Tag: poverty
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The government’s response to its defeat in the Lords last night over benefit caps has been notable for its lack of substance. Iain Duncan Smith has taken two lines: that the policy is enormously popular, and that Bishops and left-leaning peers ought to be as concerned by the people paying for the benefits as they…
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Are Conservatives serious when they bang on about the high marginal tax rate of people at the bottom end of the income scale and its symbolism as a failure of the “big state”, as David Cameron referred to on Thursday and William Hague repeated on Any Questions? I ask this because this “tax rate” –…
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At a stroke, Boris Johnson has undermined the capital the Conservatives have made out of the 10p income tax fiasco. It isn’t that the cheap oil deal with Venezuela was defensible – it wasn’t. It was this sort of tokenism that disqualified Livingstone from office in the eyes of most Londoners. But no-one begrudged low…
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The above title is also the name of Henry George’s greatest work (which I strongly recommend everyone on the planet to read). I mention this because, while the Lib Dems broadly voted the right way during their poverty debate yesterday afternoon (certainly in rejecting the option to support differential age rates for minimum wage), I…
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Madeline Bunting purports to be thinking the unthinkable in her Guardian column this week, calling for the UK to consider population controls. Indeed, I made a similar point when reviewing the Centre for Um’s recent pamphlet on demographics. Sadly though, I must add my name to the members of the blogosphere who think she must…