To wonder why the conservatives won't just tax people more ??

[stopfuckingshoutingatme]

Am I missing something here ?

Clearly there is a scarcity of money - and certain areas are rightly ring fenced .

But don't tell me that most working families can't afford an average of £50 a month - this would exclude people on low income , and for some families it £10 and for some £200 -

The UK is full of families and individuals with disposable income - a minor tax increase for 40% of the working population could raise £11bn

So why won't they do it ??? Baffles me - I would personally rather pay more tax and know that the vulnerable are cared for

UK immigrants pay more in tax than they claim in benefits your point about being subsidised to be here is incorrect.

I hear this trotted out Polly Parrot style time after time.

It's not true.

Take a male EU immigrant to the Uk aged over 25 and earning the minimum wage for a 40 hour working week. He has a non-working partner and 2 school age children.

That's quite a realistic scenario.

He therefore earns £288 pw gross. Over the year he therefore pays£795income tax and£830in National Insurance.

So he contributes £1625 pa plus indirect taxes such as VAT etc.

Without even calculating any benefits, child benefit, tax credits or housing benefit or health care he may also be entitled to you can immediately see that this family is not a net contributor to the UK economy as each of the 2 school places alone cost, £4550.54 (Uk average over all local authorities). That's over £9K per year in school places alone!.

Even if his partner also works 40 hours per week at minimum wage this family will still be a net cost to the UK tax payer.

But some people want us to build more houses, school and hospitals so we can accommodate even more migrants that we are effectively subsidising to come here.

An inconvenient truth.

www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/578535/Immigration-UK-European-Union-EU-Migration-Watch-UK

So the study I have read is from UCL and says that, whilst yours states no economic data or sources and is from the express.

Look even the FT agrees with me: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c49043a8-6447-11e4-b219-00144feabdc0.html

Yes I'm going to believe your right wing bile, xenephobic clap trap, its an inconvienint truth alright but not in your favour.

Lurked Your comparison with city sizes is slightly erroneous because they don't all go to one place.

But the impact is still the same. You don't somehow stop needing a primary school place for your six-year-old just because you go to live in Sunderland as opposed to London.

I think the problem here is that many people don't quite realise what 336,000 people actually means.

Put it this way, I live in a ward of about 12,000 people. We have eight primary schools servicing the ward with about 56 primary school teachers in total and about 26 TAs. There are an average of 90 births a year. We also have two GP surgeries with a total of 16 GPs and eight registrars in rotation. We also have a secondary school of 1900 pupils.

We have over 6000 cars in the ward with over 5000 people commuting to work every day. There's about an extra thousand who take the bus or train every day. The number of households is around 5200.

If you take my ward as a guide, 336,000 extra people means over 145,000 extra homes. It means over 1500 extra primary school teachers, over 448 extra GPs, over 168,000 extra cars, 28,000 extra people taking public transport. You are talking about 28 extra secondary schools with over 50,000 more pupils.

Going by my council figures, 336,000 people means one and a half new local hospitals, each with a labour ward, a birth centre and substantial out-patients. Looking at the pressure on our local labour ward and birth unit, I'd argue you probably actually need two more of those, rather than one and a half. It's getting near needing another primary trust. You would probably need another two crematoriums as well.

You are probably also looking at 150,000 jobs.

These are serious figures. You can spread the impact around, but, in essence, it's still there. Someone who needs to get the bus to work is still going to need the bus regardless of whether that bus seat is required in Peterborough or Durham. Yes, some areas do have more capacity, but what you tend to find is that that capacity is not as elastic as it first appears or is inappropriate in reality.

For example, we have 2000 empty housing association houses in our borough. But no locals want to live in them -- and neither do migrants or asylum seekers. They are in awkward locations, they are too far from amenities and the town centre, you kinda need a car to get anywhere ... so they stand empty. And then the HA asks what exactly the point of these homes is and "can we knock them down 'cos they are costing us money in security guards and they have high levels of damp anyway because no one has lived in them for so long and we can sell the land to this developer who is going to build houses that people with cars and who don't care about being near to amenities will buy?", we get accusations of demolishing social housing and being in the back pocket of developers.

So everyone gets jittery and the houses are still there. And, eventually, they will fall down. Meanwhile, we have a housing list that is about a mile long.

Yes I'm going to believe your right wing bile, xenephobic clap trap, its an inconvienint truth alright but not in your favour

Play fair. The figures speak for themselves.

It must be a very inconvenient truth indeed as you've had to resort to name-calling.

PS I think you'll find that UCL receives EU funding. I would hate to think that affected their neutrality.

Excellent reasoning Werks

And there is no reason to expect that 336,000 will not be higher next year as the minimum wage increases or in future years as poor countries such as Albania, Bosnia and Macedonia complete their EU accession and their citizens eventually have the right to live in any EU country, including the UK.

But spirnging your figures are from the express, I've read the link you provided. My figures are from UCL and Ive linked to 3 different sources that back it up. Why are mine not valid and yours are?

