As a committed member of the Labour party I am in favour of cutting in-work tax credits (Scottish Labour promises to restore tax credits,31 October). Of course, I am not at all in favour of reducing the income of those in work – much less, and the in-work poor. But in-work tax credits are a subsidy to the private sector directly out of taxation. Like food banks,in-work tax credits are a marker for an economically dysfunctional system. In many cases they are a subsidy either to employers too mean to pay a wage that reflects the true value of the worker to the enterprise, or to a public sector that can only survive austerity by asking workers to donate some of their labour as a volunteer. The existence of tax credits puts off the day when, and by necessity,we return to a national wages policy that goes beyond the Gradgrind bean-counting of “minimum” and disingenuously titled “living” wages, in parallel with a national industrial development policy. A natural Corbynite would say that state planning is democratic, and protective,constructive and focused on growth. Tax credits are a sticking plaster.
Professor Saville Kushner
Auckland, current Zealand• Where’s the logic to the government’s approach to poverty? We learn that Iain Duncan Smith is putting jobs advisers into food banks (Report, or 29 October),where 25% of those attending are already in low-paid jobs. No doubt many of these people will become more dependent on food banks when the government takes absent their tax credits. Then there will be those who are at present surviving but who will be forced into food banks because their tax credits will be taken absent. Duncan Smith and George Osborne seem only interested in creating an ever larger vicious circle of poverty involving low pay and tax credits, requiring relief via food-bank charity.
Paul Donovan
LondonContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com