Personal Finance and Investing

The UK is a very unequal country, and this extreme inequality is the result of major changes in the income distribution over the last thirty-five years, in particular large increases in inequality under the Thatcher government in the 1980s At the same time, according to recent data from the British Social Attitudes survey, three-quarters of people in the UK believe that the gap between rich and poor in the UK is too high.

But would a more equal distribution of income reduce the level of efficiency in the economy and hence make us worse off overall?

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‘Almost 4bn NS&I certificates issued’ Brits have taken advantage of the National Savings & Investment NS&I re-launch as £3.8 billion worth of certificates have been issued. Read more…

How does anyone manage to live on social security benefits? On Tuesday, I noted that the average weekly payment to someone receiving Incapacity Benefit or Severe Disablement Allowance was £96.64 that is being replaced by Employment and Support Allowance, where the average weekly payment is £81.71.

Yesterday, the Department for Work and Pensions published their annual Abstract of Statistics for Benefits, National Insurance Contributions, and Indices of Prices and Earnings. The most useful information in this book is in the pages detailing benefit uprating since the war each increase, together with what percentage of average earnings that represented. T Read more…

Is Don Draper on the file?

Im sure that youve noticed already, but our friends at the Business Development Bank of Canada have been spending big sums on TV and airport advertising of late. Whats fascinating about that is the timing of this new awareness campaign.

Between 2006 and 2009, BDC cut its advertising budget by 28%, from $1.98 million in 2006 to $1.43 million in fiscal 2009 . During that same period, BDC grew its loan book by $3 billion, or 36.7%. It is safe to argue that BDCs advertising had no impact on its business development activities: how many firms can cut ad spend by 28% and sell 37% more product?

Then, starting in the summer of 2009 , BDC more than doubled its advertising spend.

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