title: Economy
layout: policy published: true
What policies should we propose to maintain a competitive economy that provides full employment?
The minimum wage should be set to the same value as the living wage (currently £14,458.50 based on 252 working days of 7.5 hours per day at £7.65), and automatically adjusted in line with that figure.
In order to stimulate adoption of the living wage, and act as a good example, all public sector organisations and National Infrastructure Organisations will be required to pay employees at least a living wage.
All public sector organizations will have to use open source software and services where available. Proprietary software that is currently in use should be examined for open source alternatives. A timeline should be created and made public to show how and when the body will convert to this alternative in a reasonable period of time. This is to cut down on public sector costs and increase our society's participation in the open source culture.
Close down all tax havens under British jurisdiction. This means reforming tax rules in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and others. information to the public in a similar manner as the property price paid data set and make it a legal requirement to register land option agreements, transactions and prices."
We aim to reduce over-reliance on credit ratings whilst at the same time improving the quality of the rating process.
We will establish a national monitoring body to examine the work of Ratings Agencies in the United Kingdom.
We will force Credit Rating Agencies to be more transparent about their work and their ratings processes.
We will open up the market for competition with Credit Rating Agencies, as well as introduce a ban on expansion for the “Big Three,” Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch. We should also have a public or non-profit Credit Rating Agency.
We will also make Ratings Agencies legally liable for their actions.
Note that the first few changes here are not really changes, but are to do with my slightly dodgy editor and how it behaves with old forks. @andrewdwilliams's changes are all in the last section.
@anilliams - about 9 years ago
If you're wondering why exactly this is necessary, or what exactly this is about, here's some bits for folks to examine.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-releaseIP-13-555en.htm http://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/banks/credit-rating-agencies-overview# http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2011/07/what-the-ratings-agencies-really-do-liars-lexicon-support-uplift/ http://www.accountingweb.com/article/credit-rating-agency-performance-needs-improvement/220749
The best link for people with not much time on their hands, is probably to this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kib-oqkKAk0
EDIT: Shortly after posting this, I found something rather brilliant. The rest of my points still stand, but I've found something strongly in-line with the image OpenPolitics is trying to represent. Basically explained in this TEDx video (mind the accent) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x01tacqJUBA.
This man, Dorian Credé, founded Wikirating, which is a "free, collaborative platform for credit ratings." You can read a bit about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikirating.
But most importantly, here's the site its self - http://www.wikirating.org/. Check it out. Interestingly, we have a rating of BB-. According to the big three, we've got either AAA, Aa1 or AA+. Which one is more realistic?
The OpenPolitics Manifesto
@andrewdwilliams - about 9 years ago
A follow on from my previous pull request on credit default swaps and credit ratings agencies. A few sensible suggestions to regulate credit ratings agencies that played their fair part in the recent financial crises. Dodgy ratings can make debt appear to be worth more than it really is, and reliance on ratings from what are essentially private, profit-oriented companies, can decide how markets function and also how much debt is worth.