If Labour raises taxes what will you think?

Staggering figures from the ONS this morning. Public sector productivity for Q2 down 0.7% and in the health service 1.5%.

And no one has yet mentioned that 25 % of our council tax (which some people will see doubled according to rumours) goes to pay councillor pensions. How long can the country afford to give the ever growing public sector gold plated pensions with 25-30 % of salary contributions ?

Government spending is propping up GDP figures - underlying growth in the private sector is non existent as you can see from the canary in the coal mine the jobs market. Unemployment is forecast to increase to 5%. I fear for young people looking for jobs. In fact several of my DC friends are moving (Dubai and Australia are the popular locations) and one of my DC has expressed an interest in a role in the USA at his work. This is a problem when we need to fund more than 50% of the population who take out more than they contribute and the demographic changes that others have pointed out on this thread.

Still batting for Labour, there won’t be many.

It’s not going to help when our dc need jobs.

I agree, it’s awful to watch.

A) and
omg, Truss trashed the economy, the Tories often raised taxes just pretended not to, this myth that Tories are better at managing economy and are low tax party ... is enormous myth. Meanwhile REFORM has all sorts of unfunded spending plans while promising tax cuts... amateurs.

I'll be bracing for how sick of hearing radio4 go on about stirrers making a fuss of the manifesto promise break/tax rise.

But for the Labour Government and those that voted Labour it doesn't matter that you won't grow your business, it doesn't matter that you won't employ more people and it doesn't matter that it won't help the economy.

What matters to them is that the rich don't get richer even if that means the poor get poorer.

You see aspiration and ambition as a good thing, the left see as greed and exploitation that should be stamped out.

I have a business that I too don’t want to expand,

I won’t be alone in this. Aspiration is pointless. At every turn, the parasites are out to take the money you work for, and it reaches a point where you just lose your motivation to be involved in it all,

Spiteful children are ruling us.

They were always to do this. They lied to get in and they will tax you to death for their ideology. Criminals and hypocrites.

52.6% of people don't care. They are entitled to those benefits. The 47.4 should brace their broad shoulders, it is only fair...

It is very odd indeed. I mean people will do a few hours a week volunteering, sure. But how can they possibly imagine that a significant number of people would work difficult, full-time jobs for no more money than they would get doing just whatever they fancied?!?

Nail on the head. Some lefties are deluded enough to think that "workers" actually want to work for the good of society, so it doesn't matter whether they're a lot better off or not from working (after taxes, commuting and other costs) a few dozen hours per week.

Yes exactly this

It's as if the Labour party don't want people that have worked hard and now earn a decent salary to have a much better lifestyle than those that don't. If it gets worse, there won't be much point in working. Work hard, no spare money. Don't work, no spare money - but without the agro of working.

With the aging population demographic things will only get worse. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/the-uks-changing-population/

19% of people in the UK were aged 65 or over in 2022. This this number is projected to increase to 27% by 2072.

Reported in The Times this morning that Labour and Reeves are going to target anyone who earns over £45,000.

Way to dampen aspiration. How do you grow the economy, the only way to reduce debt (and the £105 BILLION interest bill, which exceeds what we spend on most departments except for welfare and health) with this sort of policy? You can't tax your way to growth. It will have the opposite impact. History has shown us that lowering taxes actually increases the tax take

With a third of the population on benefits and 9million people of working age ..... not uh ...... working, this country is screwed. More than half of people take out more than they put it.

And the employment rights bill hasn't kicked in yet which will make it tougher for employers to take a punt on a young person (or disabled or long term unemployed), they are going to do a deal on youth mobility with the EU where youth unemployment is almost double that of the U.K........ I fear for young peoples' prospects in this country

I love your quote! Let's hope that in 200 years time somebody quotes the wisdom of @strawberrybubblegum!

But building on your comment taxation discourages behaviour (eg smoking or speeding) whilst subsidies encourage behaviour.

