to think that seeing our national debt might

[rottentomatoes]

stop people moaning about the government spending cuts? Aibu to think that if this timebomb was put on every computer screen as a screen saver people might be less likely to moan about the cuts being made in government spending.

Our Debt

Where it goes

What you need are MPs who aren't in the pockets of big businesses and with a bit of backbone to sort it out - the big corporations wield too much power.

Talkininpeace

I like your ideas.

When I lived in the UK I would never, ever have been able to afford somewhere that had a spare room. Actually, we didn't even have our own room, had to share with 2 kids because of the damp. Why, when we were killing ourselves in state jobs (nurse and teacher) should our taxes (luckily don't have to pay any anymore) pay housing benefit for people to have a spare room. If you are out protesting today because you are going to be penalised for claiming housing benefit for a room you don't use then you should fuck off. Funnily enough, I never saw people maoning about spare rooms when I lived in bangladesh for 3 years, being alive and in work was good enough for those dignified, hard working people.

Interestingly I just read that the top 10% of earners pay 53.3% of all the tax collected (2009) I wonder how that equates to their income. I mean if the earn 53% of total UK income or if it's more or less?

I do think the government have done a good thing upping the personal tax free allowance so much though. That will certainly have a positive effect for low earners.

rottentomatoes
but the NI limit has not risen to the same level so 12% EES NI is still deducted from all earnings over £7748 a year .... and ERS NI of 13.8% is charged to employers - as a disincentive to allow people to work more hours per week

What exactly is 'other departments'? That has the second highest amount yet we are none the wiser to where that portion of money is going.

Talkinpeace
Oh! That's crap!

This visual is quite useful
www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/mar/20/budget-2013-tax-spending-visualised#zoomed-picture
and the spreadsheet linked from this page
www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/psf_statistics.htm
has the current REAL data (without spin)

Thanks Talkinpeace

Another Link ....
www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/tax-statistics/table2-4.pdf
In this one, it shows that the top 1% of earners paid 26.5% of all of the income tax.
The bottom 50% of earners paid 10% of the total income tax.

Soak the rich high tax rates (as France has done) do not work.
Closing loopholes (see my post above) does.

I totally agree with you talkinpeace. Closing loopholes would be a great place to start.

Quite a number of economists would argue that high national debt is not infact the key issue. That the people who think it is are either deliberately inflaming the issue for political reasons or don't understand the difference between personal debt and national debt.

Stimulating growth in the economy by investing in employment both by investing directly in jobs by for example investing in infrastructure and by reducing the barriers to employment by for example subsidising things essential to employment like transport and childcare will ultimately lead to a stable economy and less debt.

Reducing benefits is tinkering round the edges until you do this, if you cut the benefits of your 500,000 unemployed families but add another 200000 unemployed families this year your bill is obviously not going to reduce. More means testing is catering to jealousy and votes but will do nothing for the economy, means testing is expensive.

Closing tax loopholes is definitely a good idea but increasing taxes for the rich is not going to help the economy, it is also catering to jealousy and votes just from a different section of people. You want people with ridiculous amounts of money to spend it on things. You also want your poor to have more money and since they contribute less tax through income anyway, your best way to increase your tax revenue is to reduce their tax rate, increase their personal allowance so they have more money and spend it on goods increasing VAT revenue.

The problem with the economy is not the national debt, it is the fact that it is managed by politicians not economists.

Debt per se is not a problem.

Its what the debt has been spent on.
Infrastructure = good
Political bungs = bad

or at a personal level
Essential house extension = good
Handbags = bad

and yes, government debt of £40,000 per working person is a scary figure, but much of it is not repayable for 40 years

and in reality most of it will never be repaid. The government is like someone who lives continually on an overdraft, they will borrow to pay off the borrowing. sometimes the interest rates will be lower, sometimes higher but a UK not in debt is not likely in anyone's lifetime.

Also in 2100 £40,000 per person may well look miniscule, in the way £1000 per person looks to us today.

We have such epic problems facing us over the next few decades:

World Debt.
Food & Water access for an increasing population.
Climate Change.
Increasing scarcity of energy.

The children of today will not enjoy the same stability that we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. If there is a fix I am sure it will be hard work

yes you are being unreasonable.

The debt is not unmanageable. It is not historically high. In fact this would be a good time to borrow and invest in the country instead of cutting welfare and jobs like these cunts have done.

waffly

Please link to your evidence that the debt is not historically high? Everything I have read seems to indicate it's massively high.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_GDP.png

we are in debt to less than 1/5 what we owed during the Napoleonic era

Yes, but that was because of a war just like the other 2 big borrow times it was out of necessity to fund world war 1 and 2. It was also brought back down again after those wars.

This is making interesting reading.

Talkin, I like the way your mind works, makes me wonder what your line of work is!

Means testing is flawed and expensive and brings in poor results due to mistakes made by both sides, it is true. There's a tipping point with the idea of higher taxes for the top earners, difficult to judge what level would send them abroad (individuals and companies). Cutting benefits drastically does reduce the amount free to be spent on the high street and yet we all surely agree that benefits shouldn't be higher than the average earnt by someone in full-time employment? If we look at cutting things like defence spending we must remember how much of that is actually spent on employing people. It's all very well saying we don't need Tridant but how many jobs would be lost if we dropped it (not literally)? It's all very well to say, spend it on jobs in other sectors, but how much retraining would be needed? How many people want to retrain? How many people want to move for the jobs they've retrained for?

Lots to consider, that's just what's in my head right now and I've not had a drink yet...

Borrowing more is a gamble, if it does create growth then all well and good but if it doesn't we will just end up in a very very sorry state.
Recent history and shown growth by borrowing but there wasn't a global recession during those borrowing times. As I said it's a gamble.

MrsWembley
I am perfectly open about being an accountant and auditor.
Here is a resource I've been working on for many years : members.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=talkinpeace

rotten
Indeed in the Napoleonic era the debt was to fund a war - but the Rothschilds (for they were the lender) charged the Government rather more ant the 0.25% that is paid on the UKs debt today !

The concern with borrowing is where it is used to inflate the revenue expenditure state ( the crass failing for which Broon will always be criticised) or to create assets that will generate future revenues (like the TGV network that the French build in the 90's)

Talkin
I totally agree, Blair brown certainly used the borrowing to inflate revenue. Buying votes.