AIBU to want spending cuts rather than more tax rises?

That's because so many people don't work.

The median annual salary for full-time employees in the UK is approximately £39,039, so with 2 full-time workers they are pretty much bang in the middle.

No. They are not "pretty much bang in the middle". They are in the top 5% for household income.

I think prescriptions etc are really just noise in the grand scheme of things. The three huge issues are housing (the gap between private and public / subsidised) childcare and the ridiculous tax/benefit cliffs in the progressive tax system. The way those three interact in the UK is honestly scandalous by international standards. It creates completely perverse incentives and, unsurprisingly, women tend to get affected by it the most.

I suggest we stop spending billions on illegal immigrants for a start.

That is a good chart. I also liked the similar ones in a link upthread which showed the impact of the budget on different income deciles, represented the same way. Illuminating!

I've also seen a great chart which shows the tax contribution at each income level as a line graph, which has a line for the UK and a line for various EU countries. The UK one is by far the steepest! I can't find it just now though.

As pp says that shows his many households only have one person working. Instead of ramping up taxes continuously perhaps look at getting people into work.

My dh on his own makes £150k. Not everyone can bring in millions of business into the firm.

"The median annual salary for full-time employees in the UK is £39,039, according to official Office for National Statistics (ONS) data. 1]

Key Earnings Breakdown

• Full-time median annual pay: £39,039 (approx. £2,635 per month after tax).
• All employees median annual pay: £32,890 (includes part-time workers).
• Mean (average) gross annual salary: £40,269 for all employees.

The latest HMRC top 5% income threshold is £93700"

Average salary (as above from ONS) is 40k. 2 adults each earning average salary is 80k, which is pretty close to 90k.
Possibly I should have written as middle earnings, rather than middle households income, to account for single income households, pensioners etc.

But if we are, according to your claim, top 5%, doesn't that make it even more ridiculous that we can't afford any luxuries.

Yes, that is very true.

I meant to say: well done for keeping working as a £100k+ single parent with nursery age children. That's almost impossible to manage, with the huge tax and benefit penalties! Hope it's paid off long term - but seriously, huge respect.

We have two options to make it work

• We need to ensure that work pays enough to live on. Increasing wages will lead to higher inflation
• Or ensure that housing is affordable enough for NMW worker to live on. To do this we need a massive housebuilding of no frills properties, predominantly flats, but without ridiculous leasehold charges. We live on island, there are land restrictions to have everyone living in houses. European urban population all live in flats, there is significant change of mindset needed here.

In order to do proper housebuilding we need to have money and this should come from cutting benefits bill, so people are forced to work, pay taxes and grow economy. Housebuilding itself will generate more jobs.

What you are suggesting is to continue propping people with subsidies, even those who can but chose not to work, whilst continuing taxing productive population into oblivion.

And also recognise that having a non-worker in the household brings significant savings and household resilience - none of which is taxed, since it's in-kind rather than financial.

So again @NowSober be grateful for the dual income households subsidising you to have a nicer life.

Ooh,you found it! Thanks! I did indeed mean that bottom left one.

That bottom middle one is sobering. And does certainly reflect what we're all feeling.

And let's not make it lifetime tenancy at these highly subsidised rates - with the tenancy sometimes even passed on to the next generation! There are huge levels of unfairness in how the benefits system works.

Social housing should be short-term, and targetted where it's most needed / will save the state on subsidising private housing.

So, what happens to girls with inattentive ADHD, who sit quietly in class; but in fact can’t pay attention for very long, are daydreaming and learning very little?

It’s still a disability, causing them problems with executive functioning, which can lead to self harming, even if it doesn’t bother the school at all?

Besides which, schools are not qualified to diagnose other specific learning difficulties that go with it, like dyslexia, dyspraxia, poor working memory, etc; which cause additional problems with learning?

That sounds like a huge amount? Poverty line is over 3k per month after rent/mortgage and childcare? DH and my net income is around 5k per month. Nearly 2k is mortgage, childcare for 1 part-time place was nearly 1k. Leaving 2k for everything else, putting us way below the 3k poverty line, despite being told by another poster we were 'top 5%'?

Yes they’re useful. The issue is even after huge hikes in the first budget, then second, people just demand more taxes as the go to.

There’s not really a limit to how much that will be seen as the fix.

If you cut all foreign aid, it'll impact negatively on already unstable parts of the world, and foster conflict and its resulting consequences ( displaced populations, famine ,war etc...) . It might not be something you care about because you're all nice and comfy in your first world country where you can live your life as you please and comment freely on social media BUT it will mean more refugees ( the horror!) , an impact on food imports and potentially a security issue for the UK. Ah, if only everything you laid out could be as simple as you think ...

How much are we spending? You might be onto something...

We are now in terminal decline. Only radical fiscal discipline (the like of which can only be dished out by the IMF) will save us.

Terminal? Sounds serious...😐

This is the idea of Foreign Aid.

Buying security sounds like a good idea, but does it work?

So many of the places it goes to are corrupt and there are no guarantees that’s it’s actually used as intended and it does not disappear into someone pockets, or worse, it’s not used against our interests.