Right now we have a taxation policy that actively discourages those seeking to increase their income (either through increased hours or setting up your own business etc) and actively encourages reducing income (working benefits, going part time or early retirement or even for the mega wealthy leaving the country).

So it will be no surprise that as taxation rates increase then tax revenues will decrease. Thereby requiring further taxation.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who runs a very small business (profit of around £100k pa). Now the hours she works for her own business are insane including weekends, no holidays etc). She also takes the minimum income from the business that she can live on (circa £40k)

Being an ambitious driven lady (from a poorer immigrant background) what she originally planned to do was to build up some capital and then expand her business to a much bigger scale. However because of the taxation on her company profits she is now considering employing someone so she can work less hours and take a bit more of the profits as her income and not grow the business.

In effect the high tax rates have crushed her drive and ambition ("what's the point when the Government just takes it") meaning that a successful business won't ever grow. She is incredibly torn with her heart saying grow the business and her head saying don't bother, chill out and take more income.

like the mind of a toddler.

What’s mine is mine.
What’s yours is mine.
What’s broken is yours, until you fix it, then it’s mine.

The Left believes that every single £ you earn belongs to them.

You have no right to any more 'pocket money' out of your earnings than someone who doesn't work.

But you’re RICH

You should be HAPPY to pay for everyone else

All sarcasm aside, I do agree with you. I’m far from rich, earn an above-average income but still have a hefty mortgage to pay off (and not on a mansion, or even a house). Quite rightly I don’t qualify for any income-related benefits but I don’t see why being able to be self-sufficient (making some choices that are detrimental to my health and wellbeing to do so) means that I am now able to pay more.

Yep, they really do.

And their normalcy bias means that they deliberately try to bring you down, because they can't quite believe that harming you leads to their own loss.

They think the state will always provide...

What makes me sad is how much people hate the success of others.

That’s what makes it so bleak in the UK.

You study hard, work hard, get a great job despite all the challenges, pay massive taxes to help others, and yet the majority simply hate you.

And do you think that's actually happening?

Great quote:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy"

(Alexander Tyler, 1700s)

I think this kind of industrial action against government taxation is the only way to combat my corollary to the problem:

A government's tax system can only exist until those who benefit from increasing taxation outnumber the minority who pay it. From that point, the majority can vote for ever-increasing taxation making productive endeavor decreasingly worthwhile with the result that the tax system collapses over a loss of tax revenue.

(Strawberry Bubblegum, 2025)

We've reached that tipping point, with 53% of people in the UK living in households that receive more in benefits and benefits-in-kind than they pay in taxes.

And unfortunately this Labour government is only to happy to give those voters what they want, regardless of the consequences to us all.

There is currently absolutely nothing those of us who pay the majority of tax can do to stem that haemorrhage. We're outnumbered.

Yes, see also Tyler’s cycles of civilisation…

I think that to combat that, as taxpayers we need to be able to go on strike in protest against the government's tax policy with the same legal protections as we have for strikes against our employers.

There's a similar difference in power between employer/employee and government/individual taxpayer (especially with the current government's MO of picking off small, politically unpopular groups to squeeze excessively - arguably vindictively - for tax) and a similar impact on our finances beyween the pay-deals we are allowed to strike for and the taxes we're not.

Just like strikes that protect us from exploitation by employers, we can only protect ourselves from exploitation by the government by leveraging the collective value of our labour.

Ideally we could use of the mechanics of unions including taking regular union funds to support industrial action when voted on by the members - as well as extending the industrial action legal protections - to strikes over taxes.

Yes, it's not great for businesses to be captive to something they can't control. But our labour is our own. Since taxes are taken from us, this is the only lever we have.

My despair is for the fact that there is NO UK political party that is prepared to articulate these obvious and well-established economic facts and articulate a coherent plan to address this like the first steps towards one that I set out in my post at 11:06.

