Tax credit for all in work

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Mon Mar 22 14:19:32 PST 1999


Today's Financial Times reports that Gordon Brown intends to integrate the benefits system and the tax system with a tax credit for all in work.

Because of the size of the computer problem this will only be brought in next century.

It is consistent with the New Labour aim of breaking down the division between better off workers, who regard themselves as middle class, and recipients of benefits who are caught in a poverty trap and may be stigmatized as idle.

It will be seen by the traditional left as a way of increasing the exploitation of the working class in the interests of capital, as it will maximimise the working population. But such left positions could be seen as patronising reformism: reducing socialism to charity pay outs, rather than concentrating on the take-over of state power.

Chris Burford

London



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