Genuinely not to understand the government's economic policy

[Thisishowyoudisappear]

This is a genuine question, I'm not trying to start a political argument. For the record I am fairly left wing.

So GO says the govt needs to make huge cuts in order to reduce the deficit. The cuts are going to be made at least in part from 'welfare'.

I guess I am wondering what all this deficit cutting is supposed to be achieving. I don't know, in real life, anybody who's been made better off under this govt. I don't understand this idea that 'balancing the books' for the whole economy a)bears any resemblance to doing same for a household or small business; b)is doing anything for the vast majority of people.

I don't understand how 'welfare' can be cut much more without starting on pensioners, which surely isn't going to happen.

I also don't understand why anyone except the seriously well-off vote Conservative. Why would you, when they are cutting services and not giving anything in tax cuts or whatever? Genuine question again.

I'm intelligent and take more than a passing interest in politics. So AIBU (or just a bit dim) or what??

Well Thisishow the poll tax was a clumsy attempt to implement the idea - which is right - that everyone should pay something to local services; rather as everyone pays VAT toward national services.

No, it wasn't. It was a stupid Tory wease to get rid of the rates in the most blatantly unfair manner possible.

Dora it was both. An unfair method of getting rid of the rates and an everyone-must-pay-something regime. We are still looking for the Holy Grail in the shape of a good way to finance local government.

It was a long time ago. But, I think even the unwaged were expected to pay it. What kind of stupid policy is that?

Very stupid indeed to charge without regard to means. But the idea that everyone should have to pay something, that voting for your council to spend more should have some financial consequence, was not without merit.

If people wanted to make a moral stand out of it they could say that everybody should make some kind of contribution.

There is plenty of litter which never gets picked up by anybody. The council don't mend park fences or straighten road signs, in these parts. There is plenty that could be done without bloating the local leader's ignominious pay packet or help him lease a porsche. But, where payment is concerned, the rates, at least, made sense.

There is indeed very much wrong with a system which says that we ought to elect officials to a local committee where they look after our welfare as they see fit. Because sometimes, as Shaun Wright of Rotherham made clear to the world, they see fit not to bother.

Perhaps a fairer and more fitting system would see the citizens themselves looking out for a far greater proportion of their needs. Our station stairwells and lifts might no longer smell of urine, then.

Cutting the top tax rate actual raised the amount of tax raised by the government, similarly cutting corporation tax. On personal tax, there is the Laffer curve which says that there is a peak tax rate at which you get the most money. For example, if you tax at 0%, you get no income, but if you tax at 100% you will get nothing either as people will not bother to work. Somewhere in between gives the maximum tax, high enough to get some but low enough so people do not use tax avoidance schemes/cut down on earnings. It is generally believed to be around 45%.
Company tax is the same - tax avoidance schemes cost companies money and are bad PR, so they do not do it unless the benefit is large.

Perhaps a fairer and more fitting system would see the citizens themselves looking out for a far greater proportion of their needs.

A very Thatcherite notion, Dora. "There is no such thing as society", indeed!

How you would organise it, how you would make everyone take a fare share, is another question. I expect those nice people from Pyongyang could advise us.

On government's running businesses, just because there is no competition does not mean the government should run the business - this leads to political point scoring/ideological changes rather than efficient management. All you need is effective regulation, (something at which the Labour party has always spectacularly failed). Look back to the 60's and 70's to see what life was like when we believed in the 'managed economy'

I suspect we could only head towards fairer, rather than fair in the Platonic sense. I suspect that the organisation wouldn't be that different from cooperatives, charities and council work done today. The local college organised its students to clear a brook last year. There was no fuss and organisational panic. The students and local residents just met and tidied it up. A similar thing happens with our church tidy. The time and date are announced and people just turn up. There is even a picnic afterwards. There's no great breast beating or organisational angst. People just get on with it.

carol In the Seventies the Evening Standard had a consumer complaints page which got more complaints about the North Thames Gas Board than about all other businesses combined.

