The Budget

michaels

I think Wild_rover has a very good point - perhaps a failure by the opposition to point out that 12bn of welfare cuts would mean ' on the ground', rather than letting the Tories get away without specifiying and everyone thinking it would be all those undeserving recipients rather than themselves personally who would lose out.

We now have some even more eye-watering effective tax rates - just tax credit withdrawal plus NI plus basic rate tax = 80% (48+20+12) and then there is loss of housing benefit and council tax benefit and potentially loss of things like free school meals - does anyone know if some families will suffer more than 100% margnal rates when they get the increase in national living wage next April?

Personally I think perhaps they should have reduced the threshold more but not changed the withdrawal rate although this would hit the poorest decile even worse and perhaps they felt that they were in danger of pushing such people into absolute rather than relative poverty if they went too far in this direction.

michaels

Ending the speech with the National Living Wage was certainly a masterstroke in the politics of distraction as it stopped the day one headlines being about the cuts to the poor.

Mistermeaner

maybe those hardworking families effected by the changes aren't working hard enough? or maybe they are not family enough?

Im hard working but not a family (just me and my boy) so i get F'all off the state

My facebook is full of pictures of 'hardworking' people who seem to be able to pick up their kids from school each day and have mid week bbq's and paddling pools; where as my son is in the pre/post-school club every day while im 'working hard'.

Its annoying that IMO I am paying for them to enjoy this leisure time so I am all for cutting my taxes and their benefits.

michaels

Not sure if we have covered this.

Is the age cut off for the national living wage (below that you only get NMW) going to have some interesting micro effects on the labour market - for example will the supermarket checkouts change from being staffed by wrinklies to being staffed by those under 25. Will some means be found to let people go at 25 to allow new cheap young workers to replace them - perhaps fixed term contracts?

wotsthat

lisyloo wrote: »

It's just possible you might have calmed down in 5 years though.
It's a pretty obvious strategy to get the difficult decisions out of the way early on in the term.

Having had some responsibility restored back to individuals previously stolen by the state I expect many people worse off today will be better off over the longer term.

Maybe I'm wildly optimistic.

cells

michaels wrote: »

Not sure if we have covered this.

Is the age cut off for the national living wage (below that you only get NMW) going to have some interesting micro effecs on the labour markt - for example will the supermarket checkouts change from being staffed by wrinklies to being staffed by those under 25. Will soem means be found to let people go at 25 to allow new cheap young workers to replace them - perhaps fixed term contracts?

its not age discrimination judge its wage discrimination

BobQ

Generali wrote: »

Or more automation, e.g. more self-service tills.

I must be one of the few people who choose not to use self service tills if I can avoid doing so because it will create jobs.

BobQ

padington wrote: »

Our unemployed are actually becoming productive. Volunteering is on the up in the UK. Ten years ago my charity was probably employing under five volunteers. Now we employ over a 100.

Worth considering.

That must be worth a few sanctions, or are they paid jobs.

Maybe the solution should be to discourage all those people with index linked final salary pensions to retire rather than keep working. They could then be the volunteers and there would be some real jobs for unemployed people to do.

Generali

The budget apparently went down moderately well. I'm quite surprised about limiting public sector pay rises being so unpopular; I guess the state is now so bloated that it's quite possible that half of people either work for or have close links to someone that works for the state.

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9456

BobQ

Generali wrote: »

The budget apparently went down moderately well. I'm quite surprised about limiting public sector pay rises being so unpopular; I guess the state is now so bloated that it's quite possible that half of people either work for or have close links to someone that works for the state.

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9456

The state is being slimmed down in terms of direct employees. .

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_376284.pdf

It is about 18% and most of that is the NHS and Education. Depending how you define "close links" you could prove anything!

The problem is that it is being driven by bean counters rather than based on serious analysis of what "work" needs to be done in the public sector and what does not. Some functions have been cut (based on the policies) but many public sector bodies have cut staff with voluntary managed exits only to replace the jobs with more expensive agency workers or consultants, sometimes the same people. This is an issue in the NHS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11642267/How-nursing-agencies-making-billions-are-bleeding-the-NHS-dry.html

The public sector pay policy is largely an attempt to incentivise headcount reductions for the sake of it rather than make staff they no longer need genuinely redundant and focus on paying market rates for other public sector jobs based on the skills needed to fill them. So allowing for pension benefits, they are overpaying for many basic admin jobs but not paying enough to recruit and retain specialists.

I was speaking to an engineer the other day being paid £150K to fill a post that was previously occupied by a civil servant paid about £45K before his application for voluntary exit was accepted. That ex-civil servant now earns about £75K working for an agency who supply him to a contractor to the very same department on a one year contract to work on a similar job to the one he did for £45K. Heaven knows what the contractor charges for him.