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'

So £10 then for everytime you require the services for yourself. So if the police come to me or the fire brigade or an ambulance I get charged £10. No charge for reporting crimes.

This still doesn't make any sense.

I would scrap free prescriptions for the over 60s now.

If they paused the triple lock for say a decade they could invest those billions. Look at the success of the Elizabeth line.

Teresa Mays idea for funding social
care was actually decent idea but obviously that was hated & dubbed the dementia tax.

Cutting back but still reading the Telegraph Yes of course

You can read it for free using airplane mode...

No we do not need to be taxing low earners more or cutting disability benefits. We need to be taxing the very rich more. Not on earnings, on assets.

Any meaningful tax hikes needs to hit the masses you can't just target the very rich who are also often mobile. I think property taxes do need an overhaul.

My idea? Realise that there is no solution to the predicament that the country finds itself in - at best we can manage our decline and maintain pockets of civility while abandoning the more wretched parts of the country to barbarism.

Every country has areas like that, do that really tells you nothing

I (mid 30s) don't expect to receive a state pension. I find it really endearing in a way when people talk about how the young should support the pension so it survives long enough for us to enjoy it too.

It's not Tinkerbell, it doesn't survive based on whether people believe in it or not!

I don’t think anyone has made plans based on the triple lock or the wfa.

If it were down to me, I would roll the winter heating allowance into next year’s pension, giving everyone a one time bump up. At the same time, I would remove the triple lock. Pensions should rise with wages. We are all in this together, after all.

The ideas about a small yearly charge to replace stamp duty might work. I think it would help first-time buyers, and loosen up the property market. The introduction would need an exemption for people who had already paid stamp duty on the last 10 or 15 years.

Capital Gains taxes on people’s main properties is a horrendous idea that would be terribly destabilising. Same as some of the pension “reform” ideas which would stop people from careful planning and saving. But perhaps Labour know that and don’t care. They want the money now and the obvious problems are for another government to deal with in 20 years time.

Nope
Just odd that would be your choice

I agree that the triple lock should be paused for three or five years, and I am a pensioner. Quite apart from any other reason, the extension of frozen tax thresholds to 2029 will mean that otherwise pensioners will be paying tax on the basic state pension.

I also agree with charging a modest fee for NHS appointments and a rather higher fee for using A&E services. For all. But not for childhood vaccination and check-up clinics provided they are nurse-led walk-in services.

Benefits may have to be time-limited, as they are in many other countries, and related to taxes paid in previous years.

But I don't think there's an alternative to raising the basic rate of income tax to say 22%, on every £ above the £12,570 starting point.

This is a really sensible option. MPs seem so focused on petty point scoring (private school VAT for one) that sensible, sustainable options never seem to happen.

You can't keep going for tax payers and allowing benefits to be untouched.

I also agree with charging a modest fee for NHS appointments and a rather higher fee for using A&E services.

People would then expect certain guarantees - i.e., if they're paying for an appointment they would expect it to be timely. If they're paying for A&E they would also expect to be treated (not just triaged) within a certain number of hours. Maybe that would be possible with the extra funding received from the payments, but I doubt it.

I think MPs believe we are all thick and if the DailyM headline says oldies are freezing to death we believe them - I now get £900+ a month state pension - how stopping the £200 wfa was a life or death I can’t understand. (Ok it may have been for a few but we have to start somewhere).
Our Gov seems to be ruled by Twitter comments and right wing g papers -I wish they’d get a backbone.

Do you take into account our debt? If you do, we are very very very poor.

This is a really sensible option. MPs seem so focused on petty point scoring (private school VAT for one) that sensible, sustainable options never seem to happen.

i think they only went for the private school VAT because it was part of a package of tax rises eg means testing winter fuel, benefit changes, NI changes, Non doms etc they could then argue they were targeting all sectors of society. Some are more palatable and impact more than others though.

You are all smoking dope if you think taxing the “very rich” more is the answer to the UK’s dire financial situation.

@YelloDaisy We often have LBC on at work and the amount of pensioners phoning in saying labour wanted them to starve or die was fucking ridiculous. Many do seem to believe the Daily Mail...

Poorer pensioners do disproportionately read the Mail -- because it is the cheapest newspaper that isn't a comic. Even my (late) DM who was a sensible Times reader until she could no longer afford to buy it every day, after she stopped working at 78, would occasionally spout some nonsense.

@RattyMcBatty I do agree that people might expect a timely appointment, but if they had made it and were paying the fees, then we could realistically expect fewer DNAs. And we should have to pay for A&E unless we needed admitting to a clinical ward. I'd also make a hefty charge for abusing the 999 ambulance service.

My unpopular opinion for raising tax revenue is that noone deserves an inheritance - only the wife/husband should receive the assets and once they die all of it should be relinquished to the state.

I find it funny that people get up in arms about IHT - why shouldn't you pay for something you yourself didn't earn and only got by virtue of being related to someone with assets?

One issue we have as a country is this entrenched wealth divide. What's the point of having millions in the bank if society is crumbling around you and you can no longer walk safely along the streets? The seriously wealthy ought to feel more civic duty

Haha, one of the main reason we are in such debt is that we have FAR too many people on out of work benefits (5m plus) most of whom could work. It is so illogical that people like you think that it's OK for these people to get unearned money from people they've never met (taxpayers) but object to others getting unearned money from their loved ones. And as I've pointed out before we are no longer a rich country - our gdp per capita (the only measure that matters) puts us at about 25th and plummeting whilst countries like Poland (who were very poor when I was young) overtake us. We are now poorer than the poorest us state. And many wealthy people are bailing out to go to better countries so good luck with that.

And what happens if both parents die whilst their DC are under 18? Is their grandad on a pension of £12.5k per year meant to support them whilst the state gets my £600k life insurance, their family home and even the bloody car that takes them to school? You haven’t thought this through have you?

Yeah, I'm very interested to see where this new principle of "no-one gets any unearned money" takes us...

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I don't think those are as biting arguments as you think they are. The number of teenaged / preteen orphans in this country is thankfully low and exceptions could obviously be made for exceptional circumstances whilst the principle applies to the majority.

Money that is redistributed towards the less wealthy usually gets recirculated within the economy - I'm not against people receiving benefits, and am aware that a large proportion of people who receive state help are already in work. A large number of disabled people are willing to work but struggle to find employment due to discrimination/employers unwilling to put in reasonable adjustments. I don't begrudge them needing state help.

And just as an FYI I am a high rate tax payer, and feel very happy to pay taxes so that others can live better and healthier lives. I'm fortunate enough to be a net contributor as far as tax and benefits go