To ask how this will all be paid for?

[Charlieandthechocolatecake]

The furloughed and self employed will get 80% pay, which is excellent given the alternative.

I'm a keyworker. Working overtime on taxpayers money. Half of my colleagues are self isolating on full pay for a minimum of 12 weeks due to health conditions. I hope the NHS are doing the same.

Where is this money coming from? How will we end up paying it back?

Hopefully HS2 will be cancelled

In the short term, government borrowing.

Of course this then means the government will be making more debt payments. Currently about 5% of our taxes goes to paying debt interest. If this goes up, it's likely to mean tax increases or/and spending cuts. Another option is to just borrow more and more but that seems dubious.

The hope is that by keeping the economy strong there's still plenty of taxes coming in. If the economy was allowed to collapse tax revenues collapse with it.

The debt is owed to investors both in the UK and abroad. Chances are your pension fund includes some UK government debt.

I was reading today that Ronaldo and several Juventus players agreed not to be paid for 4 months so that staff would be paid their normal wages. Obviously 4 months wages is peanuts when you're as wealthy as Ronaldo but I'm surprised that premiership footballers didn't agree to do something similar.

German clubs are doing something similar, but then they have a different relationship with their fans than english clubs do. In the sense that they actually see them as fans, in England they see (and treat) fans as consumers. In Germany some players are volunteering, delivering food to the elderly and vulnerable. And the ultras from Dortmund are doing the same. That's what happens when your fans are a community and the club understands and recognises that.
But there's always someone like @Hingeandbracket to dismiss such people as thickos who "happily cheer on rapists...."

Once it's all over people will be back giving stacks to "their" football teams, all forgotten. They are happy to cheer on rapists, drink drivers and wife-beaters every Saturday so they will forget about the money too.

Nice bit of snobby generalising you're doing there, stop tarring all football fans with the same brush. There is no "they." Football fans are all individuals, see my example above in regards to the people you're mindlessly disparaging.

Austerity, taxes, and pension age where you won't be alive to see it.

Agree on the point on football clubs. Spurs average player earns £70k a week but they cant pay their 550 other staff their full salary most of which are probably under £30k a year. That is just shameful trying to claim furlough! Same with the Weatherspoons owner and Richard Branson

@Justmysize

You can't be serious? Please educate yourself a bit more about the media and the world we live in before embarrassing yourself like that again.

Charlie There is no easy explanation. There are a couple of competing economic philosophies around. Tories tend to be pure monetaryists (sp), who essentially believe in balancing the books at all costs. This leads to using things like austerity to do this. Keynesians believe that in times of economic difficulty, the govt should step in and spend to protect the economy & jobs. The result of this second approach should be that tax receipts are better in the long term as economy is saved, business returns to trading, people keep jobs, salaries, etc. Yes, it will need to be paid for, but should be a less painful process than old style Thatcherite monetary policy.

@Justmysize
The publisher you linked to appears to have a bad reputation for publishing poorly pier reviewed work. Also from the extract I read it was looking at the whole corona genome in bats not specifically covid-19.

Boris Johnson showed promising signs the other day when he said ‘there is such thing as society’ which was a direct contraction to what Margaret Thatcher claimed during the height of Thatcherism and Reaganomics.

I think firstly, that all big projects such as HS2, Heathrow expansion etc will be kicked in to the long grass. At best the country will make do and mend what we already have.

The self employed will be paying more tax. The government made it clear that the self employed had not contributed the amounts they are being offered and thus will be paying it back. I also believe the elderly will find pensions will be hit in some way. Nearly every other demographic has been squeezed by austerity, there is nothing left to take from them whilst pensions were ‘triple locked’ and kept rising.

Second home owners etc will also be hit.

Brexit will also be kicked into the long grass. Business cannot afford Coronavirus and Brexit in the same decade let alone year.

Future generation like our kids. Same as for WW1 & WW2 debts which the UK only finished paying for in 2006 and WW1 debt in 2015.

I too have been wondering this.
We will wait and see what the 'details' actually are. I'm actually quite concerned.