Werk, your points are valid but do you not think the impact of migration is compounded by the removal of funding from local councils, education and health etc? I think it very much is.

hahah you say about UCL's funding adn then quote the express. hahahaha

www.economist.com/news/britain/21631076-rather-lot-according-new-piece-research-what-have-immigrants-ever-done-us

My figures are exactly that - my figures. Calculated by me by researching minimum wage and the cost of school places.

i don't need a newspaper or UCL to back up the bleeding obvious - most migrants are not net contributors. Some may be. But should we be subsidising those who are not and who are just an additional burden on already over-stretched servicies?

The impact of 99 migrant families that may be a net loss to the UK tax payer are not compensated for by a handful that may be net contributors and Werz's post that explains their impact on local areas explains why.

I happen to think that's a perfectly reasonable question to ask - without being accused of being xenophobic.

The British are funny about immigration and lots of the points you make werk are valid but also make a lot of assumptions which don't match the data on immigrants.

For one, a large number of the immigrants that come each year are young and do not arrive with children in tow, about half or more return to their country of origin with 5 years as well, they are not permamnent settlers.

The points you make regarding services are valid, but I think the schools and hospitals point is compounded by 6 years of under funding! We haven't buildt any more hospitals, we haven't expanded schools for the bulge years, we are cutting the spending on these services at the same time as they need more fuding and I think that is a fundamental flaw in any argument.

"My figures are exactly that - my figures. Calculated by me by researching minimum wage and the cost of school places."

Well how scientific, great analysis there well done. Please don't take it personally if I don't take anything you say in future seriously.

Silly me. I forgot that all migrants were doctors, nurses, architects and engineers. The ones that I see in low paid work are just here on their own, staying in their aunty's spare room and contributing tons of money to the UK economy.

Silly Mr Cameron says the immigration level into the UK is "unsustainable". We must ensure he reads your helpful articles to put his mind at rest.

There, I said all that without having to resort to name-calling.

Lurked

There's none as blind as those who refuse to see. When your countryside is concreted over to provide more infrastructure for more and more immigrants don't forget to tell your grandchildren that it was all that nasty Mr Cameron's fault for forcing unnecessary austerity on you.

He just forgot to water the magic money tree.

Saying something is xenephobic isn't name calling, its pointing out a fact.

Cameron says stuff like that because it appeases the blue rinse brigade out in the shires, not because he'll do anything about it, he didn't even try to insist on caps on freedom of movement when he went to renegotiate with the EU.

Incidentally the UCL report states: " “overall, stopping EU migration would cost public services more in lost tax revenue than it would save in reduced demand.”

Which would maybe be why Cameron has done nothing about it.

Because I'm fed up of being seen as the cash cow
I know as a family we are fortunate and earn a lot more than average- but we are by no means wealthy and to be lumped in same tax bracket as someone on £100k is just unaffordable
After mortgage (regular terraced family house) and paying 2 lots of childcare- 1 ft nursery, 1 after school club, food and bills there is less left than my years as a trainee
All my choices
But don't ask me to pay more because it will push me to pack it all in, stay at home, see my kids- oh and rely on support from gov
So many people like us
My solution/ make efficiencies in public services- many friends work in nhs and education, all cute examples of high level waste because policies are being created by those who have little knowledge of daily running

There is loads of data that backs me up too. Not the anecdote and personal experience offered here.

I know what I am going to believe.

My way would be to tax the highest earners more, and tax unearned income at a higher rate.

We pander to the rentier class at the expense of everyone else and governments of all colours have done this.

Tax land to make it cheaper and less open to hoarding by firms.

Tax rents at a higher rate and bring in rent controls.

Stop allowing things like free schools ( which btw pander to the needs of a very particular group) in areas where there is already spare capacity.

Don't fund the garden bridge.. etc etc

Werk, your points are valid but do you not think the impact of migration is compounded by the removal of funding from local councils, education and health etc? I think it very much is.

This is a bit tricky because of the nature of the impact of immigration and council budgets. I would argue the problems were always going to be there, regardless of council funding cuts, because they were already there to some extent prior to 2010.

For example, by far the largest aspect of our council budget is adult social care. Now this is an area that doesn't really involve migrants. As a rule, you don't get 90-year-old Polish ladies with mobility issues and early onset Alzheimers migrating to Britain, so cuts to that budget doesn't really affect immigrants and they don't really affect it.

When it comes to education funding, LAs are basically a financial conduit. The money comes from central government. I suspect the reason why the Tories really want academies is because they want to save money by cutting out the financial middle-man and want to use a kind of "reversed" PFI deal to take the day-to-day financial liability away from central government.

Indeed, the real ideological aspect of Tories versus "the blob" is happening in teacher training, which nobody is talking about and they really ought to be because it has quite significant implications.

But, at the end of the day, adding thousands of primary school children to the poolhas a financial impact. And it's not just the impact of funding those extra place at £5k each a year, the numbers involved become a question of building schools that would not have necessarily needed to be built while also funding those extra places.

