What's your one magic thing to fix the country?

[Reluctantadult]

If you could do something to sort out the country / world, what would it be? Your one magic wish. You can have more than one of you want, I'm not adverse to a green point plan!

No more Tory governments...

Massive sustained investment in active transport.
I dunno if it's most important thing, and I do know it can't "fix the country", but I know it would do huge good.

What about a 4 day week... I think it would be good, let people do more exercise, shop locally, local economy.

Yeah right. So you think it's "fair" that an unskilled school-leaver doing menial work is paid the same as someone who's spent years studying to get professional qualifications and then years training (often also studying around full time work). So, a road sweeper should earn the same as a GP!

There HAS to be higher wages for those who spend years studying/training for specialist jobs. Otherwise no one would do it.

Even £100k pa isn't enough to keep experienced GPs working full time, so any idea of "levelling" pay by paying them less is nothing but shooting yourself in the foot!

What is needed is some way of curbing the excesses, i.e. managers/executives on hundreds of thousands, but in reality, if you crunch the numbers, even if you halved their wages, you'd only increase the wages of those at the bottom of the ladder by a few pounds, simply because there are hundreds of minimum wage workers for every top executive. You'd feel better knowing the "Boss" wasn't earning as much, but in reality your own life wouldn't be any better!

For whoever asked about UBI, the idea is that everyone is paid a basic amount of money each month, and this is enough to live on. The benefit system is scrapped (which would itself save a fortune in admin costs).

Those who work are then paid their wage as normal, so there's the same incentive to work.

I like the idea in theory; it seems like it would save a lot of hassle in administering benefits etc. Not sure how it would work in practice, but there have been some small-scale trials, and I think they had a lot of positives.

Only if you stopped their propensity for strike action. As we've seen this Summer, rail and bus strikes galore, causing a lot of disruption, cost and distress (especially to workers/school kids with no alternative transport options).

Yes, I know you'll say that "investment" would include better pay, but it's always just short term. The staff would be happy for a short while, but then they'll get greedy and strike again for even more, and so it goes on.

That's why we lost our manufacturing base. Eg car factory workers, shipyard workers, miners, etc going on strike regularly despite being already relatively well paid.

Trouble is that you'd need to have hefty tax rates, no "nil" rate lower thresholds, etc to make up the increased cost.

I.e. someone currently earning £25k pays a few thousand in tax/NIC. If you "give" them £25k, they now "cost" the country £25k PLUS the few thousand in lost tax revenue, so they may "cost" the country say £29k. So if they carried on working to earn £25k gross, even with a 50% tax/nic rate, they'd only contribute £12.5k back to the treasury, meaning The treasury would be out of pocket by £16.5k.

Someone would need to go on an earn £58k with a 50% tax rate, for UK PLC to be back in "break even" mode, i.e. £29k tax on the £58k wage, to cover the £25k basic income plus original tax loss.

You'd need a marginal tax/nic rate of around 75% to start to make a dent in the cost of UBI for those earning more than average. And that's not very behaviourally acceptable. Would people really put themselves out to work, commute, etc if they only "took home" less than 25% of their earnings?

What about the cost of pensioners, currently on state pensions of say £12k per year and who are managing fine, especially a couple, especially if they also have occupational pensions. They don't "need" more money via UBI but would get it anyway, another "cost" to the taxpayer.

Then you have those who couldn't live on UBI. Even £25k isn't enough in expensive areas to rent a house, and what about disabled who'd need more to cover extra costs of living etc? So you couldn't scrap the benefits system - you'd still need "top ups" for those struggling on UBI!

The fact is that UBI would need to be at a high level so that "most" people "could" live on it if they wanted to, i.e. don't need benefits. But the cost of that is extortionate meaning very high tax/NIC rates, which makes working less attractive.

The number crunching really doesn't stack up.

Mass social housing build to clear lists so everyone has access to properly affordable housing .

But would you have put yourself in the position of being able to get a "comfortable" job had there not been an incentive? Presumably you did further education (A levels etc), maybe you went to Uni for a degree (or similar higher education), and presumably you've worked your way up, maybe getting promotions or different roles in your chosen profession/trade?

Would you have bothered to put yourself out and done any of that if there wasn't a "carrot" dangled in front of you, i.e. the knowledge you'd have more opportunities/choices, better wages, etc by having better qualifications, experience, etc?

It's different looking back from where you are now, because you've already made choices based on the past situation. But hand on heart, would you have made the same choices, studying, etc., if you knew you could have got a simpler/easier job for the same money?

I like educational programmes but I also love music, wstching music video channels etc. I find music really helps my mental health.

