An Economic Nonsense - "We've Taken More People Out Of Tax"

As we all recover from The Chancellor of The Exchequer's final budget of this Parliament, people far more qualified than me can analyse it to death. Individual people can try and figure out if they are better or worse off. This, of course, proves extremely difficult, as as with most sets of figures and statistics you can get "experts" to speak to completely opposite opinions. Whether the "ordinary person" in the street is better off or not, with some opinions saying "we" are £900 better off and with others saying "we" are £300 worse off is particularly unclear. One thing I do know, however, that society as a whole is not better off.

I am not a qualified economist by any means, having only studied Economics to "Higher" grade, but one thing worries me greatly. It seems that modern politics, or to be more precise the top modern political parties, seem to think that the race to the bottom is the way to go and the way to financially stimulate the United Kingdom.

Many examples of this have appeared in modern economics. I would contend that the basic ideology of employers paying a minimum wage is a good one. Employers being unable to take advantage of people working for them is a good thing, surely. Unfortunately it appears to have had unwanted side effects. One appears to be that it has created a "race to the bottom" rather than encouraging employers to pay a reasonable remuneration to those who work for them. Much of this could be laid at the door of those who calculate the "Minimum Wage" but some of the blame must be laid at the door of employers. Those who can should be paying more but because they don't have to they won't.

One thing that struck me most during yesterday's budget was the absolute and utter excitement that George Osborne announced that his budget was taking hundreds of thousands of people out of tax and the rapturous applause that ensued from his side of the benches. I couldn't believe it. Is it just me or has the world gone totally mad?

I don't want people taken out of tax, I want PEOPLE PUT INTO TAX.

For me this is a government openly admitting that people are so poorly paid that we can't afford to ask them for a contribution to society as a whole in the form of tax. This is a government that can't fix the economy and uses popular sticking plasters like tax cuts to paint over the cracks in the system so that somebody else will have the problem at a future date.

Lets look at what taxes are for. The government needs money to operate, and taxes are a way for it to get this money. This money is used for a multitude of things. It's used for education, welfare, roads, policing and many other things. They are all different but have something in common. They are used for things in the community. So the less taxes that are put in, the less money available for the common good. So basically this Chancellor is removing money from the public purse and denying communities in the UK the benefits it can bring.

What George Osborne SHOULD be doing is creating an economy that people are earning enough to pay their taxes, pay their fair share, which is in turn benefits us all as whole as our communities get stronger. The way this government is going benefits only the rich in the short term but even that will come to an end in the long term when the people in these communities that make them rich disappear. They will be left with nobody to exploit but themselves.

We need a government that will understand and stand up for those other than their own type, put money into the bottom of the stack rather than at the top. "Trickle Down" economics just don't work. Unfortunately with the reverse type of thinking of people like George Osborne, which was shown in abundance yesterday, that day is a long way off in the future. I contend that this yet another component of our "Race To The Bottom" and it will only serve to deepen the United Kingdom's problems, not solve them.