General Discussion
Take a read of the following to be found in the latest edition of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners magazine. It's an article written by the National Chair of the NFOP, Jill Ypey, and I have been given permission to reproduce it.
“At the Conservative Conference held in Birmingham, George Osborne stated that there was still a need to make cuts to the Welfare budget of £28billion. Remembering that half of the welfare budget goes on the State Pension, where does he intend making these savings?
All three parties have sort of promised that universal benefits paid to pensioners are safe in their hands along with the NHS. But we all know what happens to promises made in the run up to an election!
I watched a programme on TV a few weeks ago “Workers on the Breadline”, it said that a financial crisis is sweeping the UK, with millions of people unable to support themselves or their families without State hand outs. Yet all of these people are in work, with some of them working for some of the UK’s largest companies.
All of the political parties say that they are on the side of hard working families, yet over 3 million families don’t earn enough to make ends meet. Two examples given were a family with 3 children, income £20,500 plus £9,000 tax credits and a family with 2 children whose joint income from one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains was £15,500 plus £7,000 tax credits.
It comes as no surprise that the cost of these benefits came in at around £28billion last year. We must then ask ourselves, why are tax payers in the UK subsidising these large multi-million pound companies? Should they not be made to pay a living wage to their employees, and not expect the tax payers to subsidise them? After all most of them make profits from the same people who are paying these taxes!
Hello George, I think we have found your £28billion savings for you. By the way, if minimum wage and zero hours contracts are as you say “good for the Country”, why aren’t our MPs taking advantage of them instead of accepting a pay rise of around 17% for themselves?”
And of course being on such low wages means there is not much (anything?) left over for non essentials so demand for goods is not created. Also low wages = no, or very little, income tax being paid. So not much help to the Treasury then in its efforts to pay off the deficit and reduce the Welfare bill.
So.......if not enough money going in (to Treasury) means Treasury will want to reduce the amount of money going out (reduction in Welfare payments).
Highly recommend people having a read of the whole of this report (see link at bottom of quote)
"As 29% of low paid workers work in retail,
this sector in particular is coming under intense
scrutiny. A recent report by The Fair Pay Network
found that despite collectively making billions of
pounds worth of profits and paying their CEO’s
millions of pounds a year, not one of the top 4
supermarkets were paying their workers a living
wage. They could easily do this and still make
huge profits at the same time.
Where markets fail to deliver the basic needs
of ordinary people, reform of the system is
necessary. If the government raised the legal
minimum wage from just over £6 per hour to a
living wage of £7.20 outside London and £8.30 in
the capital, all the money gained by these low paid
employees could be saved by the government in
reduced benefit/tax credits.
Even shifting half of the £28bn cost of the
poverty subsidy to employers would save £14bn
a year."