After detailed examination of the UK coalition budget measures, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the country faces the “longest, deepest, sustained period of cuts to public services spending at least since World War II”. It is the first time that a British government has proposed six consecutive years of spending cuts.
The IFS refuted the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s rhetoric that the rich would “feel more pain” than the poor, stating, “If you look at reforms due to be introduced in 2013 and 2014, they hit the poorest hardest and indeed keep on hitting them more and more every year”.
- more than one million people face eviction from their homes.
- 900,000 will lose their housing benefit
- Hundreds of thousands will be forced out of family-sized properties
- A total of three million people will be affected by the housing benefit changes.
- 725,000 jobs will be lost in the public sector over the next five years.
- Another 200,000 people are likely to lose their jobs as a result of the rise in VAT.
The current official jobless total stands at 2.51 million, or 8 percent of the workforce. The government’s measures will add at least another million to that figure.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/budg-j28.shtml