NAIRU Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment Living Wage’ ‘NLW’ ‘National NMW National Minimum Wage NRO Norfolk Records Office PAC Public Assistance Committee WFTC Working Families Tax Credit WTC Working Tax Credit Summary The summer budget of 2015 announced increases in the National Minimum Wage (NMW) so that by 2020 it will be what is described as a Living Wage’ ‘National (‘NLW’). It also announced significant cuts to wage supplements (Tax Credits and Universal Credit) so that in the future they will be residualised for the very poorest working families and offer significantly less financial support to them. These developments provide an opportune moment to consider wage supplements, in particular whether there is anything that can be gleaned from debates about, and the practice of, supplementing wages in the past that can help inform understandings of wage supplements into the future. Debates about wage supplements have existed for at least two hundred years. During that time wage supplements have been conceptualised as being both deeply problematic and as providing a solution to a range of economic and social problems. The problems that have been associated with wage supplements include: encouraging employers to adopt employment practices, for example, ‘flexible’ employing people on less than full time hours and reducing their wages in the knowledge that the state will top them up; demoralising working people by discouraging them from working long hours and/or working harder to increase their income; the pauperising of working people as a consequence of two issues.
NAIRU Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment ‘NLW’ ‘National Living Wage’ NMW National Minimum Wage NRO Norfolk Records Office PAC Public Assistance Committee WFTC Working Families Tax Credit WTC Working Tax Credit Summary The summer budget of 2015 announced increases in the National Minimum Wage (NMW) so that by 2020 it will be what is described as a ‘National Living Wage’ (‘NLW’). It also announced significant cuts to wage supplements (Tax Credits and Universal Credit) so that in the future they will be residualised for the very poorest working families and offer significantly less financial support to them. These developments provide an opportune moment to consider wage supplements, in particular whether there is anything that can be gleaned from debates about, and the practice of, supplementing wages in the past that can help inform understandings of wage supplements into the future. Debates about wage supplements have existed for at least two hundred years. During that time wage supplements have been conceptualised as being both deeply problematic and as providing a solution to a range of economic and social problems. The problems that have been associated with wage supplements include: encouraging employers to adopt ‘flexible’ employment practices, for example, employing people on less than full time hours and reducing their wages in the knowledge that the state will top them up; demoralising working people by discouraging them from working long hours and/or working harder to increase their income; the pauperising of working people as a consequence of two issues.
understanding_changes_to_tax_credits.docx