Tuesday 15 December 2015

Fun Online Polls: Most relevant measure of inequality & Charitable spending

The results to last week's Fun Online Polls were as follows:

Which is the most relevant measure of poverty or inequality?

Total income minus tax and housing costs - 66%
Total assets - 24%
Total income - 9%
Total assets excl. value of main residence - 1%


That is a pretty clear result, and surely the correct one. I can see why 'Total assets' came second, especially if you assume this to mean 'total value of land owned' i.e. the equal and opposite of 'total income minus tax and housing costs'.

And as we well know, the way to reduce this kind of poverty or inequality is not more downwards redistribution via the welfare system. That will not help those being totally f-ed over by the system, i.e. working tenants. The best way is to have less upwards redistribution via the tax system, i.e. tax output and employment a lot less and tax land values a lot more.
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To this week's Fun Online Poll:

How much of their income do major UK charities actually spend on charitable causes?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Once you've cast your vote, read the surprisingly well researched article in the Daily Mail.

2 comments:

Tim Almond said...

Some of the charities have a point about shops, but this comment is rather telling:-

"'This flawed and simplistic analysis arbitrarily defines ‘charitable activity’ to exclude campaigning and other fund raising activity."

I'd really rather that charities were banned from any sort of campaigning. If you want to campaign, you should have to set up a non-charitable organisation to do it.

And yes, the reason they've excluded fund raising is that's a cost, not a benefit. Charities don't like to tell people that chuggers take the first year of the direct debit, something like 25% of the donations.

To be honest, I'm amazed that Guide Dogs need to spend £56m. According to their website, there are 4,800 guide dog owners. That's what, £12K each? Every year? Does that sound reasonable?

James Higham said...

Interesting that assets were not seen as relevant in this by so many.