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| Raise taxes to aid poor, UN tells UK's Gordon Brown |
| 2005-09-07 |
| Who the hell is the UN to issue warnings? The United Nations warned Gordon Brown last night that he will have to levy taxes on the better-off in Labour's third term if the government is to meet its ambitious goal of halving child poverty by 2010. In its flagship annual study charting progress in tackling poverty, the UN highlights Britain as a country where inequality has put a brake on development, and says there would need to be a complete reversal of the pro-rich bias of the 1980s to eradicate the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. Its human development report (HDR) praises Labour for its efforts to tackle child poverty since 1997, but says a cash-strapped Mr Brown needs to go further in his coming budgets and contemplate politically sensitive tax rises to maintain the progress made in the past eight years. "If the next 10 years did for the poor what the 1980s did for the rich, that would bring the UK within touching distance of the child poverty goals," the UN says. The report singles out the UK and US as two wealthy countries where a growing gap between rich and poor has emerged in recent decades, leading to more child poverty and big discrepancies in health outcomes. Overall, it says the world was making faltering progress towards meeting the millennium development goals (MDGs) set by every country in 2000. These include cutting by 50% the number of people living on less than $1 a day, reducing infant mortality by two-thirds and putting every child in school. "There is little cause for celebration", it concludes. "Most [poor] countries are off track for most of the MDGs. Human development is faltering in some key areas, and deep inequalities are widening." In the UK the incomes of the richest 10% rose by 3.7% a year on average from 1979 to 1990 compared with a 0.4% average increase for the poorest 10%. Taxes on top earners were cut from 83p to 60p in the first Conservative budget in 1979 and from 60p to 40p in 1988. If the incomes of the poor rose by 3.7% and those of the rich rose by 0.4% until 2010, child poverty would be cut from 23% to 17%, the UN says. It says Labour's untrumpeted tax and benefit changes since 1997 have resulted in the incomes of the poorest fifth of the population rising by 20%. However, the report says the government needs to do more to load the tax and benefits system in favour of the less well-off, make it easier for poor parents to find work, and make "fundamental changes to the underlying distribution of earnings and income". A Treasury source said: "The government's reforms to the tax and benefit system, including measures such as the child tax credit, have played a pivotal role in lifting more than half a million children out of poverty. This shows the importance of a progressive approach if we are to rise to the challenges in this report." The UN, using data provided by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK's leading independent thinktank on taxes and benefits, said there was a limit to what Mr Brown could do in budgets to meet the goal established by Tony Blair of cutting child poverty in half by 2010 and eradicating it within a generation. "Meeting the 2010 target (of halving child poverty) will require more redistribution, a change in working and employment patterns among parents and more fundamental changes to the underlying distribution of earnings and incomes." The HDR, published each year since 1990, concentrates on the problems of poor countries, but a central theme of the report is the negative impact of inequality in both high income and low income countries. It highlights how countries with low per capita incomes often do better than countries with higher incomes in meeting human development goals such as cutting infant mortality, because they pursue pro-poor policies. Noting that the US has a worse infant mortality rate than Malaysia, the report says: "Some countries that spend substantially less than the United States have healthier populations. US public health indicators are marred by deep inequalities linked to income, health insurance coverage, race ethnicity, geography and - critically - access to care." The report also criticises two of the leading developing countries, China and India, for failing to turn stronger growth into better health outcomes. |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #5 NEWSMAX > Hillary Clinton also wants the Fed to raise taxes to pay for the KATRINA relief. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-09-07 23:51 |
| #4 Perhaps they can take it out of their UN contributions? The US should do this too (as long as the UN doesn't manage the money for the poor....) |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-09-07 23:25 |
| #3 Considering the UN's sterling record in managing other people's money to aid the poor as evidenced by the Oil for Food program, I'm sure that the Brits will give this the consideration it deserves. Although I don't normally use the word, the most apt description for the author of this report is fuckwit. |
| Posted by: RWV 2005-09-07 23:20 |
| #2 exhibit # 4,760 why a internet or global tax of any kind should be fought to the death. Who the fuck are they to tell anyone how to manage an economy? Raise taxes? I don't think so. Hillary should be asked to take a position on this |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-07 22:49 |
| #1 Speaking as a formally poor person ($7,000/year in '96) I decided it sucked, got off my lazy ass, got an education thanks to a loan from the gov., busted my butt and now make a very good wage. How about the rest of the poor people do the same if they don't want to be there? Quit taxing the successfull because somebody wants to be a lazy slob! (I speak from experiance as a former lazy slob) |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-09-07 22:38 |