Poverty and inequality

Tory policy in government has been based on an age-old ruling-class mantra: take care of the rich, squeeze the poor. With a few concessions to the barely-alive social conscience of the Lib Dems, George Osborne’s recent Spending Review was no exception. He helped the rich by cutting corporation tax to 21% — a level lower than even big business claims is necessary to make the British economy “competitive”. He squeezed the poor by fixing annual benefit increases at 1% for the next three years. At two percentage points lower than the Retail Price Index this is a big cut. For the jobless, disabled...

The Guardian (13 November) sums up the evidence given by Starbucks, Amazon, and Google on why they pay almost no tax in Britain. "The man from Starbucks... said Starbucks paid almost no tax in the UK because... with one exception, they had made a loss for 15 years. Year after year, the business failed. Yet somehow it survived, and the UK boss was even promoted!... "The man from Amazon... denied that amazon.co.uk was, in any sense, a UK firm. But he didn't know what kind of firm it was, because he didn't know who owned it... "Matt Brittin of Google... at least admitted that the company shipped...

Dividends are the portion of profits which companies pay out to shareholders instead of investing in expansion, holding the money in reserve, or handing it over in the guise of top bosses' pay and bonuses. Dividends paid out in 2012 will total around £78.6 billion (Financial Times, 22 October). This is a 16% increase on 2011, and to a level way above the pre-crisis in 2007. Some dividends go to pension funds, which in held 5.1 per cent by value of UK shares, and some pension funds pay out to working-class people, But even in pension funds the big pay-outs go to the well-off; and it is only 5.1...

"It's an economic delusion to think you can balance the budget only on the wallets of the rich", claimed Chancellor George Osborne as he spoke to the Tory party conference (8 October). He was trying to justify another £10 billion cuts in benefits for the worse-off, on top of all the cuts already in train. Yes, you can balance the budget on the wallets of the rich! Or, rather, we could balance the budget that way. The Tories never would, and the New Labour types never would, but a government based on and accountable to the labour movement, a workers' government, could and would. Osborne's claim...

3.5 million children in Britain are living in poverty. That is the headline of “It Shouldn’t Happen Here”, a report published by the charity Save the Children report last week. Best known for their work with the poorest children in “third world” countries, Save the Children have launched a campaign for Britain’s children living in poverty (defined by the report as coming from a family with less than 60% of the median income). That’s the rising number of children going hungry, malnourished, in need of new shoes, and warm clothes; always excluded from school trips, unable to have friends round...

Double-dip? It’s more like a prolonged soaking. Unemployment has been high, around 8%, since 2009, with only small and temporary improvements. Youth unemployment is particularly severe, standing at 22.6% as of June 2012 — a 9% spike since late 2007. The number not unemployed but working part-time only because they are unable to find a full-time job is rising, and is now over 600,000. Real wages have been falling since late 2009. No improvement is in sight, and a eurozone crash may bring drastic worsening. This is more than just episodic bad luck as a result of snow, the Royal Wedding bank...

A strike campaign by cleaning workers at John Lewis' flagship store in London's Oxford Street has forced bosses to back off from a cuts plan, as well as winning wage increases for workers. Cleaning contractor ICM (part of the Compass Group) had been planning to make compulsory cuts to cleaning workers' hours, meaning a loss of pay, as well as making compulsory redundancies. The workers' strikes have succeeded in halting the cuts plan. Not a single worker will now face redundancy. Although the key demand of the strike, to win a pay increase to the London Living Wage of £8.30 per hour, has not...

Despite my university education, my job training, my various other random qualifications, and the endless volunteering I have undertaken, I am at the Job Centre, again. It is a familiar routine: sign on, see your advisor, show job search activity, don’t be more than five minutes late, don’t eat, drink, loiter, or talk on your mobile and please leave quietly if it so happens you are left without any money because of “technicalities”. All around is the unknowing glare of shame that people possess in their eyes having most probably watched the Jeremy Kyle show or read this morning’s Sun. They...

While the pay of bosses of the top 100 companies rose 10% in 2011, average household incomes are slumping. A new report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies finds that in 2010-11 mean household income (the average of household incomes) fell 5.7% and median household income (the income of a middling household) fell 3.2%. Both averages are below their 2004-5 level. The one-year fall in 2010-11 was the biggest since 1981, and the longer-period fall is one of the largest on record. http://www.ifs.org.uk/pr/hbai2012.pdf .

Thatcherism was reputed, despite its right-wing drift, to increase social mobility. The gap between the rich and the poor increased, but maybe the chance of people from poor backgrounds becoming rich would rise. A grocer's daughter became prime minister. Proverbially, East End barrow-boys became ultra-rich financial traders in the City. In fact, however, social mobility is decreasing. Poor children born in the 1970s are more likely to be poor in adulthood than poor children from the 1950s. 33% of top journalists are supplied by Oxford university alone. 54% of them, as of 2006, had been to fee...