if the 12bn welfare cuts were released pre-election the result would have been different?

[Toffeelatteplease]

I spoiled my ballot. As a lone parent to two "not working" as caring for a son with special needs, I was pretty sure we would be hit hard by a conservative government.

As it happens no change. except it probably will be harder to get DS the therapy and help and support at school because sadly I think all his front line care providers will be amongst the worse hit.

However I can think of a few very vocal conservative voters who I think are probably hit quite hard. I found the why should we support those who can't support themselves rhetoric very difficult and I "lost" a few friends in the year run up to the election.

AIBU to wonder whether the divide and conquer rhetoric led a lot of people to think that the cuts wouldn't hit them when they were going to, and had they known to wonder whether the election result might have been different

lougle It's called freedom of choice. You get to choose what you do, how much you want to earn, and how you achieve that. If only ever get paid what you are worth paying. At the moment if you work for the NHS, your entire income, and all the tax you pay, comes out of the public purse. Like it or not, you a welfare recipient, a state functionary. You are necessary to a degree, just other state employees are, but welfare needs to be cut; there is too much of it; and your wages are as valid a cut as any other.

Like you said, you have choices to improve your wages, and you have the option to do anything anyone does for a living. You only need to apply and demonstrate aptitude. So staying put and accepting a pay freeze is a choice. It comes with the job of being a state dependent.

"At the moment if you work for the NHS, your entire income, and all the tax you pay, comes out of the public purse. Like it or not, you a welfare recipient, a state functionary. You are necessary to a degree, just other state employees are, but welfare needs to be cut; there is too much of it; and your wages are as valid a cut as any other."

Doctors and nurses aren't welfare recieptants and pay tax like the rest of us. That is stupid. They work for their money and can choose to emmigrate to better paying countries or work in a private hospital.

Lots of people who have worked in the private sector have had pay cuts. Are they welfare dependents of Tesco or whatever large company they choose to work for.

Do you actually believe what you type? If I work for the NHS I'm an NHS employee.

At the moment if you work for the NHS, your entire income, and all the tax you pay, comes out of the public purse. Like it or not, you a welfare recipient, a state functionary. You are necessary to a degree, just other state employees are, but welfare needs to be cut;

I agree with a fair amount of what you say Ellie, but come on. You can't be serious with that.

Neccesary to a degree? Really? Do you not want to live in a society they employs people to take care of it's sick, or educate it's children, or enforce it's laws?

Tax is subscription that we pay to live in a civilised society. NHS staff, teachers, policement all provide services we find rather useful. Lets be honest, we cannot afford the levels of services that we would like.

Ptolemy Those services do not necessarily have to be provided by the state, even if they are funded by it.

I am not a passive welfare recipient.
I provide my education, knowledge, skills, intelligence, acumen and dedication to the tax payer and indeed the non tax payer in return for tax payer funded financial remuneration.

Services like education or health provided by the UK like payer are more lik groupon than welfare. Taxation is the cheapest way of paying for a citizen to be educated. I can't afford my own governess for the kids, perhaps I could afford private ed and healthcare if we paid less tax. Certainly I do not have finance to pay for my own personal army aka dark age style.

However I like living in the UK rather than some tinpot third world state.

Do you actually believe what you type? If I work for the NHS I'm an NHS employee. No. You are an employee of the state, just like a soldier or a fireman or a public schoolteacher, or a bin man. Private industry pays taxation. That taxation pays for public services. Those state bodies employ people. Those people get paid, and have tax deducted from their wage slips, but that taxation is already being paid out of the tax pot, and is simply being placed back into the tax pot. There is no net gain to the country in taxation at all. It is simply an accounting trick and the charade that the state collects tax from its employees just as it takes from those who work in private enterprise continues to be perpetrated.

The fact that people are brainwashed into ignoring the simple minder lying maths is testament to the effectiveness of the lie and the state education system most people are educated in.

I am not saying we don't need doctors, nurses, firemen, teachers, soldiers and policemen. I am pointing out the underlying mathematics of where the money comes from and where it goes.

Neccesary to a degree? Really? Do you not want to live in a society they employs people to take care of it's sick, or educate it's children, or enforce it's laws?

Yes, but it is a matter of degree. When the entirety of all National Insurance contributions collected every year cannot even confer the NHS budget, you know you've fucked up your health care spending. When all pensioners and all unemployed and vulnerable people want paid money, because they are entitled and they have paid into the system, and no National Insurance contributions can be diverted at all to providing any insurance for the nations pensioners or unemployed, you know you've fucked up your national insurance scheme. Everyone believes they are entitled. Indeed, everyone believes they are just as entitled as everyone else. But mathematically it is unsustainable, and they will find out each year how wrong they were. Either through cuts to their pensions, cuts to their benefits, cuts to their wages, cuts to their services, or simple job losses and closures.

You have a choice of either dealing with it now, in a grown up manner, or sticking your head in the sand and going Greek with the problem. Personally, I'd prefer the chance of not tanking the whole economy, even if a few nurses end up with a little bit of a pay freeze.

