“Tax the wealthy” (RR budget) what does this even mean?

You really come across as a spiteful and unpleasant person - you are being deliberately goady. It’s grim.

Will you finally give up on this weird obsession with teachers and repeatedly asserting or implying that I am a teacher when you have been told unequivocally that I am not? I have worked in finance throughout my career, in various capacities and roles within professional services, companies and financial institutions, and done work with Governmental organisations, all within the field of economics/ finance. I don’t understand why you are making this discussion personal or what you think doing so adds to the thread and how you think this is constructive in any way. Or, indeed, appropriate and in line with the “Talk Guidelines”.

I work with data, facts, evidence, numbers. This suits me very well as someone autistic. I haven’t the faintest interest in “echo chambers”; in fact, that’s precisely what I’ve been expressing concern about for much of the thread, stating repeatedly that to start to improve things there needs to be respectful public discourse with people genuinely engaging with each other to find evidence-based solutions that a majority will support which will have better outcomes so that the UK can set a course which will actually improve the economy and, therefore, people’s living standards. Otherwise there will be more polarisation, more unpleasant behaviour towards people who are perceived to be “on the other side” such as that you are exhibiting (even when someone like me has stated they have no political affiliation and disdain for all political parties), and inevitably we will then end up with yet more incompetent leadership and further decline.

I hated school and, despite getting straight As, found it absolute torture and couldn’t get out of there quickly enough, which is understandable I think given I’ve stated that I am autistic. My children are now suffering the same fate as it seems nothing has changed in the last few decades to make it any better.

Of course you wouldn’t know any that because I am a stranger on the internet, which is why your repeated assertions about this are so bizarre and seem to betray a very weird obsession about teachers. I have no idea what underlies that and, frankly, am not particularly interested, but it would be nice if you would stop this weirdness as I don’t think it’s adding anything to the thread except making you look rather deranged.

The idea that I’d choose to spend my life in such an environment (even if it paid several times as much so wouldn’t involve a huge reduction in income) is absurd and made me laugh the first time I read your bizarre insinuation that I am a teacher. It has, however, become less amusing as we progressed to the 6th or 7th time of you posting your weirdly determined posts asserting that you think I am a teacher, and over again.

I hated school because I’m autistic but I haven’t developed a weird obsession about it like you seem to have done. What happened to you there that has made you like this?

That's interesting. The sums are eye-watering so hopefully we can weather it.

There were big peaks in the birth rate in 1950 and 1965. The pension liability for the 1950 cohort will rapidly diminish any time now, probably accompanied by a huge transfer of wealth to the next generation down. In 20 years the current high demand for pensions will largely be over and it will return to normal levels.

It will take decades for that to help matters. Existing pension liability won't change until people pop off although that may explain the rush in the Assisted Dying Bill.

Have a look at your wording in your 10 point list. It wasn't factual or straightforward at all. It was a list of insults. And what you think is the right way to run an economy might not be the same as the next person. Hence socialism v capitalism. Conservative v Labour. For example. Doesn't mean you are correct.

OK.. not 6th form debating society if that sounds so awful to you. Did your school teach you to put forward an argument without resorting to insulting the intelligence of someone that disagrees with you? If not, firstly that's a shame. And secondly that explains a lot.

Except it has changed public sector pensions from final salary to lifetime average.

They will probably go after the easiest targets like Business owners and high earners rather than billionaires.
Oh well, guess we get screwed yet again

You can also bet that whatever level was set it would of course then be frozen in perpetuity (like the £100k tax threshold that hasn’t moved for what, 15 years now?) and, therefore, before you know it the politicians’ little friend Fiscal Drag will mean that suddenly over 50% of the households in the country are paying it. Of course if the currency is totally devalued by even higher inflation due to further mismanagement (we already have the highest inflation rate in the G7) then that will happen even more quickly… this is how these things work. Establish the principle. Sell it as saying it’s a tax on “the rich”. And then gradually apply it to more and more people.

For example, the higher rate tax threshold where the 40p rate kicks in would now start at around £90k, not £50k, if it had been uprated with inflation continuously. Some countries like Belgium mandate in law that all thresholds must be updated for inflation annually automatically unless the Government passes a bill specifically stating that they won’t, which forces them to be accountable and justify it to the public. That is a much better and more accountable system.

I didn’t go to college somewhere where there was a “sixth form debating society”, and such a thing would not have been something I’d have been interested in, anyway. It sounds like a hell composed of people who like the sound of their own voices.

I am sorry if my way of expressing myself has irritated you or, “got your back up”, as you put it. I’m autistic so that happens sometimes unintentionally. It’s just the way that I use language, and is not a personal insult to you. I use words quite precisely but straight-forwardly per their actual definitions which is why your attempts to pretend they mean something else are frustrating when people invent meanings which were not there and then get offended by the things they’ve invented which were not said. Being offended by your own thoughts and then attributing them to others and trying to argue with them about you having offended yourself is weird.