These threads always descend into arguments about irrelevancies. I see very little of anybody putting forward a coherent plan or even attempting to discuss solutions.

Politicians thrive on polarising society. It’s great for their election results. Then they continue with it in order to appease their party members and vested interests in order to maintain power so they are not making decisions that are to the benefit of the electorate. They are deliberately misleading them. The more polarised the political debate becomes the more this effect will be exaggerated and the lower the chance of any sensible evidence-based policies being enacted.

My hope it that the electorate will take a step back from their personal grievances about “unfairnesses” and recognise that these will only increase as we go further into a doom loop of dividing up mouldy cake crumbs between us, and that the only way out is to redirect public spending to areas that will raise productivity and growth.

If we do not do this, living standards will continue to fall in perpetuity. It is a certainty upon which I’d bet my entire life earnings. I am starting to see the attraction of short-selling… abhorrent as that practice might be when it means betting against your own country’s future.

My “passion” as you call it, is a desperate plea to people to wake up before it is too late and demand competent politicians. MPs do listen when their email inboxes are flooded with emails all saying the same thing because like all humans, they are primarily motivated by self-interest and want to be re-elected. A country gets the type of political leadership that it demands. Sadly, out of desperation the UK has demanded promises of cake that will never materialise (when I do credit the majority of the population with more intelligence than to believe in impossible cake) over realistic messages about the situation and no politician has the backbone to articulate what needs to be done, the consequences of not doing so, and most importantly a hopeful but realistic and actually viable plan for how to fix it.

I hold out very little hope that it will happen. Apparently the electorate aren’t done with this stupidity yet and are determined to vote for ever-more implausible promises of not just unicorn cake but flying unicorns that you can actually ride to a fluffy land of candy floss trees and marshmallow skies.

I hope for someone to put forward a credible plan and some realism and believe that the majority of the people in the UK are not extreme, do actually want an improvement and just need to be given some hope that someone with a coherent and actually realistic and plausible plan is available for them to vote for who will gradually improve things even if some difficult things need to be done in order to do that.

With an electorate crying out for change (the basis upon which Labour were elected and Reform rising in the polls - total insanity) and a large majority but a shallow one which will not be repeated no matter what they do, this Government needs to grasp the situation and take the steps necessary to start to effect positive change.

They won’t, though.

And then people will likely vote in a Reform Government which will be the final nail in the coffin or any chance of UK economic success for many, many decades.

The calibre of people we have in politics and what the British public will tolerate in comparison to many of our old comparator countries in Europe is, frankly, astonishing.

I think it’s probably beyond repair already because nobody will accept the slightest measure that will not benefit them personally, everyone is now focused on their particular flavour of scapegoats and attacking each other, and nobody seems interested in uniting behind and rational plan with actual solutions based on evidence. You see it in these threads here, which presumably are largely populated by people actually interested in these topics, so what hope is there for a sensible discussion with the electorate on a country-wide basis? I can only see it happening if a politician capable of articulating a vision for the future actually emerged and did so, with “passion” and conviction but also FACTS.

I think a sufficient proportion of the electorate don’t want this social division and polarised politics and are just very frustrated/ angry/ desperate at the incompetence. I think the British mentality has always been moderate and sensible and generally reasonable and not extreme and we desperately need someone in the centre ground - which is entirely deserted - who is economically competent to articulate this and stop focusing on political soundbites and optics and many voters feel politically homeless because there is nobody in the centre anymore and they have nobody to vote for and have to vote for what they think will be the least horrific option, election after election, with worse and worse results.

It’s all extremely depressing and my bet is that people continue further with their polarisation, no action whatsoever is taken on the economic issues that need to be addressed, and we end up with an even worse Government next time who will finish the job of consigning the country to the dustbin, with no prospect of even slowing the decline in living standards let alone reversing it. I have to say I have adjusted my personal investments away from the UK already to reflect this likelihood.