Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "Half a million more UK kids drop into poverty" video.

  1. It is dishonest to frame this as something new. Between 1995 and 2021 DWP relative poverty figures for children in working households fluctuate between 60% and 71%. Those numbers increasing during a period of high inflation should only be a surprise to those who do not understand inflation. It is the devaluation of currency, that is a pound is worth less today than it was worth yesterday and that results in reduced buying power. If you had £100 in the bank yesterday and today that £100 is only worth £91.50 you've lost £8.50 you can never get back no matter what you do. When tomorrow that £91.50 is worth £84 you start to see the problem. There is very little in economics more insidious than high inflation, it stills your wealth from right in your pocket and it doesn't discriminate on socioeconomic class. Inflation makes EVERYONE poorer. So if you're already on the edge of poverty before high inflation, it plunges you in. That's why you get a jump in these figures. It's also why government and the bank of England are doing everything in their power to stamp out inflation as quickly as possible. That includes refusing to lament to the demands of unions. Raising wages makes that problem worse. It devalues currency at a faster rate and increases consumer prices. A double whammy that effects everyone not just those whom got a wage rise. You are being dishonest too when you talk about non-whites being more likely to be in poverty. You need to break those figures down further to show a truthful picture. What you're really talking about is low and no skill migrants whom have come ob asylum claims, some of whom have received refugee status. You're also talking about imported low and no skill labour by specific sectors, such as privately run social care. These groups are paid below minimum wage, and they further drive down wages across the economy. If you want to fix wages in low and no skill sectors, you need to cut off the tap for international supply of low and no skill labour. That means ending the practice of international recruitment from developing countries (particularly SEA) for low and no skilled labour, and preventing illegal border crossings by economic migrants. It also means keeping a better eye on genuine refugees such that they are sent home as soon as the war or persecution in their home country is over. Schools need to be funded properly. Maths does need to be compulsory throughout K-12. So does English. The curriculum needs to be reviewed and fixed, and the university system needs to be overhauled so it isn't just profit driven business trying to fleece international students. Business needs to be consulted in education reforms to ensure the education is pumping out the workforce needed. That afterall is it's job. Teaching staff need to be retrained to actually be engaging, to fix student retention in high school. The stats don't lie, children in working poor families tend to be the children of high school dropouts. Those children are then 4x more likely to have behavioural problems and drop out of school too making it a multigenerational problem. More needs to be done to keep those kids at risk in school and encourage them into tertiary training so they have a higher earning future then their parents before them. There's more variables at play here, but ultimately this comes down to inadequate investment in productivity (not growth), infrastructure, education and border control over the last 50 years. Governments can't spend revenues they do not have however, which means the constant tax cuts over the last 25 years need to be wound back to fix the budget deficit.
    7