How bad will the Budget be?

Frankly the notion that real terms pay has not been cut in the public sector is totally untrue. Remember all those pay freezes? They are real terms pay cuts unless you have zero inflation which we never have had. And below inflation increases are also real terms pay cuts.

This has resulted in a recruitment and retention crisis with real terms pay - ask TSM - some 20 percent lower than in 2010. Labour has recognised what you and others fail to. That this had to be reversed, though it cannot be done all in one go. 

The graph you post is dishonest since it does not measure real terms pay by allowing for inflation.

Would you therefore support the outsourcing of government administration to the private sector?

Well most businesses are of course not going to be able to just absorb the increased NI burden without in some way adjusting downwards their operating costs or upwards their income streams. These costs will therefore be borne by lower pay rises for employees, lower recruitment levels, or higher prices for consumers, or some combination thereof. There is no such thing as a tax raid on businesses that does not impact upon the rest of us, at least indirectly.

That said, with underpaid public sector workers increasingly walking away, public services barely functional, there was a chronic need for more public investment and this does not come without costs. The big three tax revenue streams are VAT, Income Tax and NI. It is difficult to raise large extra sums without using at least one of these, so targeting employers from Labour's perspective looks like the least bad option. Any hit to workers from doing this will be a lot less obvious on their pay slips than if employees NI had been increased. In other words, though working people will still be paying the price in the long run, Labour are banking on many more of them not actually noticing. Typical Labour centrist cynicism.

But since the money had to be raised somehow, how else could the £25 billion resulting from this increase have been raised? What alternatives were there? And any suggestions that giving the poor a damned good kicking instead - especially the working ones - would not be persuasive, as this would do more harm than the NI increase is likely to do to those least able to afford it.

In my view there was certainly more scope for wealth taxes on the super rich, particularly on immoveable assets like property or land which cannot be shifted abroad or physically hidden. This might have raised a few billion but nowhere near the £25 billion level. So what other alternatives could there have been? A land value tax might well have raised some of it. There was definitely scope for windfall taxes in a few areas but such taxes are one offs by their nature and best used to fund one off expenditures, eg post office scandal compensation. Or one off infrastructure expenditures. That sort of thing. Taxing dividend income at the same rate as taxes on earned incomes would have raised a bit. Because there is a loophole there that can readily be exploited. I know someone who a few years back earned a six figure sum from her own business. But she paid herself minimum wage and took most of her income in the form of a dividend, thereby paying much less tax than you or I would if we had a similar but salaried income.

Had some of these things been done, we could at least have hit employers less hard with NI contributions, by raising some of the monies required in these other ways.

Point of order:

For the record, despite being a "Righty" (which I am) I have agreed with both mrbenn and andrewbrown in this thread because they are correct in this instance.

That's debate.

As you were.

Then after the attack on landlords they are going to suffer buyers regret..