A Spensian Solution To Our Economic Problems

So we're on strike tomorrow.  The cabinet office think it's futile and I tend to agree.  We've got no chance of getting anything other than what we are given and we will be expected to be grateful.

I'm ok, because I'm happy to have a day off without pay but plenty of people are a bit peeved and I don't blame them.  Our call to arms is being led by our our "radical socialist" leader, Mark Serwotka who receives a salary before pension contribution of something over £100,000 and lives in a house in Surrey worth over £500,000.  Excuse me, for thinking his  rally call sounds a bit hollow.

The country is on it's knees though but as I said the other night I'm unconvinced about this debt thing.  That said we have to do something to get people spending money. A tax cut at the lowest rate?  A VAT cut?  I don't know but the best way to get money circulating is by giving it to the poor.  Give more money to the poor and they will spend it.  Give more to the rich and they will save it. 

I've been told my view is Keynesian.  Excuse the spelling if it is wrong but I have no intention of looking him up to check.  I've never read any of his stuff and I don't feel the need to have my view endorsed by an economist (?) from the olden days. The past is a foreign country ..... (L P Hartley) and all that.   It's bloody obvious anyway.

Of course I've heard of him and seen his name bandied about, usually from right wingers wanting to ridicule socialism so I'm guessing he was a socialist.

How do you get start getting quoted like that anyway?  I made some social predictions just after Margret Thatcher came to power about the underclass that have turned out to be right.  I wish I'd written them up.  Maybe that could be called Spensian?

I also remember also suggesting everybody working part-time to create jobs for the unemployed about the same time.  Richard Branson claimed that one as his idea last year didn't he.  Bugger, if I'd written it up the Telegraph would have been saying "Branson suggests Spensian solution to problems".

If only I'd started my blog 32 years ago!

Anyway I'm not falling for that one again so he's an idea to create employment and to raise the wages of the poor for the likes of radical socialists such as Mark Serwotka to peruse over in a new series of Spensian solutions. 

The average salary I think is about £25,000 so anybody receiving over £25,000 recieives a 20% pay cut to bring their salary down to either the greater of the resulting figure or £25,000

IE

Before Salary £30,000 = after salary £25,000
Before salary £100,000 = after salary £80,000

The money saved by employers could be used to achieve any combination of the following,

• reduce the price of their goods making them more competitive,
• employ more people
• give their lower paid employees a pay rise
• in the case of union leader's reduce members union subscriptions
• in the case of MP's, local govenment or central government employees reduce our tax (the tories should like that one)

I know what you're thinking.  People have financial commitments.  I've thought of that one.  I'd phase the changes in over a few years, similar to how they've done with my pension contributions which I've had to absorb with no pay rise.  I've just cut back and it's ok because we're all in this together.

What do you think?  I might even write and suggest it to my radical socialist union leader but remember where you heard it first if you hear somebody else coming up with it or suggesting something similar.  If you do please feel free to say "so basically you are a Spensian"