AIBU to want spending cuts rather than more tax rises?

The reason why bankers get paid a lot is that they literally have the hand in the cash till, not that they are more intelligent. Jesus wept

Let me guess you aren't high earner?

Universal Credit quarterly statistics, 29 April 2013 to 12 February 2026 - GOV.UK

• There were 3.1 million people on Universal Credit in any employment (PAYE employment or self-employment) in January 2026, which was 37.8% of all people on Universal Credit. Comparatively, in January 2025 there were 3.2 million people on Universal Credit in any employment, which was 43.3% of all people on Universal Credit

Excuse-moi, 37.8%, not 30%, but it's any employment, not FT. I've seen some stats that less than 40% of those UC claimants who work at all, work FT, but can't find the link, so feel free to ignore.

I also wonder how many UC claimants work cash in hand, declare less income and get top ups.

In the UK, a child is considered to be living in poverty if they live in a household with an income below 60% of the national average (median) income.

This means that it is statistically impossible to lift all children out of poverty.

It’s not statistically impossible if no household has an income of less than 60% of the median - so if the median is £10k, everyone’s household income is more than £6k. (Making these figures up for ease of maths)

I think it’s a rubbish definition of poverty, though, and think we should concentrate on absolute poverty.

You need to introduce communism then - median is moving based on income, there always will be some household with less than xxx percent of median.

100% agree about changing definition based on absolute value.

If it were me
ban cousin marriage - there must be some savings there on fewer sen kids
2 child benefit cap
why are all kids getting fsm on uc now?(and side issue what happened to free breakfast clubs?!!)
cut benefits to/review those on pip for ‘just’ asd or adhd.

in terms of finding for right to choose- it is useful for asd/adhd diagnosis BUT providers AND nhs need to make clearer at referral that you are unlikely to get adhd diagnosis if school see no issues.

A lot of issues are being caused by nhs delays in diagnosis.

ban tictoc.

i would spend on adverts/encouragements re having kids younger (to reduce rates of sen) reduce drinking in pregnancy (estamated 5% kids have fasd)

i thought dc1 had adhd from before 4 - if we’d had diagnosis/treatment before 13 perhaps we wouldnt have had more dc…
Part of that would be being offered genetic testing. Because also another few relatives have adhd and again earlier diagnosis may have had fewer kids.
Personally i would raise the % added to pensions from standard 25% because we want people to invest. As it is a standard rte tax payer just pays the tax later as they get the state pension using up personal allowance. (And also some people now will have pension taken by iht.

Yes of course I expect oncologists to have higher IQ overall than people on NMW jobs. But I also want to live in a society where my bins get emptied, streets swept, shelves stacked etc etc. And these wages are so low that these people can then claim UC. I'm not saying every job should be paid the same. My argument has been that rather than swingeing benefits cuts of the level advocated here we should look to people generating millions -largely paying capital gains tax rather than income tax. I'm talking about private equity, hedge funds etc. not oncologists most of whom are not earning millions.

yes and India has massive inequality problems. I went to Mumbai a few years ago, people literally stepping over fly covered people covered in faeces in the street.

That's interesting so would simply raising the tax thresholds help with that ?

Even if all higher earners are more skilled and more intelligent, as a society we need all sorts of jobs to be completed. We need both doctors and hospital porters and cleaners. We all need a certain amount left over after tax to be able to pay housing, bills, food etc. If we cut benefits rather than seek tax from very rich people, the people earning little won't have enough to live on and have a good life.

There are many reasons why people are earning nmw and many could have been in high IQ jobs.

However where I am many are on just above the nmw and they don't want pay rises because it affects their benefits uc.

I think surpressing the tax thresholds has been a bad move in many ways.

