I've heard socialists arguing that the rich should face income tax rates of 70-80%.

Raising minimum wage is a vicious circle and pretty ineffective if you're doing it particularly to make work more attractive than benefits. If you raise minimum wage, costs for employers go up. For the manufacturers, it's quite clear that this means the price of goods goes up so the cost of living goes up. Benefits are calculated on the cost of living, so they'll go up too.

Taxation in this country - especially recently - has become a nightmare. People talk about the credits systems as being fairest - bullsh1t - it effectively provides for those who have access to guidance, and those who'll claim everything, it also costs more to run the people to monitor, distribute, and police it then it gives out.

Raise the minimum tax level so that a person working 40 hours on minimum wage pays no tax at all.

Abandon NI and add it to the tax rate.

Set the standard rate at 22.5% the median rate at 40% and a super-tax at 50%, where this is only paid on earnings over (say) £500,000.

Make it illegal for people to be paid net of tax.

Stop tax relief for buy to let.

Lower commercial rates and corporation tax.

Stop building on green land, and start reclaiming inner cities - all the derelict sites, land held by corporations as tax hedges, abandoned properties and put the cost of housing back into the cost of living. (Taking it out guaranteed a housing spiral)

Increase public transport so that everyone can get to work, and THEN increase the tax on petrol.

All that will make a fairer society but it will not do away with inequality, because there are always people who are lazy, unlucky, or un-prepared.

A bit* of inequality can be kinda good as well?; those in lower paid, jobs etc., having asparations to those in the higher paid sectors perhaps
I think the personal allowances could be looked at too, raising them to somethign close to waht you'd actually need to take home to be able to live off; taking a lot of very low paid workers out of paying income tax... But seen maybe as fair as it'd apply to everyone wahtever tax band they were in,

SWL,

"the underclass - those that have never worked, although able.
working class - those that work, but can't afford pensions or savings
middle class - those that work, have pensions and significant savings
upper class - those that are wealthy enough not to need to work."

Well by that definition the upper class is probably almost nobody - less than 1% of the population for sure (probably much less). That means the 'middle class' has quite a significant overlap with what I'd call the rich. Depending what you mean by 'significant savings' it might mean that the top 20% or maybe 40% are 'middle class', but the middle 20% probably not. It's OK to use that as a definition, as long as we recognise that middle class doesn't mean middle income, but actually significantly more than middle income.

"Regarding taxation, I was reading up on flat taxes recently when I came across the snippet (can't remember where) that said there comes a point where reducing taxation actually increases tax income. When Reagan lowered taxes in the US in the 80s he was roundly condemned as favouring the rich, but tax income actually increased."

The infamous Laffer curve. It's disputed whether or not it worked in the 80s because although tax revenue increased, so did the economy which would also cause an increase in revenue. The Laffer curve says that there is a rate at which revenue will be maximised - if you go above or below this rate, revenue will decrease. So far so obvious. More difficult to say is what this optimal tax rate is.

McKay,

I think that if you did that, total taxation would be at a much lower level wouldn't it? So you'd have to cut services.

<>

Now there's a thing

There were huge recessions in the late 70's/early 80's, caused mainly (but not solely) by oil prices skyrocketing. If Reagan lowered taxes when the US was coming out of recession, then it might not have made *any* difference at all. Real life's funny that way.

I think there are two different things being discussed here: I don't think anyone would be too bothered about two brothers, with exactly the same upbringing etc., with a hard worker ending up being richer than a lazy sod.

However, I think it's pretty unfair people born into wealth have such better lives (on average) than those born into poverty. If it's this kind of inequality you mean, then there's plenty that can be done.

- Abolish charitable status for private schools. (I'd imagine simply abolishing them would be a legal minefield, this would be a simpler alternative).
- Raise top rates of tax, adjust the system so poorer people pay less.
- Have really stringent inheritance tax. It's not a death tax, dead people don't pay tax; it's unearned income for children of privelige.
- Have stronger unions, if necessary by govt mandate. A minimum wage only helps a tiny proportion of the populace. Higher wages for most workers along with less temping and more secure jobs would help everyone.
- Mixed housing. The govt. had some kind of (paltry) tax relief to have social/low-cost housing in new housing scheme. Nobody took them on, because it simply wasn't worth it.

Loads more that I can't think of right now.

Question 1 - Is social inequality the natural order of things and Quixotic attempts to end it doomed to failure?

Always has been, always will be. The level of inequality is a political decision though. In the 60s and 70s it was much less than it is now. Business leaders then earned approx 10-15 times what their workers did, now it's around 70 times. What's changed? I doubt that it reflects the relative efforts of management and workers..

<>

Tax rates were lowered in the US in the 1920's and again under Kennedy before Reagan did it again. Every time, tax revenue rose. Further, the tax burden was actually borne more by the rich than the poor after the cuts. http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/wm327.cfm

Tax cuts benefit the economy and the poor.

<>

Why have socialists got such a hard-on about private schools? Is it because they produce better educated kids on average than state schools? Why can't we turn that one around and have every school aspire to the standards of private schools? Just think what a difference it would make if we had 100,000 Etons. Too difficult? Is it just easier to abolish what's successful and drag everyone down to a common level?

<> Too simplistic and as I've already demonstrated, lowering tax rates gives better results.

<> Another socialist cause celebre. Tax people as they earn, tax what's left when they spend it, tax it if they save it then tax it again if they don't manage to spend it all before they die.

<> Been there, done that, never going back. That leads to the dead going unburied, rubbish mountains in the street, lower productivity and soaring inflation.

<> Over one million of the workforce of twenty three million are on minimum wage. These tend to be the least skilled, least educated, most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in the workforce. Not a tiny proportion and surely the people most deserving of minimum standards of protection?

<> Most?

<> The labour govt have done a pretty good job of attacking this sector, despite it providing one of the best ways for young mothers to keep their skills current and to help them back into the workforce once the maternity period is over.

<> I agree in the sense that zero hours contracts (which proliferated after the Labour Working Time Act of 1997) are an abomination, but one that the Unions don't seem to care about. Certainly when I brought it up with PCS reps, they just gave me blank stares. The "jobs for life" mantra died on the lips of "flexible labour" Pedro. This is the 21st Century; the monolithic, moribund state industries are dead.

<> No, that's just a way for a few to make a fast buck. I'd rather see more social housing, Council Houses to replace the private housing associations and predator landlords that have been allowed to dominate this sector for the last decade.