ABSTRACT
Thus, a duo of oligarchs, who only recently were giants of global capitalism, Oleg Deripaska and Alisher Usmanov, have faced demands from bank creditors to hand over substantial assets and thus, ‘the crunch’ is coming to the very top end of the income and wealth spectrum. The news is also not good for those in low paid, insecure jobs where the outlook consists of below-inflation pay rises and possible redundancy but for those living on welfare benefits or dependent on a state pension the news is relatively good. State-funding income will rise in line with the retail prices index or an adapted measure called the Rossi index for September 2008 and both inflation measures have been rising at a faster rate than has been seen since the early 1990s. The RPI, which determines increases in child benefit, incapacity benefit, disability allowance and state pensions, is up 5 per cent and income-related benefits (such as housing benefit, income support and jobseeker’s allowance) should be increased by the 6.3 per cent increment in the Rossi index. What this all means is that after many years of receiving a smaller and smaller share of the national cake, those who depend on the state for their income will actually receive bigger pay rises than almost anyone else – and their share of national income will also increase.
