The economy is still in recession for the vast majority of us, but a tiny economic minority are getting rich faster than ever, and the Tories are convinced that this enrichment of the minority equates to an "economic recovery". In this article I'm going to give you a sure-fire tip for escaping your worsening economic circumstances and getting rich too.
The reason that the economy is still in recession for the majority of us is an economic policy called income repression, which is being administered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. If you have a job that pays less than a six figure salary, the chances are that you are getting poorer, because every single month since the Tories came to power, the average wage has grown at a slower rate than the rate of inflation. This means that your purchasing power has been diminished every single month and you are getting poorer and poorer in real terms.
People on low wages have been affected particularly badly, because as well as their wages shrinking in real terms, George Osborne and the Tories are also repressing in-work benefits such as Working Tax Credits, Child Tax Credits, Income Support, Council Tax Relief, Statutory Sick Pay, Maternity Pay and Paternity Pay. These dramatic cuts in the benefits that are used to top up poverty wages are driving millions of low-income workers into even greater poverty.
Some of the poorest working people have experienced terrible poverty on Zero-Hours Contracts (which have spread like wildfire since the global financial sector meltdown), growing numbers of people are working for less than the minimum wage and many tens of thousands of people a month have been compelled under the threat of absolute destitution to work for nothing more than their benefits at highly profitable corporations under Iain Duncan Smith's Workfare compulsory labour schemes. One of the side effects of these unpaid workfare schemes is that they further drive down wages and working conditions for other working people, especially in the retail, elderly care and low-skilled manufacturing and service sectors.
The number of children living in poverty has risen by 300,000 in just one year and the disabled, the unemployed, pensioners and students from poor and ordinary backgrounds have also taken an economic battering in the last three years of Tory rule.
Everyone who is not experiencing massive wage inflation is being hit by the effect of high inflation. It should be absolutely obvious that the official inflation statistics are misleadingly low. House prices in London are growing more per day than the average worker earns in a whole day's work, rents are up, utility bills are skyrocketing, public transport, food, fuel and childcare have all risen in cost much faster than inflation, yet the official inflation statistics are manipulated to show a relatively low level of general inflation. Then there's hidden inflation, the fact that your mayonnaise jar or cereal packet just got smaller but the price stayed the same, and the fact that your beef burgers and lasagnas have been filled out with cheap horse meat from Romania, instead of British beef.
Whilst this has been going on, George Osborne has been slashing taxes for corporations and the super-rich. His unprecidented cuts in the rate of corporation tax have created an artificial boom in corporate profits, fueling record dividends and the obscene inflation of corporate pay. The directors of the FTSE100 companies took home an average 33% pay rise in 2010, a 49% pay rise in 2011 and another 27% pay rise in 2012. On top of all of these extra earnings, George Osborne also handed them a lucrative tax cut in April 2013, meaning that the 13,000 income millionaires in the UK get an average £100,000 boost in their spending power.
Then there's Quantitative Easing; the £375 billion Bank of England money creation scheme that provided 40% of the extra spending power to the 5% of richest households, and eroded away the wealth of people with savings and pension schemes. This isn't just idle speculation, the Bank of England's own research confirms it.
Well, I guess you're eagerly awaiting the economic tip I teased you with in the intro, so here it is.
I've spotted a correlation between a certain type of person and good economic fortune under George Osborne's stewardship of the economy.
George Osborne's father-in-law benefited for a massive reduction in the corporation tax rate for fracking companies, because he works as a lobbyist for numerous energy companies with financial interests in the fracking business. Then the Hedge Fund that employs George Osborne's best man was awarded £50 million worth of undervalued shares in Royal Mail, landing them a whopping profit of £25 million within a week as the shares rose up towards their true market value.
It seems that being a guest at George Osborne's wedding is a key to economic success in "austerity Britain".
You probably think that there's a glaring logical flaw in my advice; the fact that you weren't a guest at George Osborne's wedding in 1998. But don't worry, that's not a problem. In April 2013 the Tory party retroactively changed the law of the land in order to avoid compensating the victims of Iain Duncan Smith's unlawful mandatory unpaid workfare schemes. This means that Tories like George Osborne are quite willing to accept retroactive revisions to reality, so all you need do is retroactively declare that you were a guest at George Osborne's wedding in 1998 and then call him to demand your share of the economic favours he's handing out.
