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“Work is the ultimate escape from poverty. But the futile sort demanded by the United Kingdom’s income-support scheme puts many of society’s weakest members on a path to nowhere, because it reflects a welfare ideology that fails to distinguish fantasy from reality”
“After decades of assault by state-shrinking ideologues, a collision of crises has revealed how only the power of good government can save us. Covid, climate catastrophe and Brexit crashed in on a public realm stripped bare by a decade of extreme austerity. Here all the best writers and thinkers on the good society show recovery is possible, with a radical rethink of all the old errors. Read this, and feel hope that things can change. ”
Polly Toynbee
Will Hutton sets out five principles for a Charter for Work.
When the economic affairs committee of the House of Lords agreed in July 2020 to direct its next inquiry into “employment and Covid-19” the general expectation was that there would
The focus of economic policy should be on maintaining a high, sustainable level of employment. This is correct theoretically, practically, and socially. It counterbalances the capitalist market system’s tendency not to create a high level of employment.
The coronavirus pandemic has worsened inequalities and the measures taken by government, with tacit or explicit support of Labour and the TUC, have increased inequalities further.
The government’s ineptness in handling the health crisis will thus impact both the supply and the demand sides of the economy.
To avert permanent economic damage during the worst slump for 300 years, the government has to provide emergency credit to business, guarantee loans, offer grants, defer tax and rate payments and directly pay the wages of furloughed workers
Universal Credit is and has been from its outset a disaster, It is mean-spirited, over-complicated, punitive and moralistic. This is the time to put it to sleep. Now is the time for UBI pilots to test variants of a basic income for one year, and then evaluate them.
John Weeks argues the coronavirus outbreak requires measures including quantity rationing and price controls, alongside a rethink of UK labour market policy.
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