This is what is interesting about capacity. There comes a point where creating extra capacity involves a huge financial "jump". Say a school has ten spare places, ten migrant children come, the cost of those ten children filling that capacity is £50K a year. You might squeeze another eight kids in. But the next eight kids, you gotta start thinking about building another classroom and hiring another teacher. Say the building costs you £30K. All of a sudden, those next eight children have cost you not only £50K a year, but the £30K on top. You replicate this scenario over and over, and you start to be looking at serious money.

To cope with this scenario, you are looking at significant amounts of extra spend on and above your previous non-austerity baseline. So the question of whether cuts have made the impact worse is a kind of moot point -- because the problem of requiring that extra funding would still have existed.

It's that old maxim that there isn't much difference in needing £10 million or £20 million if you can only get ten quid.

Healthcare is ring-fenced; the issue there, as I understood it, was that the NHS requires greater increases in funding YoY. Funding has not been removed per se, it's just not being increased by the amount it ought to be.

I do feel that it is important to point out that Corbyn's economic plan is based on the premise that Osbourne eradicates the deficit entirely or halves it during this parliament (which would mean bringing it down to about £50 billion). His anti-austerity plan, or the last one I read, is based on the notion of Osbourne's austerity having done its job.

So why does the economic data (from more than one source) give the point that removing the immigrants would be more harmful due to the fall in tax reciepts than the benefit of the lower demand?

The schools point that you make is not taking into account the falling budgets of schools. For example they are ring fenced in cash terms, not real terms, schools don't get the extra 1% pay rise they gave staff, it comes from the budget, schools will also not get the extra money to pay the 1% extra in employers NI in the coming tax year. Schools have falling budgets and the Tories cancelled schools for the future which was building schools with extra capacity.

Austerity has NOT worked, the national debt is larger, the deficit is down on 2010 yes but not at the same level it was prior to the crash. The surplus will not happen because the figures are so dodgy, Osborne has done some really clever accounting tricks to make it look like it in his last budget. But then who trusts his last budget?

Lurked Austerity has NOT worked, the national debt is larger, the deficit is down on 2010 yes but not at the same level it was prior to the crash. The surplus will not happen because the figures are so dodgy, Osborne has done some really clever accounting tricks to make it look like it in his last budget. But then who trusts his last budget?

The crash "caused" 75 percent of the deficit because tax receipts collapsed by £150 billion in the credit crunch environment (we were already running a deficit of around £46 billion pre-crash during a boom period), leaving us with a £200 billion deficit in operational spend. The national debt is larger because we have been borrowing year on year since 2008 to cover operational spend as we still had an operational deficit and still have one to date of about £100 billion.

These figures can be found in historical PESA returns.

I am sorry Lurked, but you don't seem to have a very good grasp on what has happened with British public finances over the last twenty years.

Tories cancelled schools for the future which was building schools with extra capacity.

There was never any money for Building Schools for the Future. A close friend of mine was the council lead on that project in one of our neighbouring councils and everyone knew there was no money for it. They were all "Potemkin" schools.

I'm very aware of what has happened to the British public finances over the last 20 years thank you. I'm aware that Osbrone borrowed as much in 3 years as Labour did in 13. I'm aware that the Labour government did have a deficit during years of growth, but also that they ran 3 surpluses. The deficit years were when we were fighting a war on 2 fronts, and also putting right the damage the Tories did to public services in their 18 years in power.

After 6 years of cuts, the deficit is still higher than it was under Labour pre crash.

"There was never any money for Building Schools for the Future."

Strangely there was money for QE though, there is money for all sorts of projects, but schools for the future went. Strange

Oh and the deficit in 07 was the same size as the deficit the tories left in 97' and far smaller than the ones that they had run over the course of that particular parliament.

One final point would be that budget deficits really became a much bigger thing under Thatcher's government, you know the same one that reduced the top rates of tax.

Could there possibly be a correlation?

I confess, I haven't RTFT because there was a vein of benefits bashing which pissed me off.

How about, before we cut benefits, privatise education and the NHS... Before the wonderful parts of out country are fucked over because of "funding" why not fix HMRC?

Make them accountable, transparent and FFS, ensure corporations all pay their fucking taxes. Close the bloody loopholes. Make every "deal" available to the public to scrutinise and act more fairly.

Re budget deficits, it's no accident that deficits have risen since 2008.

A feature of post-2008 economics has been the discrepency between the economic fortunes of the best paid, and those of middle and lower earners, accompanied by cuts in taxation that have primarily benefited the better off.

What this means is that middle and lower earners are paying less tax because their income has fallen in real terms, while the richest are paying less tax because taxes (on both earned and unearned income) have fallen.

That's a simplification obviously, but if you encourage rising earnings inequality, and then cut taxes for the best off, you will necessarily reduce the tax take (unless you simulataneously increase indirect taxes like VAT, which the poor cannot avoid).