If only Steve Hilton knew what he was talking about

steve-hilton.jpg

It's not looking good for the idea that Steve Hilton is well informed, is it?

My meeting with Luiz was arranged by Citizens UK, the brilliant community organisers who have been such a powerful force in campaigning for a living wage. But my real conversion to this cause was brought about years previously by an unlikely protagonist: Polly Toynbee.

Gaining your information from that source is never going to work out well, is it?

And yet he does get close, only to reject the correct solution:

Some might say that the minimum wage was deliberately set so low that it wouldn’t affect business very much. An increase to the living wage would be a completely different proposition. It is to counter this argument that in my book, More Human, I advocate what I describe as “business-friendly living wage” that requires companies to pay a living wage but cuts their employers’ national insurance by roughly the same amount to neutralise the overall impact. But to be honest, this is letting businesses off the hook. There are plenty that could perfectly well afford to pay the living wage. It’s a choice.

The actual answer is to, as we have been saying here for near a decade now, reduce the amount of tax charged to those on low incomes. We will have more on this later in the week but seriously, what is so difficult to understand about the following? If you want the working poor to have more cash then just stop taxing them so damn much.

Previous
Previous

Kid's Company seems to not quite get this idea we call "charity"

Next
Next

The Treasury has lost on RBS whether or not it sells up