If the economy needs sacrifices, it will be workers who are thrown to the wolves

theguardian.com:

We are back in the thieving world of Fred “the Shred” Goodwin and Northern Rock. The sole difference from 2008 is that instead of the state expecting ordinary people to bail out failed banks, it is expecting them to take pay cuts to protect bosses’ bonuses. The war against inflation in the 2020s, like the war against financial collapse in the noughties, must be fought by those least able to fight it.

Nowhere in the speeches of the prime minister, chancellor or governor of the Bank of England is there a hint that a national emergency demands equality of sacrifice. They do not repeat David Cameron’s line that “we’re all in this together”. As millions sink down, all they say is that it is their patriotic duty to protect the privileged by sinking deeper. Or, as a writer plucked from the Victorian age explained to Daily Telegraphreaders last week, the rewards of the rich are “natural and inevitable” but the “clamour” of workers for pay rises is “nothing but shameful opportunism”.

The hopes of working-class voters that Brexit would raise wages by removing the competition from EU workers have proved false. Unemployment is as low as it has been for 50 years. Employers are desperate to fill vacancies. Despite the most favourable of circumstances, average pay rose by just 4.2% between January and March – far behind inflation, which is now at 9% and heading higher. Averages conceal as much as they reveal, however, and the Resolution Foundation found that bonuses in the financial services sectorwere running at a “red-hot” rate of 30% a year. That is still not fast enough for the City, which is pushing the government to remove all limits on the rewards they can dole out. Meanwhile in the corporate boardroom, chief executives’