More people being left behind than ever

I HAVE enjoyed the correspondence following Peter Milton’s original letter, which in part, referenced the use of statistics measuring relative poverty based on average household incomes rather than absolute poverty, effectively destitution.

In the UK, we define households living in poverty as where the household income is less than

60% of the national median, or average, household income. It is therefore true that as incomes rise the threshold for households to be judged as being in poverty also rises.

However, the purpose of this method of measurement was to establish, as a society, how successful we were in lifting the incomes of all classes of society against the average.

Delving into statistics is always a complicated task but I have looked at figures comparing 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, and the latest whole year figures available (2020). I have done this as 1979 reflected a cultural shift away from our post-World War consensus of a mutually inclusive society with government support and controls, to help ensure no sector of society was “left behind”, to the embracing of an American-style, of free-wheeling enterprise where, allegedly, anyone could be a winner if the dead hand of state interference was removed.

Yes, I know in the ’90s there was Blair’s Labour government, but whilst some important social initiatives were implemented in terms of the economy, apart from the introduction of the minimum wage, the loss of employees’ protections and the creation of ‘hire and fire’ working practices, zero hour contracts, etc, etc, continued at pace.

It is interesting to note that at the end of the ’70s, approximately 13% of households were in poverty and now the figure is over 17%. This, despite the huge rise in double income households as both husband and wife earners became the norm.

Moreover, not only are more people being left behind but the rich are becoming richer. In 1979, the average FTSE 100 chief executive earned 11 times the salary of the average worker – now, it is 83 times.

Measurement on social mobility is very hard to drill down precisely but it does appear that there are now fewer earners in the top categories who had not been born into high earning families.

It seems we have created a society where more of us are “left behind”, the rich get proportionally richer still and it is harder for any of us to join the ranks of the rich.

If we don’t change course we will end up back in a Victorian society with a very large, desperately poor working class, a relatively small but very affluent middle class, with a super rich elite.

No amount of prudent budgeting will help us then.

Paul Thomas Highbridge, Somerset