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Involuntary consequences
The government's large -scale changes to the British labor market have returned from their consultation period. The result is as radical as the plans were to start.
In some respects, they are downstream of its promises on taxes and expenses. Since the Labor government has essentially excluded the use of public spending as a lever to improve social results, it was always likely to turn to regulations as an alternative approach.
In this way, this government owes a strange debt to George Osborne. As Chancellor, he reduced the benefits of work and increased the national minimum wage to compensate. Likewise, this government does not increase public spending but increases the amount it requires from companies (in particular by increasing the minimum wage).
When you summarize together the imminent increase in national employers' insurance contributions, the increase in minimum wage and the band of new obligations, the government really increases the cost of someone in a fairly large way. I don't think any Things the government offers is alone beyond the pale. But when you add them, they can have consequences that the government does not like.
Readers who read my last newsletter at New statesman I will remember that I had similar concerns about Osborne plans. I thought that the reduction of services in work would increase poverty (it did, but not as much as I feared) and that the increase in the minimum wage would cause unemployment (this was not the case). These reforms may therefore work similarly.
In addition, the government wishes Some jobs in the private sector to disappear. He wants to reduce the number of immigrants from the United Kingdom, which means doing different things with the existing workforce. Disincing hiring in a part of the economy to move consumption expenditure to the increase in defense and infrastructure spending is a characteristic, not a bug.
But my concern is that by doing all this via regulations and no via taxes, the government strongly bet that these changes will have the results it wants, while doing little to direct things. The United Kingdom may just end up with a less dynamic labor market and not much else when everything is said and done.
Now try this
I saw Summer with CarmenAnother project that is another project far from being a high -level comedy. I would frankly miss, very frankly. Jonathan Romney's criticism is here.
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Farewell, well-being | The secretary of work and pensions Liz Kendall seeks to win the office for the responsibility of the budget with A recast of the benefits systemto be described later this month.
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'Absurdly dishonest' | The veterans said that US vice-president JD Vance was dishonoring the hundreds of British troops who died in Afghanistan and Iraq following his comment that peace in Ukraine was unlikely to be secure by “a random country that has not fought a war for 30 or 40 years”. Vance said This interpretation was “absurdly dishonest”.
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Cost reduction | Rachel Reeves will submit this week to OBR plans for billions of pounds of discounts of expenses to be repaired The worsening of the United Kingdom's public financesby emphasizing the reduction of the social protection bill.
