By Andrew Brons.
Real wages, when the general inflation rate* is taken into account, have fallen by 2.2% per annum since the first quarter of 2010. It appears, from figures from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, that the income of a household in the middle of the income scale (the median?) has fallen by 6% since 2007/8.
This is the longest period through which real wages have fallen since 1964. So it is clear that the British as a whole have been getting poorer. However, we are told that the incomes of middle-income scale households have now stopped falling..
An assumption that is usually made is that this is simply the product of the (rather long) recession and that things will improve when the recession is over. It appears that the recession is over in the UK (for now at least) and middle income have stopped falling – for now at any rate. However, the incomes of Britons and other Europeans have also been falling as the result of a longer term process – Globalisation, which, if not arrested, is a terminal condition.
The next question is: who have been the winners and who have been the losers? The answer depends on the precise wording of the question.
We might simply look at falls in income – real incomes measured by the RPI or CPI. The IFS found that the greatest fall, since the beginning of the recession, was suffered by the top 10% of earners. They lost 9% of real income. The second greatest drop was suffered by middle income families whose real incomes had fallen by 6% and the smallest fall was suffered by the bottom 10% whose real incomes had fallen by 2.4%.
This would seem to suggest that all have lost but the richer have lost more than the poorer. However, the poor have a rather narrower margin of security against falls in income than the ‘middle’ or the rich.
It would perhaps be more interesting to look at the fortunes of the top 1% or fraction of 1% within the top 10% – the super-rich, the colossally rich. They might have bucked the trend of falls in real income of the 9% below them.
Furthermore, if we look at standards of living rather than incomes, we must look at changes in expenditure, as well as income.
The poorest 10% will spend disproportionately large proportions of their income on energy and on food. Whilst general inflation from 2008 to 2013 was 20%, energy prices rose by 60% and food rose by 30%. This means that the inflation rate for the poor was considerably greater than 20%. However, I do not have a figure for it.
Furthermore, if we look at cuts in benefits that are in the pipeline or the so-called ‘window tax’ that is already with us, the poor are suffering and will suffer more than anybody else.
The Financial Times has commissioned a study by Professors Brian Bell and Stephen Machin into the shifting fortunes of the professional middle classes. The authors of the article, Sarah Neville and Keith Fray, distinguished between the Uber-Middle – the top 1% within the top 10% and those they called the Cling-ons – those professionals who have fallen out of the top 10% – academics, scientists and mechanical engineers, in contrast with the 1970s. The most significant winners have been barristers (though not those at the beginning of their careers), doctors and London-based financial services professionals. Many of the latter are the direct beneficiaries of Globalisation, because their portfolios have expanded internationally and their bonuses have followed suit.
The Uber-Middle Class members have increased their share of total (real) earnings by 9%. That does not, of course, tell us the increase, in their absolute position, in real terms.
We might then consider the influence of property prices and mortgage rates. All property owners buying their properties on mortgages have benefited from low interest rates. Those buying houses for the first time will have suffered from rising property prices. Those who have lived in their houses for several years will have gained in equity but not in amenity. The beneficiaries will be their heirs – after payment of estate duty.
We are committed to withdrawing from the process of Globalisation and to rejecting the ideology of Globalism. Those employed in global financial services would lose from an Anti-Globalist government. That does not mean that they would be pursued vengefully. Their fall in incomes would be collateral damage and they would have the opportunity to switch the emphasis of their businesses.
People who are unable to work because of unavoidable unemployment or disability must receive a living income. That will cost money that must be paid for out of taxation.
Our rejection of Globalism and re-building of British business would provide employment for the able. That will save expenditure and taxation.
*The general inflation rate (measured by the Retail Price Index or the more recent Consumer Price Index) is based on changes in price of an average ‘basketful’ of goods and services. However, we all have slightly (or greatly) differing expenditure patterns and so we all have our own personal inflation rates. Nevertheless, certain generalisations can be made. The poor spend a higher proportion of their incomes on energy and food that the rich. If those item rise faster than most other items of expenditure, the poor will suffer a higher personal (or class) inflation rate.
(Party Member) The best way of helping the working poor is to raise the tax threshold. I hope we set a figure on this as part of a policy of being the first Nationalist Party in Britain to have a complete set of financial policies. We would thus be considered on a par with the large parties and be relevant to peoples lives, especially at election time!
Yes, that is a good idea. One of Britain’s most profound economic problems is the fact that we have too few tax payers and a consequent narrow tax base due to decades of grotesque economic mismanagement by the economic globalists of Tory and Labour alike.
As a party, we need to concentrate on the economy as it is primarily upon this issue that elections are won and lost and we nationalists have the better answers to the structural faults within the British economy than globalist free marketeers like Lib/Lab/CON and especially UKIP.
