The number of poor elderly people has declined sharply over recent years and decades. The same can’t be said for those of working age.
Relative, absolute, before housing costs, after housing costs… the only way out of this madness is to embrace the complexity.
Social security spending on pensioners has risen by £10 billion over this Parliament. It’s declined by £2 billion for non-pensioners.
The most straight forward way to achieve a Living Income for everyone would be to align the Income Tax and National Insurance thresholds with the Minimum Wage.
The economy’s doing well, but productivity levels are still to recover from the recession. Should we care?
As Milton Friedman once quipped, we could increase employment by making those working on government construction projects use spoons instead of shovels.
Linking benefits to the Local Housing Allowance would produce a better-targeted, more flexible and generally lower welfare limit than currency policy permits.
And, happily, it’s starting to get it from charities operating in conjunction with the Church of Scotland.
Large numbers of unemployed clamaints remain on benefits because they are too choosy in the jobs they are willing to do.
Yes, it is essential to make some reforms. But others can be made without it – and here are nine examples.
Our principal recommendation is to establish a new body to provide better co-ordination amongst civil society, Government departments and supermarkets.
Osborne simply has no political room to do anything very much. The big decisions will come after the election – whoever is in office.
Politicians say that they’re concerned about the costs and implications of an elderly society. But, at the same, they’re making them worse.
The Conservatives can tell a similar story to Reagan’s in 1984: a record number of people are in work.
This is a social justice issue: people with lower incomes aspire to get married, but face significantly higher financial and cultural barriers to doing so.