The UK has borrowed too much money, has a massive debt - £105 billion goes on paying our debt interest

What % of our taxes is being spent on civil service defined benefit pensions? (Most of whom had the option to retire before 60, meaning they could claim for more years than they actually paid in.)
That is a huge huge cost that needs to be rectified. If we are to improve social care for the entire ageing population, in the current economic situation, we can’t be spending such a huge amount of tax receipts on a coddled minority any longer.

The current OAPs were perfectly happy to watch entire generations priced out of housing and forced into private rentals. They were quite happy to watch us to be forced through the stress of having to move every couple of years and in my case finally forced out of the region I worked and lived in. Why should that generation be spared any more of the burden that they are causing?

Life isn’t fair. As someone who’s paid all their life I’m all for it.

They have high levels of taxation though.

That leads to other consequences. For example if you tax people more they have less money to spend on houses, so house prices are lower.

The problem with the UK is we have built up structural imbalances over many years of misguided policy, so if we are going to undo those balances it is going to have a severe impact on some sections of the economy.

For example house prices have built up to unaffordable levels based on incomes (mainly because they have been undertaxed as an asset, leading to significant asset inflation as the middle class pile into property). We can tax incomes harder to pay for better services, but that will have a severe impact on house prices as they will become (even more) unaffordable as peoples incomes shrink.

Undoing structural imbalances involves some sections of the voting public undergoing a lot of pain, and it is not clear yet that we are ready for that.

higher tax isn’t a bad thing. Properly funded services aren’t a bad thing
well educated and well paid teachers, doctors, nurses, council staff, social workers. None of that is bad.
they pay tax, they spend money which brings in more tax.

trickle down economics increases personal savings for the wealthy, it doesn’t build a prosperous economy. Giving poorer people money, it gets spent which creates jobs, and more taxes in.

Rented property whether that's council, social housing or large professional companies are still owned. How you decide which ones need to be taxed and which don't?

That’s not fair.

Why should someone who has paid all their life need to pay more, but someone who has had the benefit of lower rent be exempt?

Hunt was a complete disaster as Health Secretary and as Chancellor.

He failed to invest in the NHS. He imposed an unworkable pay and conditions deal on the junior doctors that resulted in them leaving the UK in droves to go and work in Australia, Canada and elsewhere. He did nothing at all about social care other than let it deteriorate. All of his "savings" are coming back to bite the country now in the form of lost production, lost export income and lost taxes. Getting people off waiting lists would have brought benefits equivalent to £73 billion between 2023 and 2027, according to research from IPPR and LCP Health Analytics, but insted waiting lists contiued to grow and Hunt (now as Chancellor) told NHS managers that balancing the books was more important than treating patients.

Nobody will pay the tax on social housing, it would apply only to individually owned property. It could be deferred for asset rich, cash poor pensioners so it was collected from their estate after they die.

Because then the question of "ownership" comes to the fore.

At the moment we have a notional value of these "assets", once we try to actually sell them everyone will want them back.

Other countries, particularly in northern Europe, manage to have similar levels of debt whilst maintaining high levels of investment in infrastructure and key public services (education, police, health). This makes our government's contention that it simply isn't possible to spend adequately on these things - that in fact we should be spending even less - rather questionable.

No they don't pay a bedroom tax. It's misunderstood, people who claim benefits to help pay rent are penalized if the property is larger than they need. However people of state pension age are exempt.

Google the debt levels of other countries internationally. We are somewhere in the middle.

It’s clearly not high enough if people prefer to pay it instead of moving.

That’s a very short sighted view. Foreign aid gives the UK soft power and in these times soft power is essential in my opinion. Help improve the lives in other countries through schemes etc people are less likely to look to leave and search for a better way of life. It’s not just a case of protect our own, yes I think some schemes are probably not needed and take the piss and there should be a review but cutting foreign aid is bad in my opinion

The short explanation is you can borrow in two ways. One is repayment in assets you don't have an unlimited supply of. For example gold. Countries generally don't do this.

