BBC has just said the budget amounts to a 7% drop in income and living standards over the next 2 years.
As usual when journalists and numbers get together this is so incomplete as to be of very limited use. Not a single assumption was stated, including whether or not that included or excluded inflation-matching pay rises.
>>I thought there'd be more tax rises for lower earners, but it appears not.
TBH I thought there would be more for higher earners. The minimum wage increase from c. £9.40-£10.42 is worth c.£1650p.a. for the lowest paid. Before any effect on benefits, the marginal tax rate on that will be 32% including NI if memory serves (handily increasing tax revenues at employers' expense, or, looking down the other end of the telescope, reducing the government subsidy of firms paying wages to low to live on.
The are so many moving parts, it's quite difficult to take in the whole picture.
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