Your post appears yet again to confuse opinions and beliefs with evidence and data. People can believe whatever they wish to believe, obviously. My concern is that we have an electorate where a significant proportion of people seem to vote based on opinion and beliefs rather than evidence and data, and politicians who therefore pander to this because it becomes the only way to get elected, and therefore politicians don’t create evidence-based policy and law so negative economic effects continue to be exacerbated. There is clear evidence that this is one of the main reasons why our country is now in such economic decline. This impacts everyone and creates a cycle of ever-declining living standards which will not change until this changes. It’s quite possible to vote for something that isn’t aligned with your personal preferences or beliefs because you recognise that the outcome of it will be better overall and ultimately democracy will only be successful if it leads to rational choices: an unfortunately inaccurate presumption in pretty much all literature about the foundation of democratic society is that the electorate will make rational choices but unfortunately this is not the case.

The conflation of belief/ opinion with evidence/ data is very concerning and has been increasing for some time now. This inevitably leads to polarisation, instability, further economic decline, sleep-walking into authoritarianism or, often, war or total societal collapse. These patterns are evident in history over and over again. It is therefore in all of our interests that people examine possible solutions to the UK’s current problems rationally based on evidence and that public discourse based on facts and data and credible solutions is reestablished in order that we can save ourselves from this doom spiral which seems to mainly involve people shouting at each other and blaming each other or being rude to each other or banging on about personal bugbears which are less than an immaterial rounding error and make no significant difference whatsoever to the national budget, but not actually proposing any viable solutions at all to anything that would make things better for everyone.

As long as this continues the decline will continue, and if we elect even more extreme people with even more extreme and divisive rhetoric and even less viable economic plans then, quite obviously, things will get a whole lot worse and much more quickly.

It’s a sorry state of affairs but ultimately there is a lot of truth in the saying that “a country gets the Government that it deserves”. While a significant enough proportion of the electorate continue to behave in this manner and refuse to engage in any calm, rational discussion based on evidence and prefer to be fed rage-inducing angry and divisive messages that offer no viable solution anyway, that is exactly what politicians will feed them, hence politics having polarised with more and more of the electorate having moved to the extremes and the political parties having followed them and feeding them what they want, to everyone’s detriment.

Has it improved things so far? No. Will it, if we go even further down the same road, from one extreme to the other? No, obviously not.

Meanwhile the proportion of the electorate who are reasonable and rational and don’t have extreme views and simply want competent Government and sensible economic management so that they can see there is a path towards an upwards trajectory in the economy and living standards are stranded in the centre between these warring factions of vocal extremists with no politicians to represent them at all because the centre ground, moderation, competence and general decency and respect have been entirely abandoned.

You seem agitated and frustrated that people don't agree with you and instead have their own views. You think they are wrong; that's fine. But no one appreciates someone relentlessly ramming their own views down other people's necks particularly if they do it in such a superior and derogatory way.(I remind you again of your 10 points. Your language was in no way "dealing with facts"). I thought we learned this in 6th form debating society?

I think you’ll find that I’ve showed equal disdain for Labour and the Conservatives as I have for Reform, if you read my posts. The conversation became overly focused on Reform because lots of Reform voters got furious about me criticising their dear leader and pointing out the complete fantasy of his economic proposals (per his own website) which are so unbelievable and ridiculous that my 8 year old child would laugh at them. I was asked why I think people might be considering voting for such economic lunacy which will be the final nail in the coffin or any prospect of UK economic recovery for another couple of decades at least, so I gave my opinions on that matter in response to the poster who had asked for them.

Predictably, sadly it has created pages and pages of rage and personal attacks from Reform voters claiming that I said things I did not say, and despite me stating multiple times that I’d welcome hearing why other people who are planning to vote Reform to which the factors I listed (which I think account for a large proportion of recent increases in their polling) do not apply because I’d like to understand their perspectives better, unsurprisingly no such rational reasons why they are considering/ intend to vote for Reform that aren’t covered in that 10 point list have been forthcoming so far and they have preferred to engage in personal attacks on me.

However, I also posted earlier in the thread quotes of Reeve’s pre-election lies about tax and criticisms of her idiotic economic policies which have made a difficult situation much worse than it had to be and are now creating an economic doom loop, and the utter insanity of her determination (it seems) to take the same approach to this as last year where she thinks raising taxes will fix the problem (newsflash: it won’t). I was also immensely critical of the procession of useless Conservative Prime Ministers over the last decade or so, in particular Johnson and the lettuce. And now they have Badenoch (someone I’ve met in person several times and found to be immensely dull and slow), and their prospective alternative is Jenrick?

I have no political bias. My concerns are economic competence, data, evidence and outcomes.

