I don't pretend to know the answer, but I'm b***** sure that neither the Conservatives nor Labour hold the answer, nor are they prepared to step one inch outside their normal tired, tried, tested and frequently failed approaches.
>> Lots of stuff in your post to debate but above is nub. Tax credits and
>> easing of some employer costs may have had unintended consequence of creating a sweet
>> spot for jobs that are not full time.
Not full time is ok - plannable part time for example. Perhaps even flexible hour totals within boundaries. All potentially useful for everybody. But such a contract should have both a minimum number of hours and a maximum. Minimum to avoid ridiculous hardship and maximum to avoid replacing full time workers [who have benefits and protections] with such contracts.
I'd also like to see some kind of faster reacting control system. Some kind of workers council or arbitration system perhaps or some such, that would review a contact and determine whether or not it was *fair*. And lack of fairness should be an acceptable decision, even where the contract was legal. Where the employee or employer accepted the arbiter's decision or went to court over it, knowing that if they were against the arbitration decision then they were on a sticky wicket. Union members and company owners (amongst others) would be disqualified from being on the panel.
>> Bottom line is decent and affordable homes for people earning in lower centiles of median
>> wage.
>> Historically Social Housing filled that gap.
I'm not sure it did. It was just a shield against media or public attention. Still, whether it did or not it wouldn't now.
>> Do we subsidise the housing directly or via state topping up wages for low earners?
I prefer a massive increase in the minimum wage to address one part, and then measures to stunt the housing market for the other - Nasty taxes on the margin between purchase price and sales price perhaps. [and I mean 'margin' not 'profit']. That's a measure that wouldn't affect first time buyers for example.
We also need to reconsider corporation tax. It needs not to be based purely on profit but needs to account for revenue also. There ought to be a minimum %age of revenue to be paid in tax above a certain threshold irrespective of profit margin. [I can't resist throwing in that that would be considerably easier if we were part of the EU. Sorry].
It needs thinking about, but surely we know by now that the same old s***, be it Labour s*** or Conservative s***, just isn't the way to go.
For sure I know that I am not comfortable with either.
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