Millions of ordinary families are unlikely to see their earnings return to pre-recession levels until at least 2020, a report from a leading thinktank has warned. But it predicts that the income of the wealthy will continue to rise over the same period.
The study, which focuses on the state of the "squeezed middle" and is produced by the independent Resolution Foundation, looks at the situation of 10 million adults, who crucially do not rely heavily on means-tested support from the state, and their 5.2 million children.
A report by the foundation last year led to Ed Miliband's championing of the squeezed middle, a part of Britain that the foundation says remains a key political battleground. It says that households without children earn between £12,000 and £29,000 a year to be part of the squeezed middle; homes with children, between £16,000 and £41,000.
On Monday Labour's welfare spokesman, Liam Byrne, will debate the report's implications with Liberal Democrat MP David Laws at the foundation's London offices.
The two have not met since the former Treasury secretary Byrne's infamous note in 2010 to his successor, Laws, which read: "There's no money left." Since then, the UK's economic woes have deepened and the foundation paints a "gloomy picture on incomes for the next decade".
Byrne told the Guardian that Britain risks replicating the US's "lost decade" where the middle class has fallen so far behind the rich that "Time magazine recently wrote its obituary". Byrne said the report underlined the fact that "the government's economic strategy is doing nothing for jobs, which is why wages are stagnating and welfare reforms are doing nothing for working people. The result is inequality between the middle and the top. Working people do not have a government working on their side."
More bad news from the source: Ordinary families will be worse off till 2020, report claims | Society | The Guardian
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5% "official" inflation for next 10 years is
The study, which focuses on the state of the "squeezed middle" and is produced by the independent Resolution Foundation, looks at the situation of 10 million adults, who crucially do not rely heavily on means-tested support from the state, and their 5.2 million children.
A report by the foundation last year led to Ed Miliband's championing of the squeezed middle, a part of Britain that the foundation says remains a key political battleground. It says that households without children earn between £12,000 and £29,000 a year to be part of the squeezed middle; homes with children, between £16,000 and £41,000.
On Monday Labour's welfare spokesman, Liam Byrne, will debate the report's implications with Liberal Democrat MP David Laws at the foundation's London offices.
The two have not met since the former Treasury secretary Byrne's infamous note in 2010 to his successor, Laws, which read: "There's no money left." Since then, the UK's economic woes have deepened and the foundation paints a "gloomy picture on incomes for the next decade".
Byrne told the Guardian that Britain risks replicating the US's "lost decade" where the middle class has fallen so far behind the rich that "Time magazine recently wrote its obituary". Byrne said the report underlined the fact that "the government's economic strategy is doing nothing for jobs, which is why wages are stagnating and welfare reforms are doing nothing for working people. The result is inequality between the middle and the top. Working people do not have a government working on their side."
More bad news from the source: Ordinary families will be worse off till 2020, report claims | Society | The Guardian
---------
5% "official" inflation for next 10 years is
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