Rising personal debt, global imbalances, excessive bank leveraging and reckless financial risk-taking all played a key part in the current economic meltdown. But there is another factor that has been largely ignored – the role of wages which I explore in the first Touchstone Extra – Unfair to Middling:  How Middle Income Britain’s Shrinking Wages [...]

Filed under: Earnings, Economics, Financial crisis, Middle Britain | 2 Comments »

In the ToUChstone pamphlet, Life in the Middle, I argued that the term ‘middle Britain’ has come to be commonly used by the political and media classes to describe a group that sits in the upper half of the income distribution. Indeed ‘middle Britain’ has increasingly become shorthand for the professional middle classes. Yet an [...]

Filed under: Earnings, Inequality, Middle Britain | 1 Comment »