Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show last Sunday, Osborne boasted that his Wednesday budget would contain measures targeted to help "hardworking low and middle income" households.
This was politician's hype, of course. And as usual, the devil is in the detail. Because what Osborne failed to mention was that his "targeting" is really designed to favour the highest earners, while hammering low-income households!
Lining the pockets of the wealthy
So, much of the pre-budget polemics have been about the 50p tax rate, currently paid by the richest on their earnings over and above £150,000/yr. This is 12 times the income of someone working full-time on the minimum wage - and only 308,000 of the richest taxpayers reach that level! So they are certainly not the low or even middle-income earners Osborne claims to be targeting!
Two options were considered: Tory right-wingers demanded that this tax band should be scrapped completely, while others wanted the 50p rate cut to 45p. Either way, the richest taxpayers would get a bonus, ranging from £3.3bn to £6.6bn a year. And this, at a time when the livelihoods of millions are undermined by benefit cuts, supposedly to save public finances from the threat of bankruptcy due to the bankers' bailout!
But even these figures understate the benefits targeted at the very rich, proving there really is no such thing as "fair" taxation. While us workers must pay income tax and National Insurance on our entire incomes, the rich are under no such obligation. For instance, a common practice for them is to set up a bogus "company" and pay themselves through dividends. This way, they pay no National Insurance, just 20% tax on the income which remains in the bogus "company" and 36% maximum tax on their dividends, no matter how much they earn!
And the biggest winners are...
Of course, it's not hard to figure out who the big winners of Osborne's budget will be - companies and, more specifically, the biggest among them.
To start with, the 1% cut in corporation tax, down to 25%, which had been announced when the ConDems got in, is included in this budget. In and of itself, this represents a £2bn hand-out to the richest companies - which will be funded by more social expenditure cuts.
But there is more to come. Despite all the government's talk about clamping down on the estimated £70bn in tax avoidance by big business - legal or not - Osborne's budget will open another tax-avoiding loophole for them: profits made abroad by these companies and invested in tax haven subsidiaries, will no longer be taxed at UK rates! This is not a minor issue, given that, for instance, the big 4 high street banks have 1,649 tax haven subsidiaries between them! Who can tell how many billions in lost revenue this represents for public funds?
"Targeting" the working class
As to the working class, even before this budget's attacks, it was already "targeted".
For instance, after the January housing benefit cuts, many "low earning" households with children will now also lose Working Tax Credit, if they cannot find the 24 hours of work per week now required (instead of 16) to qualify. This really does "target" among the most hard-up of "hard-working" families, as Osborne promised, but in order to make them even more hard-up!
Meanwhile, public sector job cuts are set to continue: on top of 270,000 already cut, another 500,000 will go. Again, hundreds of thousands of mostly low-paid workers "targeted" - for the dole.
As if this wasn't enough, Osborne's budget will introduce local public sector pay rates, supposedly in line with local living costs. So for instance, someone working in suburban Birmingham would earn less, even if he lives in inner-Birmingham. It is an obvious nonsense, but not if Osborne's real "target " is the ability of public sector workers to use their collective strength to fight for decent wages. Divide and rule is the name of the game!
And in this, from Tory to Labour, there is cross-party consensus to make workers foot the bill for the capitalist crisis. Time and again, Miliband and his sidekick Liam Byrne, attack the ConDems for not being "tough enough" against the jobless!
But this does not mean that we have to take it all lying down. We still produce all the wealth in this society. Despite all its greed, and the tricks of its politicians, there is still very little the capitalist class could do if we, workers, decided to use our collective strength in order to regain the ground lost.