There May Be Trouble Ahead [For Cameron]

[planeterotica]

I saw some of this yesterday as i crossed Trafalgar square to go and have a look at the VE day concert in Horseguards

Could this be the start of the poll tax riots again, i don't think call me Dave's honemoon period will be lasting to long...

[number 6]

Once the 12 million of welfare cuts become clear people will realise what they have done....we are talking benefits of working people here, not just the unemployed. Very noticable the toRies never came clean about where the cuts were coming from before the election.

[Essex Lad]

Working people shouldn't get benefits.

[number 6]

The whole point was to top up poverty pay.

[Essex Lad]

Then why not do what the Tories have done and raise the tax threshold to take low-paid people out of tax completely? Instead of complicating the tax system which is what Gordon Brown did... You pay x amount in tax and then we give you y amount in benefits... It's madness.

[David Johnson]

Well the most recent increase in the personal tax allowance in 2014-15 gave about ?100 a year extra to a typical basic tax ratepayer (?60 in real terms) . Working tax credits can mount to ?2K a year.

Increases in tax free allowance are a very inefficient way of targeting the lowest earners in our society, given that everyone earning up to ?100,000 gains from having a personal allowance and, of course, households with two earners will prosper more than single occupant households. Some of those households would already be benefiting from the tax breaks for married couples where ?1,000 of the personal allowance can be transferred to a spouse.

The Tories always trumpeted the benefits to the low incomer earners of this rise whilst, surprise surprise, totally forgetting to mention that this was also beneficial to much, much better paid people.

[Essex Lad]

So? Why shouldn't the well-off benefit from being able to decide what to do with the money that they have earned?

[David Johnson]

The answer to this is pretty obvious and we have discussed this in another thread. Not sure why you are even making the point.

The gap between rich and poor has increased under both Labour and Tory governments and if you want to close this gap so that the UK is a less unequal society, increasing the personal allowance is not an efficient way to do this. It is wasteful.

To repeat, if working people on the lower end of pay are struggling to survive you will never have a situation in which the deficit can be cleared because huge numbers of people on low paid, zero hours contracts will never make a contribution to the Exchequer. That is why increasing the personal tax allowance is a very inefficient way of dealing with the problem.

What the government should be doing is increasing the minimum wage substantially, cracking down on zero hours contracts and tax dodges such as forcing your workforce to become "self employed".

[planeterotica]

At the same time this Riot was taking place i shot this tranquil scene just a short distance away along the Mall and in St James park and you can hear the police helicopter hovering above Whitehall i don't know any other city in the world where you can have riots and tranquility happening side by side..

[Essex Lad]

Los Angeles?