bassnation said:
child poverty has gone up since labour have been in power. also the gap between the very richest and the very poorest has widened. in what sense is this a socalist government that is concerned with equality?
i don't really want to turn this thread into a defence of labour- i'm just interested in how others are voting, but this from the economist weblog might answer yr points:
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POVERTY:
In absolute terms Britain's war against poverty has made great strides. Absolute child poverty, for example, has fallen a great deal. According to the DWP report:
There were 3.2 million children below 60 per cent of 1996/7 median income Before Housing Costs in 1996/7; by 2003/04 this had fallen by over half, to 1.4 million.
Likewise, the overall number of people living in absolute poverty has fallen by 40 per cent or 1.7 million since 1996/7. For pensioners, the IFS report that pensioner poverty "continues to fall dramatically" when measured after housing costs: "it fell by 10 per cent in the single year 2002/03–2003/04, and has fallen by over a quarter since 1998/99."
However, not all have benefited, and the improvements in relative poverty have been more modest lately. The latest child poverty figures were disappointing; they did not show the big drop that both DWP and the IFS were expecting.
The IFS' assessment for trends in poverty in 2003/04 is mixed:
Poverty for the population as a whole changed little between 2002/03 and 2003/04. This is because the declines in child and pensioner poverty were broadly offset by a rise in poverty among working-age childless people, which is now statistically significantly higher than it was in 1998/99.
INCOME AND INEQUALITY:
On incomes the good news is that inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficent, fell for the third consecutive year in 2003/04. In an era of globalisation and widening earnings dispersion this is no mean feat.
The bad news is that after several years of solid real income gains, household income growth stalled in 2003/04. Real median housheold income rose by just under £2 a week (a modest 0.5 per cent increase), while mean incomes fell by 0.2 per cent. According to the IFS this is in part due to rises in national insurance, income tax and council rates. However:
...even excluding them income growth was low compared to previous years. This is explained in part by a big drop in income from self-employment.
Meanwhile "the incomes of poorer households were boosted in 2003/04 by the introduction of the child tax credit and working tax credit, both more generous than the credits and benefits they replaced."
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labour aren't a socialist government. but when the sun, the mail, and the telegraph are among the biggest selling newspapers in the uk, i don't think we'll get a socialist government. the best we can hope for is a labour government, consisting of people who became politicians because they care about reducing inequality.