What other ways could Rachel Reeves have raised more money?

But are you aware that the pensions are to compensate for salaries being lower? Both of us could have earned far more in the private sector.

My pension isn’t going to be great as a public sector worker. I think they changed in about 2014. I won’t be retiring at 55. I think the police still do. You could retire at 55 if you had worked in mental health.

You’re assuming their pensions are their only source of money. They’re at the age when people bank big inheritances.

I didn’t say how much over 60. 🤷‍♀️ They were less lucky than financially illiterate, the pension hit is massive.

I agree with you about public sector pensions, although I believe things have changed for new entrants now.

They have

Maybe that’s because public sector workers take such a pension hit if they retire at 55 that virtually nobody does. In this house there’s a combined 76 years of public service, both of us were well over 60 when we retired because the pension reduction was unaffordable.

I would end defined benefit pensions for the public sector for starters. I would reform BTL tax (not popular but where we are now is worse than where we were before), and I would also increase income tax. I wouldn't mind paying 1/2p more (which spreads the burden depending on how much you earn) rather than this very polarising tax policy they seem to have implemented.

Things that might help growth, get rid of the 2 child benefits cap, do more to fund childcare, remove the child benefit cap, do more to chase absent parents, get rid of the cliff edge that occurs at 100k (do we really want to discourage people from aiming high in life?) and raise the income tax thresholds. People can't spend what they don't have.

I would rather we had a smaller state than raised even more money. Reeves/ Starmer apparently are going to move on to cuts next and waste in bodies like the NHS but I will believe that when I see it.

Spot on.

The NHS does need reform. GP’s should be salaried and work in community clinics where care from a multidisciplinary team is provided. Why should District Nurses be salaried and GP’s run private businesses? You would not create that model today. Also consultants should be in hospitals full time. Most other jobs don’t let their staff moonlight on their time.

If the NhS switched to preventative care they’d be much better off.

i struggle to lose weight. I’m considered obese but I eat a healthy diet and go to the gym 3 times a week doing a mix of hiit, strength and cardio. I also get 12k steps a day. When I’ve worked with a PT, we tracked my macros for two years but I still couldn’t lose anything. I asked the NhS for help. The nurse referred me to the hormone clinic whose response was “perhaps your patient could try going to the gym”. At that time I was working out 6 days a week and deadlifting 80-100kg. But they won’t help anyone who is overweight / obese - they’d rather wait til it becomes a bigger issue and costs them more money.

similarly my daughter was needing grommets. They decided to wait for a year and pay for SLT instead. After a year they ended up doing the operation anyway. So all that money they could have saved…

@itsnotabouthepasta

"they need people to drink. Smoke. Eat sugary food. Drive gas guzzling cars. Without that, they will lose billions in tax revenue."

Nor really taxes on alcohol, tobacco
,and vehicles raises bugger all in the grand scheme of things. VAT, NI and income tax raises way more.

Plus you need to look at the cost savings for example alcohol raises £13 billion pa in taxes but costs the NHS £28 billion pa.

Ultimately, if something happened overnight and the UK turned into some utopia where we all did everything to live a perfect life, e.g en mass everyone stopped drinking, smoking, ate a perfect diet free of sugar, switched to energy efficient EVs, the government would be absolutely fucked.

they need people to drink. Smoke. Eat sugary food. Drive gas guzzling cars. Without that, they will lose billions in tax revenue.

By giving people approaching the end of life or with a devastating diagnosis a clear sighted right to choose, and not keeping patients existing, suffering prolonged, undignified lives in care homes, with repeated hospital admissions.

I have gone through this with both my parents, and I can assure you, if I had a dementia diagnosis ( even an early one) I would put my affairs in order and be gone. Unfortunately the law does not yet allow that. We treat our animals better.

That's the moral point. The hard headed truth is that it would also save money.

How can Rachel Reeves raise/save more money? By Euthanizing people that need expensive care?

Introduce national id card to clamp down on black economy
Right to choose- euthanasia for those with dementia or other life limiting diagnoses.

@Morph22010

I suggest you research it also using hmrc website all the info is on hmrc website still. There was a limit on furlough that could be claimed from hmrc under cjrs, it was limited to £2500 which is far less than £50k limit for self employment.

Helping excluded small businesses to actually survive covid was my job for nearly two years, so I know all there is to know about it. I lived and breathed it for a few dozen clients who were barely surviving.

Mixing a monthly figure with an annual profit figure doesn't help your case.

Employees earning over the limit still got furlough based up to the limit. Self employed with profits over £50,000 got bugger all - they were excluded completely. An employee earning £51k per year got furlough based on the limit of £2500 per month - a self employed person earning £51k per year got zilch, nada, nothing. Common sense would have said it would be based on £50k but no. Anyway, the same £2500 applied to self employed too - if their profits were say £40k p.a. their support was limited to the same £2500 as employees, so they got no more than employees under furlough, so your assertion is false that they did better, they didn't and like I say, those with profits over £50k got nothing at all.

That was one of the many things that Sunak constantly lied about, Starmer and Reeves were too thick to understand, and the media just lapped up the lies.

And I never said the self employed received nothing as you allude. I said 3 million of them were excluded, not all! The reality is, though that higher earning self employed were shafted and virtually everyone who set up a new business in the year or two before covid, or who had a part time self employment, were shafted. Whereas employees were largely protected as long as they were employed in February 2020, they were entitled to furlough.

Lots of exclusions had no rhyme nor reasoning, the Govt clearly wanted to provide no support at all, but cobbled a half arsed scheme together to fool the gullible that they were supporting small businesses - the gullible including the Labour party, the media, etc.

I think what the question doesn’t really get at is raising money is not just about taxing and taking it from people. It’s also about stimulating growth. And a lot of what has been proposed simply does not stimulate growth. There is a huge spendathon coming in the next couple of years and then they will need to raise the taxes again. I for one am a small business owner and will be letting go of an employee in the coming year rather than taking the risk of trying to grow the business and employ more people