Food, heating and shelter are the essentials for survival. All things other than these are luxuries. Andrew makes the point very succinctly that this means that as prices of these essentials increase, the proportion of income that the poorest have to allocate to those essentials diminishes in relation to the much lower increases (if any) in their incomes. There has been a marked shifting in spending patterns between supermarkets in the last year alone, with the lower priced shops beginning to take a much larger market share of customers who are obviously trying to find ways to exist on lower incomes. The net is widening for those who find themselves in this situation, and it is now not just the poorest who are being pushed to find cuts in their outgoings either. The middle classes are increasingly finding it difficult to maintain a reasonable standard of living.
There is no guarantee that incomes for many workers will ever return to the same level that they were, or that incomes will not be further eroded by failing to match any ongoing inflation in the cost of the essentials. As ever larger numbers of hitherto middle-class workers become relatively poorer, and as they begin to realise that this is very unlikely to be just a temporary situation, it is probable that they will begin to become very disgruntled and more politicized. The traditional political home for the working classes in the past was always the Labour party, but the “new Labour” party has betrayed its core supporters by pursuing Globalist ideology and encouraging mass immigration. Many of those die hard supporters have yet to wake up to this reality.
The middle-class voters who were supporting either the Tories or The LibDems have begun to feel betrayed and abandoned by those two parties, who have embarked together on ever more Globalism and mass-immigration. Promises made on important key issues by both of those parties prior to the last General Election, having been broken. The hope of many of the electorate that UKIP will change their fortunes is unfortunately misplaced. UKIP is simply the anti-European Union wing of the Conservative Party. The UKIP leadership is cynically using the issue of mass-immigration to increase its parties appeal. This is because most opinion polls show that Immigration is now the number one issue for most voters. UKIP is every bit in support of Globalism as the LibLabCon and therefore will not stop immigration from outside the EU, nor the continuing exportation of British jobs.
Only the British Democratic Party has the policies that can deal with the deep malaise that years of political mismanagement by the LibLabCon have produced. Only the BritDems will release us from the iron grip of EU control, and end both Globalist government policy and mass immigration in Great Britain. As long as the LibLabCon are in Downing Street we will continue to gradually spiral downward into third world status. The top 1% will become ever more fabulously rich, while the majority of the population will experience a gradual decline in living standards until we have nothing but high personal debt and lifelong servitude. Mass unemployment will be a constant feature and retirement will become a thing of the past as the young people of today will have to work into such old age that few will ever live to see their state pensions. Only a relatively small number might have enough money saved to buy an annuity with, but that will become harder and harder as the cost of living begins to exceed most incomes.
The future for the majority of working people in a Globalist Britain is very bleak, but this does not have to be our fate. There is another avenue – Join/support the Brit Dems and build up a viable alternative.
Yes, UKIP’s leadership is certainly cynically using the issue of mass immigration to lure voters away from the political Establishment. Their own voters put this issue ABOVE the issue of the EU. However, the fact is UKIP have no coherent stance on the subject
As a good example of this, UKIP just like the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats don’t recognise the concept of their being indigenous ethnic peoples in the United Kingdom and that there are social aspects of mass immigration and not just economic ones to consider.
For years now a succession of Westminster regimes have been urging us to save more towards our retirements. Yet, since 2009, interest rates on peoples savings have been less than the rate of inflation, meaning that our savings are being continually reduced in real terms. Back in 2009 people where asking where the money to bail out the banks was coming from. We now have our answer, from our plundered savings. Cameron and his public school cronies have been robbing the financially prudent to save the miserable skins of the financially irresponsible.
Andrew said he didn’t have a figure for inflation for the poor.
Someone should find one! Derive a nominal ‘poor’ income. Deduce the amounts spent on food and fuel (talk to someone) and work out the corresponding inflation figure.
Then put it on a leaflet!
The BDP needs to put the economy and living standards to the forefront of its literature and campaigning tactics as it is this issue above all that makes ‘swing’ voters change their voting habits from one party to another.
Adopting a non-globalist economic policy which will rebuild an economy too dependent on retail and financial services and not enough upon a REAL wealth earner for the country ie high-tech manufacturing industry will do this. We have to show we can create longterm economic success for the country and that such an economy will help spread wealth to the many and not just the few.
UKIP are the anti-EU wing of the Tory Party in exile. Their greatest political flaw is their embrace (to an even higher degree than the Lib/Lab/CON party) of globalist economics. Needless to say, such a stance narrows their social appeal to the electorate and would worsen our economic problems to an even greater extent.
We need to support a paternalistic economic model along the lines of post-war Japan. Free markets need to work for the interests of the nation and can’t just be allowed to let rip to its detriment. We support a market economy but not an unrestrained market economy. There should be an industrial policy which promotes the expansion of high-tech manufacturing which should form the core of a modern economy for this country.
(Party Member) I hope we adopt the policy of abolishing employer’s National Insurance. This is, in effect, A TAX ON JOBS as it makes it very expensive to employ people.I also hope we adopt the policy of undergoing a complete overhaul of the National Insurance Number system as there are currently more numbers in circulation than there are adult people. This will assist us in IDENTIFYING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS and stamp out fraud in general.