All I can say is people will look back at the history books and laugh, that workable solutions to improve things were available but none of these dullards in any political party were able to comprehend them and put them to the electorate and instead are focused on their petty little hobby horses which will make no meaningful improvement to the living standards of anybody in the UK, or their personal power trips, and that the electorate actually tolerated and endorsed this repeatedly and got furious with anybody who suggested it wasn’t a good plan. Nobody will be laughing for the next 20 years or so, though, at least.

Perhaps someone with an obviously superior attitude who drafts a 10 point list that oozes disdain for Reform voters at each point, gets their backs up?.

Again, you’re attributing things to me that I have not said at all. This is the problem. You are reading things and then imagining/ pretending (it’s unclear which, but either has the same effect) that they actually say something different and then taking offence at the things that you’ve invented in your own imagination.

It’s impossible for anybody to have a rational discussion with somebody who behaves in such a manner.

Oh goody. Actually, I do have a professional qualification and registration with a professional body related to my industry (finance) in addition to my expertise in economics from two decades now of working in similar roles and, you know, all of that irrelevant studying at university and such like before doing the professional qualification. But whatever. You clearly haven’t the faintest clue about economics or finance or tax law or public policy or business based on the posts you make (I’ve seen many of them previously on other threads), from which it’s apparent that your comments about anybody’s qualifications or expertise in finance/ economics are meaningless, to put it politely.

It’s very depressing that Reform voters frequently claim “nobody will understand or listen to their point of view” yet as this thread shows, in fact they are often the ones who resort to completely unwarranted personal attacks on others whom they don’t agree, and seem incapable of having an objective and rational discussion about policy and the merits of various policy options based on data.

Perhaps the hypocrisy is what they relate to about Farage?

What I'm saying is that you seem to think education gives a vote greater value than a vote cast by a less educated person even if they vote the same way. I'm highly educated; objectively more and better educated than most people, and yet I will vote the same way as someone who left school at 15 with no GCSEs. Our path to deciding the vote may be different but the result is the same. Our votes are of equal value.

Therefore the fact you raise "education " as a factor in a party's voting base suggests you are trying to make out your choice of vote is somehow superior to a vote cast by someone less educated who may vote for a different party. It's a snobbish and superior approach. You vote according to how you see the world and your own circumstance

If you had included age as a factor (which you didnt) you may possibly be on to something as of course Blair increased university participation to 50% of school leavers from 10% when I was a uni. And young people used to be traditionally more left wing (although I think that is changing. So in 2029 you may get a greater proportion of educated young people voting Reform as to vote Labour as a young person would be a turkey voting for Christmas). That doesn't necessarily mean a good education and ability to judge economic policy however given some of the courses on offer and it doesn't mean thay people who didn't go to university are (in your words)

" poorly educated electorate who have next to no understanding of economics so are easily redirected from the pressing issues into flapping around in rage and squabbling over irrelevancies/ directing their anger at scapegoats."

Education is not a factor in voting.

Really. So you don’t think education impacts people’s ability to analyse information or their decision-making?

Can you explain, given the above assertion that you’ve made, what your explanation is for the fact that education level is a factor that shows consistent statistically significant correlation to the the distribution of votes for different parties in this country and every other democratic country that I’m aware of for which data is available?

If it isn’t in fact the education levels of voters that is driving these correlations but some other confounding factor (when such findings have been the case even when income and many other factors have been controlled for in the data analysis), what do you believe is the confounding factor that would be necessary to explain the correlation instead, which all researchers and data analysts and economists and political pollsters must have overlooked in order for your assertion to be true?

I don’t think it will be either. It should be. And the failure to address this issue and the enormous NHS wastage (most of which alongside the vast majority of social care spending are directed at the elderly) is one of the fundamental reasons that our productivity and growth is so low and taxes keep rising: appropriately plans were not put in place in a timely manner to deal with demographic changes and the current pensioners are extracting on average far more than they ever paid in tax in real-terms, and far in excess of the kind of provision they made for their own parents or grandparents. It is not sustainable and as a result productive areas of the economy desperately in need or investment are hugely underfunded like infrastructure, education, industrial policy, and lowering the tax burden strategically in areas that will encourage investment and generate growth. The long-term prospects of the UK will not improve until a significant proportion of public spending is redirected from the over 65s (who consume over 50% of it but make up 15% of the population) to the young. This can be done without impoverishing any elderly people who are genuinely in need of financial support and cannot support themselves.

Ha! No. Not like Rachel, at all. It’s a standing joke. But whatever.

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

I shall reciprocate tomorrow morning.

Your home is not a luxury. Everyone needs one home, nobody needs two. Second homes are a luxury.

I don't think any house that is your main / only home should be taxed other than at purchase or sale.

I’m not even in the Home Counties and our ex-council three bed semi is worth just over £500,000!

The estate agent described it as a second-time home. As in you go from a flat, to our house to forever home/something a bit nicer.

@PlanetMasorry Im not scrolling the whole thread to find it but I guarantee state pension is not going to be means tested in immediate future

Unless you are the Business Secretary