Reform the political/voting system. Have voters vote on individual political ideas for all key sectors rather than politicians representing parties. Then have qualified people from those sectors in charge of implementing the plans. Have the plans fully costed and project-managed, and a fully independent body to address underperformance or incompetence

I really like this one - get rid of tribalism/class distinctions/unthinking "I always vote X" type voting in one fell swoop, and make people really look at what they've voted for. Also, I would make it illegal to publish one-sided articles about politics - if you're writing an article about eg the economy, you have to explain not only your idea, but the opposing ideas and their merits/flaws.

If, for example, a vast majority of people voted to invest in the NHS, then we could stop all this posturing about reform and doing more with less. There's scope to make it more efficient, of course there is, but right now it's absolutely falling apart and it needs a massive influx of new staff. How do we attract people to work there? I'd fund major training programmes with grants for anyone doing any sort of medical/nursing/AHP/social work etc degrees, and I'd offer existing staff cash incentives to stay working while newbies were trained, and I'd fund childcare for NHS staff working antisocial hours (which is most of them) by offering payments that could be spent on any sort of childcare. I'd also take a long hard look at social care, increase carer salaries, improve terms and conditions and start a massive PR campaign to get people to take up carer jobs. I'd pair this with investments in healthy aging, giving communities boosts, running classes to keep people fit, active and socially engaged, encouraging people to volunteer for community projects like gardening.

If there was no profit allowed then why would anyone produce these things?

Taxation meeds an overhaul so we have more to invest in public services.

I think we should ensure that massive corporations are taxed properly and, even better, this should be a worldwide agreement. Then we couldn't be held hostage by companies like Google, eBay and so on, threatening to take jobs elsewhere if we were to tax them properly.

Free public transport for children, students, unemployed or first year of working after unemployment and those of retirement age. Subsidised for everyone else. More public transport will reduce congestion, improve air quality and help increase fitness/reduce obesity (more walking having to go to a bus stop or train station than just going to your driveway).

Better subsidies for people getting solar panels- surely this would be cheaper than building more and more power stations. Plus better energy storage and more timed tariffs to encourage people to use energy when there's plenty being produced.

I'd change the NHS from free at the point of use to a more Scandinavian system- modest charges for care with a maximum amount you would be expected to pay in a year. Preventative healthcare (vaccination, screening, contraception) would remain free as would care for children and the elderly, those on certain benefits or people with long term health conditions.

Under this idea, given that nearly everyone would like the beautiful larger houses in nice places, and virtually no-one would like the bed sit next to a crack house, how would housing be allocated?

I just don’t think it would be everyone. Maybe I’m just naive and think money isn’t the main motivator for as many people as it actually is

I think it is for most people. If it weren’t for money I would absolutely resign from my job and take a job as a waitress in a cafe. I really enjoyed that job when I did it as a student and it was so much less stressful than my current job but I wouldn’t want to live off that amount of money now.

So I would get £20k or whatever from the government, plus my £53k salary? Surely this would just raise inflation more and those just living on the UBI amount would struggle as much as now?

I came on the thread to say exactly this. You wouldn't run any large organisation by kicking out the entire management every four years and replacing them with people who were chosen for their personality and ability to chew a bacon sandwich in manly fashion.

We're facing unprecedented, multi level national and international crises. We need to get the nations cleverest, calmest, most able people together to work out how to manage things.

Of course it's a pipe dream but parliament seems like an expensive, pointless joke at the moment.

Nice idea, but you need to "balance" your proposal for increased investment in the NHS with how that's going to be funded, i.e. a choice of:

1. Increase NHS spending by 10% paid for by an increase in income tax of 5%
2. Increase NHS spending by 5% paid for by an increase in VAT of 10%
3. Increase NHS spending by 10% paid for by a reduction in Benefits of 10%

etc etc.

You can't have a one sided vote. Of course everyone would vote to increase NHS spending, but the real question, and where politics comes into play, is HOW that's going to be paid for!

Not really, because to pay for it, you'll be paying most of your £53k salary back in much higher taxes & NIC!

How do you enforce other countries to impose the same taxes? The tax havens won't be keen as it will ruin them. We're back to an earlier post suggesting gun boats pointed at tax haven islands threatening to fire on them if they don't agree. How else are you going to get the Virgin Islands government to give up their tax haven status when that's basically paying for their entire economy? Likewise Jersey, Gibraltar, Monacco, even Isle of Man!

I would make it so that everyone immediately owns the house they live in outright.
Everyone then owns one home and only the one. No rent or mortgage payments would mean people have the disposable income to fix up the home that they now own.