The Poverty Trap
Posted on November 28th, 2023
by Rab Bruce’s Spider
Mastodon: @RabBrucesSpider1@Mastodon.Scot
Twitter: @RabBrucesSpider
Tory Government Ministers really do talk a lot of nonsense. Of course, they know that they can get away with telling brazen lies because that principle was established by Boris Johnson a few years ago. But I do wonder whether some of them actually believe what they are saying. For example, in giving evidence to the Covid Enquiry, Kemi Badenoch asserted that the Tories do not have a cure for poverty, and that they would have used it if they could.
I’m not sure whether she was being disingenuous, or whether she really is that ignorant, but this is patent nonsense because there is a very simple cure for poverty. It is to give people more money. But the UK has been transformed into a low wage economy, paying the worst state pensions in the OECD, and with a social security benefits system which is recognised by the UN as being dangerously inadequate.
And a recent report has even suggested that the huge scale of wealth inequality in the UK costs the economy billions of pounds each year. From being one of the most equal societies in the 1970s, the UK is now one of the most unequal. It is not that there isn’t enough money, it is that far too much of that money is in the hands of a very few people.
The Tories may bang on about the economy, and it is clear from the evidence given to the Covid Enquiry that many top Tories believe the economy is more important than people’s lives, but I doubt they will do anything to alter the inequality situation even if it would improve the economy. That’s because it would harm their own interests.
And don’t count on Labour changing things. Even if they decide to abandon the Tory policies they are adopting with such readiness, they won’t have long enough to alter the situation very much. Such societal change takes decades, and we know from history that the English electorate will vote the Tories back into power before too long.
It is way past time that Scotland escaped this madness.