A country which borrows in its own currency can never go bankrupt as it can print as much as it wants. However what it can do is trash the value of the currency through overborrowing and overprinting, and stop any new borrowing taking place.

If a country trashes its currency then there are generally serious consequences, especially in countries like the UK which is very globalised. All imports would suddenly become hugely expensive and no one would be able to buy anything that was produced abroad. Which is a lot of stuff.

Who owns the debt is kind of interesting. In the US and the UK it is largely ourselves, that is pension funds for example.

What this means is that borrowing is effectively a transfer of wealth/productivity from the young to the old. So taxing our children in order to pay for lavish retirement lifestyles. There is a limit to how much this can continue, and we are reaching that limit. Fortunately for the old at the moment the young haven't quite joined up the dots. Maybe one day they will.

They pay a bedroom tax I believe if they have more rooms than they need.

Are going to make council tenants move?

Do we as a "Government" lend money to other countries?

Explination.

The tax burden needs to be spread more. You can't keep increasing taxes on workers (NIC, student loans, workplace pensions) but leave "unearned" income unchanged for decades, i.e. pensions, rents, interest, etc.

If we are to have any tax rises, they need to be across the board as the base line, i.e. an extra percent or two on income tax or VAT, so that the burden is spread as wide as possible.

Though I'd prefer to see more targeted on unearned income, i.e. reducing the tax free interest allowance, reducing/scrapping the personal savings allowance, reducing ISA allowances/exemptions, a new, higher income tax rate on rental income, (or bring rental income into the scope of NIC), etc.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/102-trillion-of-global-debt-in-2024/

Image of world debt in 2024 - for those asking.

The problem is shrinking working population - already high taxes and aging population so higher medical costs.

Auserty - drastically cutting services did economic harm. Governments can and do spend their ways of our rescessions - so cuts will hurt the economy.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/27/austerity-policies-do-more-harm-than-good-imf-study-concludes

It turns out, however, that the cost could be large – much larger than the benefit. The reason is that, to get to a lower debt level, taxes that distort economic behaviour need to be raised temporarily or productive spending needs to be cut – or both. The costs of the tax increases or expenditure cuts required to bring down the debt may be much larger than the reduced crisis risk engendered by the lower debt.”
The economists rejected the notion that austerity could be good for growth by boosting the confidence of the private sector to invest. It said that in practice, “episodes of fiscal consolidation have been followed, on average, by drops rather than by expansions in output. On average, a consolidation of 1% of GDP increases the long-term unemployment rate by 0.6 percentage points.”
McDonnell said: “The International Monetary Fund has summarised what a growing consensus among economists across the globe now think, that Osborne-style austerity economics increases inequality and instability, and undermines growth.

I don't think there are any easy answers to be had - we are in too much debt - we don't seem able to get growth ( I've seen lack of investment and high energy costs cited for that).

Maybe also a one off "bail out levy" on bank savings balances as done by Cyprus in 2012 - 6.75% for those with less than 100,000 Euros and 9.9% for those with more! We're nowhere near that kind of extreme necessity yet, but unless RR can get things under control and find sustainable ways to reduce the deficit, it's only a matter of time when something like that will have to be considered if the deficit continues to grow and our international credit rating falls meaning interest is higher (if anyone would lend!).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21814325

Other countries owe us 5300 million whilst we owe 2800 so its not like we're in minus. It's just how it works, we are receiving interest on what they owe.

Lots of people talk about how no one wants to be taxed more, but I’m just not sure that’s true.

I’d be happy to pay more income tax if it means better public services as I spend quite a lot of money having to compensate for their current sorry state. Lots of my friends - ranging from NMW earners to HRT payers agree.

What we all despise is politicians (of all parties) treating us like idiots and pretending they’re cutting taxes while actually introducing a load of stealth taxes that often have a disproportionate impact on those who can least afford them.