I'm at a loss - why are the LD's being punished and who is voting Tory?

Burro

Most governments since 1974, both Labour and Conservative, have run structural deficits. Running a deficit is neither rare or even necessarily harmful.

spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdEdNdWlxdGhJVHE1WE9OYlVQazZUcWc&hl=en#gid=2

We, as a country, are spending far more on public services than we are collecting through taxation

As many countries have for decades. The 'deficit crisis' was not caused by too much public spending, but by the financial crisis and recession (and subsequent loss of tax receipts).

and this cannot go on idefinitely without seriously effecting future generations.

Our debt as percentage of GDP is historically very low. We are not amassing some huge unprecedented debt, as you seem to imply. Our problem is a high deficit, not debt, which is causing us to pay high interest payments which are wasteful. The solution to this problem is economic growth and making the people who caused this crisis pay for it - not he public.

ttosca - the fact of our structural deficit is not a Tory narrative. Labour, who presided over the forming of it, had belatedly recognised the problem at the time of the last election and were planning their own substantial cuts to public spending. We, as a country, are spending far more on public services than we are collecting through taxation and this cannot go on idefinitely without seriously effecting future generations.

They are being punished because there appears to a lot of people who believe that the Government can spend more than it collects in perpetuity or that if we ignore that the country has an enormous structural budget deficit then it will just go away.

What utter nonsense. You appear to have bought in to the Tory narrative hook, like, and sinker.

I have not read the whole of the thread but here is my take on the original post as an ex LD voter.
I am extremely angry with them because they have abandoned any principles that they had - and all for what? The only thing that they seem to have achieved from this process is to make Clegg et. al. feel more important than they did before. Does anyone really take them politically seriously? Can anyone point to any policy of this coalition and seriously say that policy x is a LD policy? They are in government without being in power and this has alienated their core vote. In addition, what Clegg has done over the student fees is unforgiveable, a complete betrayal, and I for one will raise a glass when the good people of Sheffield dispatch him to obscurity at the next election.
It used to be possible to believe that a LD govenment would be different in someway, indeed this was their USP. Voters like me have nowhere to go now - an irresponsible, unapologetic, uncomprehending Labour party who have left us with a massive structural deficit, lapdog LDs drunk on their own self importance whilst achieving nothing progressive, and Conservatives rushing through a lot of ideologically driven change on the back of an economic crisis. Cameron and Osbourne must piss themselves laughing everytime he thinks about the way things have turned out.
Where does a progressive voter like myself go?

I know all that knittedbreast (are you related to knitteduterus I met at antenatal classes?) - but the point is people know how the Tories sort out finances and they vote for them to do it in the usual Tory style. Mainly because they know what the Tories stand for but after 13 years of New Labour and now the wishy washy leadership of Ed Miliband it's less clear how Labour would deal with the current problems - they don't have a reputation for being honest about unpopular but necessary decisions - and they're not saying anything useful even now - sidestepping what cut they would make etc which contributed to the Tories holding steady in England. I don't vote Tory but I understand people voting for something which offers clear solutions when no-one is giving an alternative. And that seems to be the pattern in recent administrations.

labour mismanage money and then the tories sort it out again?

by selling off council houses?
by denationalising our services thus getting rid of an income that would have helped plough money into gov?
by wanting rid of the minimum wage?
by wanting to privatise the nhs? Thus eventually creating health insurance policies that will exclude some people from insurance all together?

Tories look after business, but people are not business they are people and capitalism does not look after people it runs at the expense of people and has showed itsely to systamatically fail ever 20 years or so.

The lib dems are gone now (hopefully). Cameron is further right that thatcher ever was and it wouldnt surprise me if he spouts horns soon.

Anyway, I suspect most would not find it too tricky to live on £7000 per month. One could even afford one of Sam Cam's leather designs. And stuff out of the Toast catalogue.

Oh OK my dh has just told me that it's still closer to a quarter for the person on £34 and nearer 40% for the person on £155000. And he did teach Maths at one point so I have to concede to him , but not to you swc because he agrees fully with me that the amount taken off the earnings over £155000 at 50% is in fact a tiny (his word) fraction of the pay they get overall. (raspberry emoticon)

smallwhitecat any Maths teacher on the planet will tell you that out of a total of over £150000, the 50% on what is earned over that amount amounts to a small fraction of the overall amount of pay.
You are thinking of the fraction of overall pay that goes in tax. This is about a third, though will check this on tax calculator in a mo. A long serving teacher with no responsibility points would be on about £34000. S/he would pay around a third also- slightly less.
The difference that the 50% makes is very much a small fraction. I am not a Maths teacher but it's the difference between just under a third and just over a third.

According to the pay calculator
pay £155000 take home £93,019.50 (That's £7,751 per month everybody! Life's a struggle!!)
tax + NI = approx 1/3, bit more

pay £34000 take home £25,482
tax + NI = approx 1/3, bit less

So the 50% rate makes the very small difference between just under a third of your wages going in tax and just over a third of your wages going in tax, ie a small fraction of difference.

pay £22000 take home £17000
tax+ NI = approx 1/4, bit less

Hence the phrase 'the squeezed middle'??

I am sure if there are gaps in my knowledge of fractions here you will put me straight swc but as I say, not a Maths teacher...

smallwhitecat, what do you mean property rights are not respected? In what way?

And it's not 50% of your wages, it's 50% of anything over £150k. Banging on about 50% without qualifying it gives a false impression.