Or the state could have not bailed out the banks and the private sector they could insist people who live in the uk and companies who trade in the uk pay tax in the uk. The rich could pay more for the privilege of living in a society that enables their wealth.

It is you who has bought into a lie Ella austerity is not necessary, it does not benefit the economy, it is an ideological choice. (And seeing as you brought up Greece if it worked arguably they wouldn't be fucked because they sure as shit have cut down their state support and cranked up the austerity and it hasn't made their economy roar...but we are not Greece. We were never in the position that they are in so the comparison is disingeuous.)

mink

I don't disagree re. state support for banks and corporations. Any business should rise or fall on its own merits, but once you build a system based on government subsidised monopolies, you cannot allow them to fail without it bringing down the country. I don't disagree, but the turning back point was the point at which the country decided to promote stae monopolies, and not the point at which they faced systemic failure.

As an aside, most people have bought into the lie that bank creditors are the ones who bail out banks when they fail, and all nations in the developed world have enacted such legislation. But most are completely ignorant that THEY are the bank creditors they are talking about, and THEY are the ones who's pension pots, ISAs, etc. are going to be used to bail out the banks in a failure scenario. A fool and his money and all that. If they can't be bothered protecting their savings, and they just buy into all the BS FDA to them by the press, they really only have themselves to blame. The information can be made available, and as clear as day, and the masses will still plead ignorance and cry when their savings disappear. How many years warning do people actually need to protect themselves from these types of things?

As regards austerity, when a country spends more money every year for fifty years than it takes in in revenues, and less than 40% of the population are forced to work and pay for the remainder to live off their backs, then the system is unsustainable. Socialism only has two destinations, fascism or communism. Which is your preferred ideology?

People can't protect themselves from government bank bailouts, only parliament can do that. But, parliament can legislate that financial authorities regulate bad investment banking. Then the banks ignore the law and so does the regulator. Or, a new government removes the existing oversight. It's completely inappropriate to blame the electorate for failing to supervise the financial sector; it can't.

What do you mean by 'protecting their savings' Ellie?

Dora

What I meant was, following the bail-in legislation, people,tacitly support the notion that creditors are now on the hook for future crises. The vast majority of them do not know what a credit is. It means THEM. Where as the government back stopped the last failure, THEY backstop the next one, and if they believe their savings are protected by a government backed insurance policy, good luck with that one.

IMO, no one can oversee or regulate the banks. Banking transcends sovereign nations and governments. They have no need to obey laws. They write them. They have near infinite lobbying power and influence. And should they choose to ignore the law, they merely need to pass a potion of their profit from doing so back to the government as a kickback. Job done. Call it a fine. No one need go to jail. No company needs to be devolves or banished from these shores.

MuffMuff

If the game stopped being played tomorrow, and everyone walked away with what they had in their possession, what would you actually own? Any money you have in a bank, you do,not own. The bank owns it. They are the legal owner under the law. You are an unsecured creditor with an electronic receipt to say so. It is no different form having a credit note or a gift card for a shop that goes bankrupt.

If you can touch it, and you can protect it from others, then you own it. If you can't touch it, it is merely a promise to pay in times when promises are honoured.

A good start might be to research how money is created. If you have wealth such that it needs protecting, you should start by understanding what the difference is between wealth, money and currency, and what the risk are that you are trying to protect them against.

I view money as a store of labour. We work hard while we can, and are able, and we store what we don't need immediately as money. The purpose of money is to transport the value of the work we have done in the past, forward through time so that we may call upon it when we need to. That being the case, our money needs to be as safe a store of value as it can be, as impervious to theft and depreciation as possible, and as portable and as universally accepted as we can make it.

It is all them a matter of degree. How much wealth you are trying to protect has very different answers.

What do you mean by 'protecting their savings' Ellie? Maybe getting them out of paper assets would be a good start. The answering the question, "Why do I need to protect my savings?" Should provide the rest of ones answers.

Tbh I don't have wealth, just wondered what you meant.

In the last election my friend who had a job in the public sector voted Tory. Then a month or two later, she was dismayed to find she was very likely to lose her job. Apparently she didn't realise the Torys always gun for the public sector!

I think too many people don't bother to understand what they're voting for and don't read the manifesto.

Tbh I don't have wealth, just wondered what you meant.
Neither do I. Those who do I'm sure know how to protect it. It is those in the middle, who are the ones who lose most in a financial calamity. When a system fails, those with the power to transfer wealth to their own pockets do so. And the only place substantive wealth resides in a collapsing economy is in the pension pots of the masses, and the pockets of the middle classes. If you are poor, as I am, you can rest assured, others have far further to fall, and are a lot less accustomed to it than we.

Any money you have in the bank you do not own
This is one of the reasons people from my grandmothers generation secreted all their money in their house. They were very mistrustful of banks and kept it at home.
When grandmother died we found in excess of £30,000 stashed around her house, in pages of books, under the bed even in her old Hoover bag!

ROFL. Good on her.
We do not learn from history.
And so it repeats itself.
There will be a move to ban cash from existence. Incremental at first under the guise of safer for the poeple, stamp out terrorism, stop drug smuggling, pick your scary monster. But concerted and determined none the less.