-
Left Foot Forwards looks the TPA and IoD report
-
Paul Krugman on fine form (hat tip Richard Murphy)
-
Steve Bee, Scottish Life’s prolific commentator on pensions, reports that the Irish Commission on Taxation Report is proposing flat rate tax relief on pensions and what looks like auto-enrolment:
“10.2 The current tax relief for personal retirement provision should in the medium to long-term be replaced by a matching Exchequer contribution of €1 for each €1.60 contributed by the taxpayer.
10.3 The matching contribution approach should be accompanied by a kick-start provision involving a contribution of €1 for each €1 contributed by the taxpayer in the first, say, five years of pension provision by an individual.
10.4 The matching contribution should apply where an individual has relevant earnings including where, because of the level of his or her earnings, the individual is not liable to tax.
10.5 A soft-mandatory approach could make a significant contribution to increasing pension coverage and should be considered.”
-
-
Stephen Hale
Green Alliance will be publishing ‘Working on change’, a collection of articles on trade unions and climate change, at a TUC Congress fringe event on Wednesday 16 September.The challenge of climate change is primarily portrayed and understood as a threat, not an opportunity. The consequences for our future prosperity and security will indeed be devastating and indeed fatal for many if we do not act decisively now. But at Green Alliance we believe that it is the stories of the opportunities presented by climate change that will lead us to victory in this struggle.
-
-
Richard Murphy explodes myths about the national debt
-
What reducing the deficit has done to Ireland's economy on the excellent new Left Foot Forward, which promises evidence based political blogging
-
-
-
Nigel has a guest post today on Liberal Conspiracy, with more comment on our pensions story from earlier today
-
Sunny H spotted this in the Telegraph
-
-
Nicola Smith
This week we published an analysis of Jobseekers’ Allowance looking at the relative increases in claimant unemployment among different occupational groups (a full list of the increases in claimant unemployment for all occupations can be downloaded here). The analysis shows that while workers from every sector have been affected by the downturn, 50% of the increase in claimant unemployment has been borne by workers from just 17 occupational groups – including retail assistants, van drivers, cleaners, bar staff and general office assistants.
-
Nigel Stanley
Today’s TUC report on pensions has got a good show in the Guardian, Independent and from Kevin Maguire in the Mirror. Our aim was to carefully go through all the arguments used by the shrink-the-state right against public sector pensions. Then we could explain where they mislead and where they misrepresent, thus exposing their basic argument - private sector employees have suffered big cuts in their pensions, so now public sector staff should suffer too. Along the way, when we started looking at how much the state spends on pensions, we realised that no-one had ever compared the costs of pensions tax relief – astonishingly skewed towards the super-rich – and the annual cost of paying public pensions.
-
Nigel Stanley
A great quote taken from the UNCTAD report
“Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism – which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object. ” - J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936: 159)
-
Nigel Stanley
Ashley Seagar had a great column in yesterday’s newly one pound Guardian asking “Have we learned nothing from the financial crisis?”.
Much of it refers to the new Trade and Development report from UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) that was published yesterday. PDF overview here and the gateway to the full version here.
-
Kate Pickett
Kate Pickett will be speaking at the TUC Congress fringe meeting “Building a more equal society: the role of economic democracy” on Mon 14 Sep 12:45-14:00Despite the dominant trends in politics and economics over the last thirty years a consistent and large majority of the population still believe that the UK should be more equal. In July 2007 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported in its survey “Public Attitudes to Economic Inequality” that:
“Over the last 20 years, a large and enduring majority of people (73% in 2004) have considered the gap between high and low incomes too large” … “People do not necessarily think that those on low incomes are underpaid, but that those on higher incomes are very overpaid”.
We now have new and compelling evidence to bolster this widespread and intuitive view that great inequality is damaging to a society.
-
Nigel Stanley
I’ve got huge respect for Labour MP Terry Rooney. He’s done a fine job as chair of the Commons DWP select committee, and its reports have been very helpful in much TUC campaigning.
But his call for a cap on public sector pensions is wrong and unhelpful. For a start it feeds the anti-public sector pension campaign. There are very few big public pensions in payment (and none in the Fred Goodwin class), but that is not what the TPA and allies would have us believe.