Positive thinking

Hulya Dagdeviren, University of Hertfordshire and Sheilla Luz, University of Hertfordshire   Debt is a growing problem for people on low incomes and it has been made worse by the austerity policies that followed the 2007-08 financial crisis. The UK’s poorest households have the highest debt-to-income ratio in comparison to other income groups. This often means they struggle to repay their debt because it is so high in relation to their earnings. Many are forced to cut back their spending on basic necessities just to keep up with repayments – or they may borrow more, increasing their debt burden further. Our calculations, based on the latest Office for National Statistics data , show that the financial liabilities of the UK’s poorest households (excluding mortgages and student loans) were more than two and a half times their monthly income after tax and other deductions. What is more remarkable is that a significant proportion of this is accounted for by unarranged de...

Jacqueline Best, University of Ottawa Ten years ago, on Oct. 3, 2008, United States President George W. Bush signed the “Troubled Assets Relief Program” (TARP) that promised $700 billion to support banks and companies that were hit by the global financial crisis. As U.S. Congress granted its support for the historic bill, it seemed like liberal democracy was rising to the challenge posed by the global financial crisis. Yes, the bill would be very expensive for American taxpayers, but the cost seemed justified in the face of the potential collapse of the global economy. A decade later, the financial crisis is a distant memory, the TARP funds have been repaid with interest and stock markets are reaching new heights. Yet switch from the business pages to the front page and a much darker picture appears: a particularly virulent strand of right-wing populism is popping up around the world, while Doug Ford and Donald Trump are wreaking havoc with our democratic institutions....

Nicholas Lord, University of Manchester Remember, remember, the 5th of November. Not, this time, for gunpowder, treason and plot. But for the news break by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of the so-called “Paradise Papers”, a leak of 13.4m files detailing the financial behaviour of individual and corporate elites, many of whom use offshore financial centres to avoid paying tax in their home countries. This is a major leak that not only questions the opportunities available to the wealthy in arranging their taxes, but also the extent to which governments facilitate such enduring arrangements for the benefit of an elite minority. Tax takes many forms: income tax, corporate tax, land tax, capital gains tax, death tax, inheritance tax, sales tax, customs and excise tax, and value-added tax are all available to governments. Plus many more. Paying our taxes to fund public policy initiatives and investments is a central necessity of most s...