Are we heading into a major recession?

Yes but they are taxing the wrong people. Over 50s are hoarding all the wealth while young workers can't even afford a home. Older people need to start paying more tax to cover their own care.

At @MidnightMeltdown I agree they need to target wealth but look at the outrage with means testing WF. The care may end up getting funded by default though. I said on a recent thread that the IHT threshold should be lower. People want the NHS, free social care but they want low tax. You can't have it all.

The charity I work for is expecting an increase of £450000 due to the NI contributions increase. that is not sustainable and there are likely to be mass redundancies.

We do. They just don’t want to work.

im recruiting for a full time manual labour job. Not glamorous but above minimum wage and has opportunity for good career progression. If you work hard by 25 you can be on 30k plus a house and bills paid.

Tried so many avenues to get local young people. Job centre send them. They don’t turn up. I’m sure they tell the job centre we’ve rejected them. Offer them a job and they can’t get out of bed for 9am and don’t turn up. Again, I’m sure they tell the job centre a different story.

We fill the vacancies with immigrants with the right to work and semi retired post 55 women caught out by government pension.

I think we’re heading for a recession. Businesses haven’t yet felt the impact of the April taxes. I produce an item many of you will buy on a weekly basis. Our contract is set up with the supermarkets that they know all our input costs. Which are based on minimum wage by the way for every single worker. When they go up the price we get paid goes up. Works in the other direction too. I can’t see how food isn’t going to go up substantially in April. This is not an unusual situation.

We all complain that we thin everyone should be paid an amazing wage. But that’s not reflected in our shopping habits. We buy cheap tat from SHEIN and the like or imported Dutch pork. Not the British stuff that pays its workers well and looks after the environment (not perfectly yet I know but a flip site better than some countries we import from.)

Try reading?

The pp is correct. You might not notice as I take it you are a Labour voter

Why don't you address specific points? Scared of the facts?

How can I address something that's hypothetical? What facts?

If you want to be poorer, have more crime, more immigration, higher energy bills then I'm sure Labour will give you that.

My point was the Tories gave me all of this. What's confusing you about my posts? 😁

Hate to say it but we kind of need it for a reset on these crazy pieces in materials and labour.

The downside is, I know an awful lot of people will struggle before it gets better.

This is a major part of the problem with the add on costs of social care, pensions & healthcare. We are just going to keep
having to pay more tax.

Yes but they are taxing the wrong people. Over 50s are hoarding all the wealth while young workers can't even afford a home. Older people need to start paying more tax to cover their own care.

Why don't you address specific points? Scared of the facts?

If you want to be poorer, have more crime, more immigration, higher energy bills then I'm sure Labour will give you that.

Yes, Tories, but Labour could have ended it.

At least they didn't extend it.

*"In 2024, there are now 22 million people aged over 50 in England, equivalent to two in five of the total population and this is rapidly increasing: the population of people aged 50+ in England is projected to increase by 19.3% between 2024 and 2044 (an increase of 4.3 million people). The population aged 85+ is growing the fastest."

This is a major part of the problem with the add on costs of social care, pensions & healthcare. We are just going to keep
having to pay more tax.

Yes, Tories, but Labour could have ended it.

Not that I vote Tory or Labour. Both are shit.

I think all reform need to do is stop the stupid decisions made by the current and last government and then we would be in a better position.

I feel like i'm reading those buses declaring how much more money we will have for the NHS...

I think that they urgently need to increase the personal allowance for tax. Frozen tax thresholds, combined with high inflation has decimated disposable income and removed the incentive to work.

Agree, the Tories introduced this didn't they?

They can start by not taxing jobs like the labour party.

As each low wage migrant costs the UK 500k over their lifetime and only 22% of the circa two million immigrants who came to the UK over the past two years work that would a save huge amount of tax. I've heard it's about 34 billion a year tax loss for the immigrants who came in last year. So that would be 68 billion a year for the immigrants who came to the UK in the past two years. Going forward that would save a lot of money if we had tighter immigration policies and restricted it to immigrants with the skills we absolutely need or who can pay for themselves.

We currently have policies which prioritise net zero. For instance there are roads which could be built and have an economic pay back period of one year, in other countries around the world they would build those roads. They would be pro jobs and pro growth. In the UK we don't build that road. We pick anti growth policies. We make ourselves poorer.

We have planning policies that have blocked multi billion pound investments in film studios, data centres. We have subsidised north sea wind farms where the majority of new jobs created are in Denmark and France rather than the UK.

We are paying Mauritius £9bn to gift them the Chagos islands 2000 kilometres away from Mauritius against the will of the Chagossians but for the benefit of Keir Starmers mates.

I think all reform need to do is stop the stupid decisions made by the current and last government and then we would be in a better position.

I think that they urgently need to increase the personal allowance for tax. Frozen tax thresholds, combined with high inflation has decimated disposable income and removed the incentive to work.

People with kids are often better off not working, and higher earners are reducing hours to stay under tax thresholds.

@wipeywipe this is the issue for Reeves, Starmer and everyone pretty much from CBI press release. January looked particularly weak on jobs market which is after this report

Private sector firms expect activity to fall in the three months to March (weighted balance of -24%), according to the CBI’s latest Growth Indicator. Expectations are now at their weakest in over two years.
This pessimism was shared across all sub-sectors. Business volumes in the services sector are anticipated to decline (-18%), driven by predicted falls in both business and professional services (-13%) and consumer services (-37%). Distribution sales are expected to fall steeply (-35%), and manufacturers also anticipate output to fall (-31%), with expectations at their weakest since May 2020.
2020 was the pandemic so not great to be back there

What do posters think any party can do to fix it? How do you fix the productivity issue? the implications of an ageing population? wage stagnation? a distorted housing market? services starved of investment?

Who will you blame for Austerity 2.0 in March? Anyone but labour I presume!

@HauntedBungalow take a look at private sector figures post GE and budget

It'll show you which ones are shrinking

Growth stalled and the private sector started decreasing with job losses due to those policies

Our productivity has been crap for years?

@EasternStandard how did the Tory budget help?

"Shame Jeremy Corbyn didn't support remain isn't it."

Shame Cameron & Osborne spun out austerity for years.
Shame Cameron called a Referendum to keep the headbangers in his party quiet. That worked well.
Shame Johnson & Gove collaborated with Vote Leave.
Shame Theresa May's Mansion House speech & redlines propelled us towards a hard Brexit.
Shame Johnson and Frost's crappy deal was signed.

I didn't like Corbyn and didn't vote for him but he wasn't the biggest problem by a long way.

Now Farage - who welcomed Truss's budget as the first great Conservative budget - will play That's Not My Brexit.

Mine was, and many others were just getting back on their feet after covid. But we mustn't let facts get in the way of an ideology!
You could start with Astazeneca.

I'm trying to think of businesses that were successful under the tories.