And while I don't rule out renationalising the railways I wouldn't want them run by a Board of superannuated politicians, themselves in hock to the unions, again. It did not work well then and it would not work well now.

DoraGora As a one-off event, yes, but in the long term, I doubt it.

In fact Dora the people who would turn up and do it would correlate with MN which is rammed with folk of that sort!

Our church tidy is a long term project. The Samaritans is a long term project staffed mainly by volunteers. I'm not sure what your point is, really. We could awaken something called civic duty. But, we choose not to. And instead we have lots of elected officials, a proportion of whom are vastly overpaid and some of whom are doing a terrible job, or not doing a job at all, or so it would appear.

The bulk of the population do not volunteer, Dora, that's a sad fact. If you want the dirty jobs done you have to pay people to do them.

When a child goes missing, you find the local community out in droves. The police have even made appeals for people not to come out. People do volunteer. Our society just isn't set up to make doing it normal. Another part of my point suggested having universal contributions. Just as with mandatory voting in Australia, if you create the system, people will follow it.

Another one-off, and one that attracts the sentimental side of us all.

Has any society anywhere in modern times been organised as you suggest? I'm not saying it is unattractive - just implausible.

On the Continent it's common to have national service, where people who don't want to join the army volunteer for two or three years to do civic duties, such as man ambulances and do hospital duties. And, am I not right in thinking that Israel has both a standing and a citizen army?

I personally think local government is out of control and costs too much, and proposals to give it more power fill me with dread. My local council is already mired in fraud charges, further allegations and constant sackings as another sacrificial lamb hits the golden handshake (they never reveal how much the pay offs are). It doesn't respond to FOI requests half the time for "economic reasons" and generally makes people's lives a misery by being really bad at maintaining roads, collecting rubbish and operating public dumps. It likes to close local leisure centres and give private developers planning permission to build on the site. Fort this I pay nearly £2000 a year.

Considerable savings and improvement to quality of life could be made by reducing its size and powers, and encouraging some of its employees to get jobs in sectors which create wealth rather than take it away from people. Its not going to happen though. I live in an area where I am told tax raises are definitely coming, as if this is some form of vote winner, and where, when I was cutting my own hedge on a Sunday morning recently, a man walking past said "Can you not get the Council to do that for you?". Volunteering? Doesn't happen much.

We made it onto the national news once on account of how bad our pot holes were. Something to be proud of. Oddly enough, our roads have all been resurfaced, now.

If you were an ambulance driver you might resent being undercut by conscripts!

Are you looking at national service for everyone? That produces a corps of mostly young and inexperienced people.

Israel like most (probably all) countries which have or had military conscription does indeed have a regular career army too. What makes them unique is that military or alternative service is in principle compulsory for women too - would you want that?

The austerity measures will undoubtedly reduce demand and have a negative effect, however this depends where they fall. In theory in effect cutting the disposable income of middle income earnings will have less impact on demand than if they cut benefits given to those on low income. However, leaving benefits untouched when working people are less well off is not in my opinion a good move. Benefits need o be lower than the minimum wage otherwise it reduces the incentive to work.

I think that I was simply pointing out that it has in fact been done. You were saying how implausible it all was. We have several problems. Our probation service seems to be on its last legs, as is our social work and social care system. Our roads are in a parlous state and we have a surfeit of litter. Added to that, it has been pointed out that several people don't seem to be making a civic contribution. I'm sure those things could be put into a pot, and one or two solutions fashioned. I doubt it's wholly beyond the wit of man. And, while I was about it, I'd more than halve the pay of council leaders.

Our Council is so bad DoraGora its in the news and on the news most weeks. This week its been in twice - on Monday, it won the Golden Bull Award by the Plain English Campaign for one of its reports into one of its frauds. Then today it has announced it needs to make cuts to achieve £138 million to balance its books.

I actually live in dread of what its going to do next. Its speciality is licensing anything that moves, then creating departments to "police" it. Its activities actually cause me anxiety. The thought of paying more tax to give it more powers is absolutely terrifying.