People who work in PE and HFs are very smart

@Greaded - just to give you full info in case it changes your choices, you do still get some serious tax wins as a standard rate payer:

1.You get to take 25% of your personal pension tax-free. Which by itself gives you a 5% tax discount on your personal pension, paying 15% income tax instead of 20% income tax even after you get state pension

2.If you do retire early and use your personal pension to bridge the gap, then you'll obviously have your tax-free allowance. Which brings your effective tax rate even lower. If you take £20k out of your pension during those bridging years, with the tax free lump sum and personal allowance you'll pay less than £700 tax. That's a total tax rate of 3.5% which is a huge saving on the 20% you didn't pay earlier!

3.You don't pay NI on pension income (although it's possible that might change, unfortunately). That saves you another 8% if you're a basic rate payer.

Just to give a worked example (ignoring inflation and growth for simplicity - since you get those in either ISA or pension), imagine you saved up £100,000 for your later years, whilst working as a basic rate tax payer

If you don't put it in your pension
then you pay 20% income rax + 8% NI. You pay £28,000 tax

If you do put it in your pension
Let's assume you use it from aged 65, bridging with £20k per year until state pension age, so in those 2 years you'll use up £40k but only pay £1400 tax

Then the remaining £80k you take flexibly over the next 20 years to top up your stare pension. You're paying 15% income tax and no NI, so you end up paying £12k.

The difference
By putting that £100k in your pension, you've only paid a total of £13.2k on it, instead of £28k. You've paid less than half the amount of tax due to saving it in your pension!

You'll also find that this metric is calculated after housing and childcare costs are taken out. If it's the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report you're thinking of, their poverty line in absolute terms worked out at around £790 a week after housing and childcare for a couple with two children, and about £624 a week for a single parent with two children. I had considerably less than £624 a week left as a single parent earning over the mythical £100k once rent and nursery fees had been paid lol.

Highest tax take as a proportion of GDP since the late 1940s, when we were rebuilding after the devastation of WW2.

So what? Tax take as a proportion of GDP in Denmark is 46.9%, in France it is 45% whereas in the UK it's only 37.7%. If we want public services at European levels we need to be taxed at European levels.

ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally

They also work much, much harder than a care worker.

I know this, because I've seen both jobs up-close.

This thread has been a bit of an eye-opener for how little some people actually know, whilst still having huge resentment and strong opinions that someone else must pay more.

Higher income workers (above about £70k) are already paying the same amount of tax as they would on that income in a Nordic country - and getting much less access to poorer public services than they would in those countries.

It's UK lower and middle income earners who are paying far less tax than in other European countries.

If you want a European system, that's where tax needs to increase: basic rate income tax.

Yes, who’s up for that?

PE as in private equity, or physical education?

I think it's fair to say they're very different jobs, and difficult in very different ways. I work in finance consulting in the City. At the peak of the season, some of my weeks are genuinely 80 to 90 hours, and 70ish isn't unusual otherwise. There are mornings when I feel like I need 15 minutes just to upload the basic information about who I am and what I am doing here back into my brain.

The salary is good, obviously, although it becomes considerably more mainstream when you calculate the effective post tax hourly rate.

But when I was younger, fitter and considerably less mentally fried (uni times) I also spent time caring for a family member who had very limited mobility and cognitive function. It was someone I loved deeply and genuinely wanted to care for, and it was still extraordinarily hard work.

If the two jobs paid the same, I'd choose my current job without hesitation.

It sounds a better plan than anyone else has come up with.

I think true levels of redistribution are obfuscated in this country.

Even the headline amount is high: someone in the top decile earning 10 times more than someone in the bottom decile ends up with just 3 times more after redistribution.

But that ignores so much of the hidden redistribution eg social tarifs, council tax discounts, free prescriptions (and much more), as well as loss of benefits for higher earners such as childcare subsidy.

I'd like to see the final amount. But I'm pretty sure it will always be hidden away. I think it would be rather shocking.

DH and I are middle earners (total household income around 90k)

Are you kidding? With a total household income around £90K you are in the top 5% of households. Median household income is about £38,000 per year.