General Election 2019

That won't get abused....

My take on this is that anyone earning little enough, whilst working 36 hours a week with the 2.4 children (or whatever it is now), that they have to claim benefits is having their employment heavily subsidised by the government, and that should be stopped.

It benefits big companies more than small ones, it stops it being a level playing field between a corner shop and a supermarket (as a simple example).

Raising the minimum wage helps to combat this.

Also smaller companies are generally paying more than larger ones. Look at the wage cuts that Asda are forcing onto their employees, look at the cuts to pay by paying a below inflation pay rise. Small companies don't tend to go in for those tricks, because the owner knows their staff more intimately.

How would I suggest that it should be sorted? It's tricky, but I'd look at moving minimum wages to be determined by Councils.
How to get the Councils to determine it correctly? Stop paying the councils for HB or CTR claims where the claimant or partner is working 36 hours and they have less than 2 children? Not that they don't have to pay them, but that they don't get the central government subsidy on those cases.

I'd also point to this: http://www.grubstreet.com/2019/10/new-york-restaurants-minimum-wage-increase.html

In New York, higher minimum wages in bars has increased profits in bars, rather than cut them, an effect that has also been seen in Seattle apparently.

https://mobile.twitter.com/mcawtherley/status/1197428403160408069

the other point on increasing minimum wage is that it goes into the pockets of people who will then be able to spend more in these small businesses. generating further economic activity

generally, it's better to enact measures which help people at this bottom-end of the income scale (from an economics, if not moral standpoint) as they don't tend to save as much as those at the top

I.e., Keynsian economics, or trickle up economics.

sounds like communism to me.

The Tories edited a video of Jess Phillips yesterday to make it look like she'd dismissed the labour manifesto.

I hadn't heard or read anything about this. Which is pretty worrying.

On the one hand, that sort of 'tactics' suggests they're a bit desperate. On the other hand, it might 'work'. We'll see.

What is abundantly clear is that electoral law needs major reform.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/22/jewish-voting-labour-antisemitism-progressive-government

Any process has a cost: taking in tax, then paying it back as a subsidy to an employee who isn't earning enough to feed themselves is inherently inefficient - because you have to pay for that process to occur whereas paying the employee a living wage doesn't have the process cost of subsidising them.

So paying a living wage causes a reduction in costs for the whole of society.

The question then becomes how to enable smaller businesses to cope with the increased costs before (theoretically) the overall increase in money in the hands of citizens generates increased profits for the business in question.

Reducing other taxes is the logical answer, because you are saving governmental costs with the reduction in subsidy - so you can pass that on.

I'd suggest business rates would be the logical tax to reduce, but the problem here is that those go to local gov and income tax revenue is a central gov issue - so you'd need to address that imbalance, likely by direct funding of boroughs from central gov funds.

Putting more money into the hands of more people should lead to more money in local use, and increased velocity of money through the system as it's not taken in, processed, then payed back out as for e.g. Universal Credit etc.

Overall, if handled well, it should be win-win, with societal costs reducing whilst individual liquidity increases.

Here's a useful summary of the Labour manifesto:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/21/whats-in-the-labour-party-manifesto

On the one hand, that sort of 'tactics' suggests they're a bit desperate.

Unfortunately an election is not simply won or lost, it's won by a margin and your government has more control the larger the margin. They might be highly confident of winning but these dirty tricks are still an opportunity to win a few extra MPs overall.

• The unweighted results show that only the Conservative party received more positive than negative coverage across all newspapers.
  
• The increase in positive Conservative evaluation in the weighted data (Figure 5.2) reflects the strong editorial support provided by the newspapers with the largest circulation (the Daily Mail and the Sun).
  
• In contrast, Labour had a substantial deficit of positive to negative news reports in the first formal week of the campaign. This offers important context to the findings presented in Figure 1.2. Labour politicians may have had more coverage in the national press than the Conservatives, but a large proportion of this was negative.
  
• The minimal deficits for the Liberal Democrats and SNP largely reflected their marginality in newspaper coverage (see Figure 1.2).
  
• The increased deficit in negative coverage of the Brexit party in the weighted data reflects the impact of negative coverage in the Daily Mail and The Sun.
  
  
  

Figure 5.1: Overall evaluations in newspapers (unweighted)

Figure 5.2: Overall evaluations in newspapers (weighted by circulation)

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/general-election/report-1/?#section-5

Method could be argued with but pretty conclusive

I know you hate to be @ mentioned @WillMelling but I do think you should enter this:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/20/show-us-your-general-election-poster-designs

Then don't @ mention me then. It puts you in some very sad company.

How can we reply to your points - serious question.

I still have no idea. That doesn't appear as a user name

So can we refer to Mrak as chaiiwala now? Sorted.

If I understand Will right, he doesn't hate being @mentioned as much as he hates the full post in which the mention occurs appearing on his 'Following' page. Then again, I may not understand him right, and he may just hate being @mentioned.

If I hadn't how would you have seen it though?

As much faith as I have in you I am unconvinced of your omnipotence.

It's OK, a bit of common-or-garden omniscience would do. :)

How did we manage before?

I can't remember, I'm old now.

Reply with your question in it?