I don't think we are a rich country anymore

[ThisHairColourIsTooDarkIThink]

I've been feeling for a while that the country is in a bit of a mess financially.

Are you feeling this and cutting back where you can (I know I am).

Telegraph headline today
Rachel Reeves ‘heading towards 70s-style IMF bailout’
Economists warn of 1970s-style debt crisis unless Chancellor changes course

I think this is why people are so up in arms about the inflow of all these young men from abroad seeking refuge.

Nobody minds helping others when we ourselves are sorted.

Lets be honest though - it's hard to get an NHS dentist or a doctors appt. Our police are falling apart (which is very scary given what they keep at bay in society), ambulances don't come fast when you have a genuine emergency, housing shortage, food prices rocketing etc.

How can we help all these people when we can't even sort out ourselves?

Anyway watched a few things recently and alot about our economy being in serious shit. It seems we are indeed in a position much like the seventies.

So I just wanted to know if others are feeling like we are on a bit of knife edge and are you all cutting back financially to 'brave the storm'

We traditionally have more Tory governments than labour, the Tories don't do as much public spending as labour and slag them off because they say we need to pay more tax.
The truth of the matter is we do, look at Scandinavian countries. They pay way more tax than we do, they aren't perfect, no country is, but they consistently top the happiness charts.
What is like to know is where this the money go when Cameron etc all were in, they made the debt much higher and imposed an unnecessary Austerity project on the UK, apparently killing more than 150,000 people in the process.

There are plenty of rich people in the UK. More than you'd think. The problem is they are very good at hanging onto their lolly - mainly by getting you to pay for everything.

The gap between ‘working full time’ and ‘in receipt of multiple streams of state support’ seems to get smaller every year.

The middle class of 20 or 30 years ago is disappearing - with people struggling to afford the same standard of living as asset prices have skyrocketed and wages have flatlined.

We need to radically reduce our spending - the number of people needing support seems to be increasing every year, the number of pensioners is forecast to grow very significantly, the number of those over 80 is due to double (meaning high healthcare costs).

No government that just keeps raising taxes to fund a rapidly expanding welfare state is going to stay in power beyond one term - I think there will be a big political change over the next 4/5 years.

This.

Very wealthy people and they avoid everything tax, writing things off against expenses the works.

You also get people that can’t or won’t work and those benefits all need to be paid for,

DH and I were joking yesterday and told our youngest that there was a new tax on children’s height - DH rolled his eyes but we can see taxes getting higher and higher.

I'd take what the Torygraph says with a pinch of salt.

I watched a update on sky news (Ed Conway) a few weeks ago and it said our borrowing is just going up and up. The host gave figures and I can't remember exactly what they were but the point of it was we were borrowing more each month and using most of it to pay interest on our existing debt. It was very worrying indeed.

I agree and I don't put too much reliance on any one source. I've watched quite a few things recently that have talked about this. The economy really does seem to be in a bad place.

There are quotations from actual economists in the article- isn’t not an opinion piece

There is plenty of money in the UK. We are in the top 10 of richest countries in the world. That's not hyperbole - that's just fact.

The problem is all the money is in the wrong place.

The country is rich but far too many of the people are poor because of the tendency of power/wealth to compound by default.

We are, but our wealth is now held by a few unimaginably rich individuals.

I've been feeling for a while that the country is in a bit of a mess financially.

It's been shit for years as we never recovered from the financial crash. Low interest rates masked a lot of it though & now the shits hit the fan.

The truth of the matter is we do, look at Scandinavian countries. They pay way more tax than we do, they aren't perfect, no country is, but they consistently top the happiness charts.

The difficulty with this is the aging population unless you are saying they should also pay more tax?

We need to radically reduce our spending - the number of people needing support seems to be increasing every year, the number of pensioners is forecast to grow very significantly, the number of those over 80 is due to double (meaning high healthcare costs).

Spending on healthcare & pensions will be increasing for some time due to the changing demographics.

Very wealthy people and they avoid everything tax, writing things off against expenses the works.

It's not just very wealthy though, people
don't want to pay IHT or for their own card etc.

@ThisHairColourIsTooDarkIThink just servicing our debt is ££££

The problem we have is that 'our' wealth is increasingly being concentrated in fewer hands.The 50 richest families in the UK own the same as the poorest 50% of the population.

We are one of the richest countries in the world but the wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands so apparently we can't afford decent old age pensions (one of the lowest in Europe) at a reasonable age (ie where the poorest are still alive long enough to benefit reasonably.) Chinese women eg get their old age pension at 55 ( unless they are managers) despite China having a much lower per capita income.

The problem is lack of political will. If we wanted to tax extreme wealth, we could. If we wanted to provide free access to higher education we could. If we wanted to eradicate child poverty, we could etc etc. Many countries do....and thrive.

It isin no one's interest to impoverish large swathes of our people.The poor can't buy the goods we produce, the poor cost the NHS because of the unhealthy way they are forced to live etc. etc.

We are often told we are a Christian country. What does that mean? Christ said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the KIngdom of Heaven. You'd never guess by looking at the way the Christian billionaires off shore their wealth and avoid as much taxation as they can. Is the multi millionaire Head of the Church of England lying awake at night sweating over his inevitable descent into Hell? Or, does he not believe a word of it because he will be exempt?

Our GDP per capita is low & we have a big disparity between income & wealth with huge intergenerational inequality largely because of our stupid housing market.

Still better than the big majority of countries in the world. For every country in a better situation than us I can name you ten that aren't.

We are one of the richest countries in the world but the wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands so apparently we can't afford decent old age pensions (one of the lowest in Europe) at a reasonable age (ie where the poorest are still alive long enough to benefit reasonably.) Chinese women eg get their old age pension at 55 ( unless they are managers) despite China having a much lower per capita income.

When you add private pension to state pension our pensions are in line with other European countries they just don't tend to have private schemes. Also many benefits in other countries are linked to how much you pay in, we don't do that.

Still better than the big majority of countries in the world. For every country in a better situation than us I can name you ten that aren't.

We should be aiming higher not lower

UK taxpayers pay as much tax now as the Scandis do.

Difference is our public services are shite, theirs aren’t. NHS is very bad value for money, transport old, social care non-existent.

🇬🇧 has a welfare bill problem because wages are too low to live and forced ever downward by employers benefiting from unskilled migration, which the Scandis don’t allow because they believe in social justice.

Pensioners should pay more, benefits receivers should get less, lower paid should pay more tax, etcetc - simples -everyone does their bit -that’s the sensible answer, but as we’ve had crap Govs for the last 20 odd years I don’t hold out much hope

Yes corrupt and poor that’s why their residents are coming here -to make us poorer

Globally growth has slowed in many Western countries and inequality has grown. We haven't improved productivity for a long time, we've relied on importing cheap labour and borrowing. Everyone feels they are getting poorer in a downturn, its exacerbated at the moment by the proportion of working age people who are classed as too ill to work, fewer people driving growth means what little there is spread between more people.