Edam - makes me want to weep the sheer waste of it all ...

(Granny23 - agree. Whether the perceptions are correct or not, that's certainly how they are seen).

Back to the OP

My father used to say that the Tories were the most HONEST party - they do exactly what it says on the tin, i.e. they are CONSERVATIVE, the party for those who have something worth conserving. OTOH Labour, allegedly the party for the working classes seemed to spend their 13 years in power sooking up to bankers, pop stars and the middle classes. People were not surprised to find Tory MPs over claiming on expenses and exploiting privileges as that is what they expect from bosses and top dogs. But when the representatives of the ordinary working people behaved in the same way people were appalled. Ordinary workers do not have expenses to fiddle and have to PAYE their tax. They expected the people they had voted in to play fair too, not to rob the public purse, have off shore accounts, pay £100s for one meal in London and award each other peerages. NEW Labour has not done what it said on their tin.

As for the Liberals, they are now seen as the party who would get into bed with anyone in order to have the illusion of some power. I hope that a decent centre party can somehow rise from the current mess to plug the gap between left and right - otherwise some of the strange fringe parties will no doubt fill the void.

Quite, ttosca. And to stop wasting money on the inflated transaction costs of contracting out and competition in services like the NHS. This merely allows big business to grab valuable and reliable public service contracts, since smaller organisations including most of the voluntary sector can't afford the costs of bidding. Or the contracting experts big business uses to ensure they have the most impressive bid. Which often ends up being a false economy because the charges ratchet up and the eventual cost of the project is far higher than first anticipated. Either the public sector pays those higher costs or the private sector suppliers pull out, as happened with Blair's vanity project with NHS electronic health records.

We ended up paying shedloads for contracts with independent sector treatment centres that were doing far fewer cataracts or hip ops than they were being paid for - simply because the contracts were written without consulting local clinicians and paid the ISTCs for work that was anticipated by the Department of Health, not what they actually did. And we are paying shedloads for the PFI hospitals and schools and will be for decades - it would have been far cheaper for government to borrow the money to build them at the rates governments can get rather than paying the massively inflated costs of the private sector. With companies now making money by selling on those contracts because they are so profitable...

Agree, ttosca.

The alternative to paying taxes is not paying any taxes, and then not having any public services at all.

Even greedy governments, beholden to Capitalist interests, realise to a more or less extent, that public services like the NHS and the National Rail (partially subsidised) are necessary for the smooth functioning of a state. It helps no one if half the work force is unhealthy or ill and therefore unproductive.

What is needed is more democracy, so we can put pressure on the government to pay for these public services, instead of subsidising banks, and spending tax money on weapons and war in foreign countries on the other side of the planet.

Agree, Driftwood. But the answer is more efficient managment of the money, and more democracy at that level. Not paying less.

SWC, the freedoms I enjoy are being free of ill health and bad education; freedom to use the roads and go to libraries. I expect to pay for those freedoms, both for myself and other people. If I couldn't afford to pay for them, I would expect someone else to.

We live in a society. If one person is suffering, the rest of us help. Those of us who have been lucky help others who aren't. We don't do this out of philanthropy but self interest. If you don't pay for education, you don't get any doctors. If you don't build enough houses, you get homeless people cluttering up the streets. If you are eating a big fat donut and there's someone who is starving watching you eat it, you don't enjoy it so much.

Social inequality is dangerous, as well as being unfair.

That is so Driftwood, I would rather not pay for trident, or for management consultants for example. But I am happy to pay for schools and libraries, and I think we have to take the crunchy with the smooth when it comes to tax. The point is that you can exercise a small amount of control by voting for a government that you feel will spend your money most wisely.

"I personally find it very disturbing how few people grasp that respect for private property - which the state should only exact from you on pain of prosecution for good reason and in accordance with clear legal rules - underpins the freedom we all enjoy"

Freedom? Oh do you mean like the right to roam smallwhitecat? Try enjoying that freedom on private property. Though fortunately your mates have abandoned their efforts to try and make profit out of flogging off the nation's woodland..... That's a digression though, back to the point.

I personally find it very disturbing that some people are so grasping and greedy, and have such a very distorted view of reality, that they believe that paying a small fraction of their earnings over £150000 is somehow equivalent to being robbed or mugged.

If we pay more tax, it get sucked up by the state and you have very little say as to how it is spent.

I hate the way it's seen as normal to try to minimise the amount you pay in tax. For example, we have been invited to a pensions meeting at work, at which they are going to tell us how to make the most of government loopholes in order to maximise our pensions. What's that all about? There are whole industries based around tax avoidance; some people earn good salaries advising others how to be creative with their tax returns. Mad. Even ISAs ... totally legal, but advertised as a way of grabbing back money from the taxman's evil clutches.

The government are their own worst enemy, imo. Why can't they say 'You have to pay taxes because you want decent services. Richer people have to pay more because they have more'? End of.

If we pay low taxes we get worse services.

I think there must be fundamental problems in how funding is managed. My friend is an NHS psychotherapist specialising in very damaged children in London. Her funding was cut dramatically in the penultimate year of the last Labour gov limiting the time and resources she was able to give by more than half. God knows what it is now. But my point is, it's not just this administration or the last that is to blame. There are real problems with the way the whole thing is run and so far no-one seems to have made enough of a difference.

Dont forget national insurance-if you count that as tax more people are paying 50% tax than you might at first think.