Is your household contributing net tax ?

We all contribute to society together.
People who earn high salaries need someone to produce food, supply them with power and utilities and build their homes - just to meet their basic needs.

So the net tax debate is meaningless.

Apols, I mixed you up with the person I was replying to earlier

And yet pension age is moving out for younger people & will move out further
Younger people now are more likely to have an occupational pension. It might very well be that next generation will see the state pension go with only something like pension credit available in the same way UC is.

Hopefully that will mean a large sum available for redistribution towards the NHS, Education and Social care.

This is the problem right to buy was supposed to help with.

The flaw in the plan was not building replacement social housing

I am a bit shocked that 55-60% people aren't taxpayers.- Do you mean adults?
I have 4 DC- DH pays higher rate tax , I pay lower rate. Between us we pay a lot of tax- we stopped being able to claim child benefit when youngest was about 2 and rules changed. I was at home at the time so no child tax credit, childcare vouchers etc but they all had between 12- 16 hours free child care- term time only from either age of 3 or 4- whichever rules were at the time. DC now all teens or young adults. 1 is now a tax payer, 2 at uni , 1 at school.
They will all contribute to society/ pay tax for future pensioners etc.
But when my child benefit was taken away and we were survivng on 1 salary just over threshold I did get a bit bolshy about pensioners free bus passes/ TV licences/ winter fuel payments not being means tested!
But people with disabilities and their family carers deserve our support. Ultimately their carers save the country a lot of money.

With a new name at the top of it.

There’s also the big issue that up coming generations won’t be approaching old age in owned homes mortgage free/with low mortgages

So you start a thread by objecting to the vilification of disabled people, but then go on to vilify parents for being a drain on the country's coffers.....

talk about double standards!

There’s always a bonkers thread on a Sunday 😂

But removing the state pension is not the answer. You will remove the state pension in future from young people too and reduce political support for NI overall.

where have I said it’s the answer? I said state pension age has moved out despite no increase in healthy life expectancy.

DH had a lot of very expensive cancer treatment and we are now gearing up for expensive fertility treatment so it will be a very long time, if ever, before we are breaking even tax wise.

On the other hand we both do badly paid Useful Jobs - if we were all expected to be net contributors everyone's taxes would either need to pay me more or do without my skills in the public sector. I'm pretty good at my job and could definitely earn more in the private sector; I don't feel bad because I know you're getting a bargain having me do the work I do for such miserable pay.

Following on from the awful disabled people are a drain on society threads..

For those that have children, have you considered this?

Roughly 55-60% of all households aren't net contributors to tax.

That's not to say the households that don't make a net contribution are in receipt of benefits.

Having children entails the following:...

So instead of looking to blame those who are disabled for being a drain, look elsewhere, and better yet, instead of the disabled, pensioners, the working poor...we should look towards those are govern us, avoid tax.

So your answer is to shift blame in part to the children? Because they are in good company with the government and tax avoiders?

As other posters have commented.
The cost of education etc is the child's own benefit/ cost. They grow up and pay taxes.

YABVVU and guilty of what you say others posters are doing on other threads about Carers.

@qwertyqwertyqwertyqwerty Im not saying they should be doing that but it will happen.

im an older millennial but have paid contributions since I was 17 as I worked around school/uni. The contributions were meagre back then anyway which is often overlooked in the “I paid for it”.

I do not like the term 'politics of envy' as it is designed to shut down debate.

I accept that young people are facing great difficulties.

But removing the state pension is not the answer. You will remove the state pension in future from young people too and reduce political support for NI overall.

Yes, it'll be things like VAT - which, remember, is on things like utility bills, fuel etc and so adds up to quite a lot of money. Council tax is also a very unequal burden, yes big houses have a bigger bill but rarely commensurate with the wealth of the inhabitants (which is why the SNP promised to abolish it in 2007!).

Your average person is not bothered about the deficit ( well not until the city will not finance it any longer then they will )

If what you suggested were to happen the amount of services and welfare would be non existent. As you know the deficit is approx 100 billion pa that's a lot of cuts.

Electoral suicide

Pensions is a tricky one. Imho state pension should be universal. But it wasn't designed to be paying out to so many people for so long. All 2 of my grandparents claimed it for over 25 years each, one claimed it for 30 years and I have one who is still alive and at over 25 years of claiming. I'm grateful they had/have such long lives but multiply that over the country and it's not sustainable.

You/your family have never used the NHS ever?

Never driven on a road?

Never been for day out in the country?

Alert the papers!

I think there is a political limit to how far pension age can go at the present time.

A solution to the mess we are in does not lie in further cuts. Austerity put the country into something of a death spiral, continuing down that route will not help. Removing free prescriptions, for example, will cost more as people become reluctant to seek medication and conditions worsen.

It’s not the politics of envy to acknowledge that younger people have the odds stacked against them. Even if someone earns a very good salary they will be paying a lot of tax & wondering if they can buy a home & afford children. That’s where things have gone wrong imo.

The kind of attitude above is clueless and is about the politics of envy rather than common sense. You can't penalise people for working hard and contributing to their own private or occupational pensions by taking away their state pension (which they are also paying into!)

And yet pension age is moving out for younger people & will move out further. Prescriptions won’t be free to the over 60s in a decade, and healthy life expectancy hasn’t changed

Yes this is an excellent explanation of why you can not remove the universal state pension.

No, they wouldn't. Those 'best minds in the city' don't have the first clue about how society really works. They are good at what they do, but that doesn't make them good at what other people do.

If you look at how decisions were made during COVID, it was having blinkered privileged people making decisions too quickly that led to issues such as no DV provisions in the regulations.

We need civil servants to be civil servants, it is an extremely complicated area that involves thinking about society as a whole. We have had som many problems wince the government has started to cut the civil service so no one has time to think. The last thing we need are bankers messing about with government!

I will have a very decent income from my occupational pension because I have worked full time my whole career and pay £500 every month into it. If that means I'll lose my state pension then sod it! I'll take an easier life and stop paying so much of my hard earned income into my pension! Of course I'm also paying hundreds a month in NI towards the state pension.

The kind of attitude above is clueless and is about the politics of envy rather than common sense. You can't penalise people for working hard and contributing to their own private or occupational pensions by taking away their state pension (which they are also paying into!)

We're in net contributor territory and that's before you include tax such as VAT, which those just below net contributors are likely to pay a significant amount of. Plus the extra council tax.

What I would like to see is for us to stop borrowing and making this our kids problem;

*A proper balance sheet for the county made public.
*A realistic budget drawn up on what we bring in without borrowing!!!!
*Essential public service for the working prioritised so security, health and education. With fair salaries for those working in it.
*Whats left can be used for things like benefits.
*Companies can get tax breaks if they subscribe (with evidence) to private insurance schemes.
*Topping up allowed/encouraged e.g. schools can charge up to X amount to parents to fund extras on top of the money they receive from the government. Early morning/late night/weekend appointments for health/council etc at extra cost.
*A COVID tax on those we protected with the lockdowns so our kids who weren't at risk aren't paying it off!
*The only borrowing allowed is for things likely to bring in wealth e.g. if we borrowed to build stadium to host a World Cup that is capped at a percentage of the predicted extra tax it will bring in.
*Considerable increase in powers for the police to tackle the lawless element of society and prevent any backlash against issue like just stop oil.

I feel like in this country we have lost our focus on the average working family. We have labour on a race to the bottom and conservatives on a race to please the top 1%. No one is looking at the average family of two working parents with 1 or 2 kids. Someone could walk the general election if they avoided all the nonsense over things like gender ID and economic migrants instead focusing on how they can pay down the deficit without adding to the tax burden.