Sorry Guido, but there really is a cost of living crisis and it's getting worse under a Tory government.
Guido Fawkes has put up a curious post this morning in which he claims that, rather than there being a cost of living crisis, voters are actually better off now than they were in 2010:
“Throw in the income tax threshold hike (£493), the savings from holding down council taxes (£210) and you have already countered the Balls attack in cash terms – and some – at £1,703. Meaning that in terms of disposable income the “average working person” is better off.”
In other words, the rise in personal allowance and the fact that council taxes haven’t significantly increased since the coalition came to power outweighs the fall in living standards due to prices rising faster than wages.
Unfortunately for Guido and the Tories, this is simply untrue.
Even when excluding the impact that falling wages are having on peoples’ living standards, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says that taking into account tax and benefit changes since 2010 a majority of working households are worse off now than they were when the coalition came to power.
As senior research economist at the IFS Robert Joyce puts it:
“Looking at all the measures that are happening that started in 2010 and that are happening to the end of this parliament, if you look at all the measures announced over that period, then most of those families will lose overall because of things like the main rise in VAT back in January 2011.”
And as John Rentoul has also recently noted on disposable income, comparing the last whole year of Labour – Q3 2009 to Q2 2010 – with the most recent year to Q2 2013, real households’ disposable income per head fell by 2.2 per cent.
Sorry Guido, but the coalition really are presiding over a cost of living crisis.
35 Responses to “Sorry Guido, but the Tories really are presiding over a cost of living crisis”
TM
We are returning to the politics of the 19th century. The rich don’t want to pay their taxes, many Middle class people collude in this as long as they get their affluent careers and the best housing, education and able to live well, and the people at the bottom can get all the crap heaped on them, keep getting undercut and have to accept low wage jobs, zero hours contracts and uncertainty as part of their existence. Not a good way to run a modern 21st century democracy and in no way fair, but the people at the top and many in the middle tacitly accept it as long as they don’t suffer in any way.
Guido is living in a fantasy land, and is either a government shill, a Tory or someone who is personally wealthy and so the hard cold reality impinging on many of us isn’t reaching his no doubt well heated ivory tower.
LB
Unless you are a net contributor, you are taking other people’s money.
If you need HB, you are taking other people’s money.
Unless you pay 2K a year per person for the NHS, you are getting it out of other people’s money.
Rents are high for two reasons. Supply and demand. Demand is up because lots of economic refugees have arrived. Pay is down for similar reasons. You’re being under cut by migrants. Ditto for house prices.
Housing benefit goes to you. It’s your money. It’s a subsidy paid for by other people. Or is it that Waitrose should supply your food for free?
Where I agree, life isn’t easy. But that the state for you. Screwing people over so people like you get their money. Just wait however, and see what happens in your old age. The state has a 6,500 bn debt hidden off the books – for pensions.
If you’re a civil servant, it will be dire. After all, people like you will demand their housing benefit, and given a choice, your HB or their pension, you will choose to do them over.
It’s the new game. The state blaming others for their crimes.
Johnny
It seems that we have more important priorities for our finances like helping India to get to Mars or making sure that our corrupt, mis-managing bankers get their well deserved bonus’s paid by the taxpayer, We also seem to need to protect the greedy lying utility companies so that they can carry on ripping us off.
We can pay for all this by cutting NHS and welfare services at home. To hell with the ordinary people who have contributed for most of their lives.
In the meantime the country’s wealth is been filtered out to foreign bank accounts
The all concept of austerity measures is a disguised ideology to get Britain back to the good old Victorian days
Cameron keeps going on about “hard working people getting rewarded”. But it seems that the harder you work the more you are screwed. The hard working man and women in the street are not getting these rewards. The only incentive they are getting is to work until they are 70 and have a poor old age. Only the corrupt, friends of Dave seem to be getting any reward
By your reasoning Labour must have wrecked the rest of the World’s economy as well ?
No wonder Dave and Co are laughing all the way to their foreign tax havens
LB
I doubt he’s a shill. He’s exposed the corruption.
The problem is that there aren’t enough rich to pay for the state. Consider Richard Branson. Two points come to mind.
1. He’s left the UK. Income inequality has now been reduced. If you are on the left that has to be good news? Ho hum, shows that point of view for the farce that it is.
2. Consider the deficit. First you have to say which deficit? Income – spending, or the increase in debts. Lets go with both.
a. Income – spending = 120 bn a year. Branson is worth 3 bn. So we confiscate all his money and sell it off. Not quite sure who is going to buy, but …
(3 / 120) * 365 = 9 days. All that’s happened is that the borrowing stops increasing for 9 days. Now what? Who are you going to target now.
b) The true debt, pensions included, is going up at 850 bn a year.
Take all his cash, and the debt hasn’t gone up for 31 hours.
That shows what the state of the state is. It’s bust. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy land. Pensions matter.
So it is returning to the politics of the 19th century. The left can’t get the cash from the rich to pay for the state. They can’t get it from the middle class either, because turkey’s won’t vote for Christmas. So that leaves the poor up shit creek.
They are up shit creek because the state forced them to be dependent on the state, and now the state is bankrupt they are going to be destitute.
All down to running a Ponzi pension scam.
jimmydefish
But he is probably funded by them too! Not only is he connong himself but he is conning us too.