It’ll be taxes and tbh, no one can complain.

Our children will pay for it, for their entire lives. Don't expect them to live as long as your parents generation. Or to have a retirement.

Well the good news is that we’ve only recently finished paying off our WWII debt so we can reasonably crawl back into the hole again. Silver linings.

I think the government will want to bring manufacturing back to the UK. Gone are the days of cheap foreign imports.

To do that they will increase import taxes. They might decide to continue to support the Commonwealth and EU so different levels of import tax from different countries.

This in turn provides a better jobs base within the UK and keeps money circulating. This is a wake up call that we can't reply on overseas imports. We don't have enough PPE because most is made overseas, in countries who need it themselves, we need to be more self sufficient.

I also suspect that businesses will not want to return to the crazy fly half way round the world for a meeting scenario. So Heathrow expansion and HS2 will be put on hold.

Taxes will go up, particularly for higher earners.

You could tax the higher earners 100% and it is still a drop in the ocean compared to the debt we're running up.

EVERYONE will have to pay more tax and/or NIC. I can foresee the NIC exemption on pensions and workers over retirement age being scrapped so the tax burden is spread over a lot more people.

Workers (especially middle earners) are the ones worst affected by this shut down, and they're the ones already paying tax, nic, student loans, workplace pensions, and lose child benefit if earning over £50k - there's a limit to how much more you can screw out of them.

The govt will be looking at others who are paying relatively lower amounts of tax/nic - pensioners, self employed, those living on investments (property/dividends/trusts/foreign income), etc.

A middle earning worker could have deductions of 50% easily from their pay packet. A pensioner on the same income, deductions of only 20%.

I think we'll also see tax incentives on putting money into pensions reduced, not just for higher earners, but for normal/average workers too.

And look at high earners like a GP on £125k - actively reducing working hours to avoid the 62% marginal tax rate, so going part time to get their wage below £100k - we have to scrap that kind of punitive tax as we need workers to work. We don't need punitive taxes that almost force workers to reduce their hours, refuse promotions and invest in pensions to reduce their tax.

Taxes will increase in all areas, young, middle and old. Spending taxes such as VAT will also increase and maybe even zero rated items will become VATable at 5% (perhaps food). Alcohol, food, insurance, flight taxes all up.

If people want a better funded NHS, better funded public services, everyone will have to pay more, especially to start paying down the debt taken out over the next few months. Those who think it can all be afforded by "taxing the rich" or trying to clamp down on multinationals are, frankly, deluded - it's a numbers game - tens of millions of ordinary people versus a tiny number of "rich". We're all in this and will all pay for it, one way or another, there'll be no-one hiding from it.

I agree HS2 and Heathrow expansion will be put on hold. WFH has proved so useful and popular, hopefully it will remain. I’d love brexit to be kicked into the long grass. Bozo seems to have other ideas.

I think taxes will need to increase. Plus austerity reinstated unfortunately. Hopefully we will realise the need to get industry back to this country and the tories will stop asset stripping, which has been happening for years.

It would be good to see more levelling, transparency offshore monies squirrelled away, properly taxing companies like amazon etc.

I think the government will want to bring manufacturing back to the UK. Gone are the days of cheap foreign imports.

Fully agree. We've had an eye wateringly high balance of payments deficit on goods for far too long and for some reason, the politicians etc have turned a blind eye. A few decades ago, the economy was ALL about the balance of payments deficit, now it's barely mentioned. Since Brown/Blair, we're all about this so-called "service" economy - well now we're screwed at a time when most "services" are shut down and we have a massively run down manufacturing industry unable to produce what we actually need.

This WILL cause a massive re-think towards us being more self sufficient. Of course there are things we need to import (like foods stuffs), but things we can make/grow ourselves, we should do.

We're been shown the fully of relying on slightly cheaper imports - when the chips are down (like now), it highlights the fragility of it. We're going to see huge numbers of new factories and start heading towards making more stuff again.

Like the poster above, I can foresee import duties etc to discourage and increase the cost of imports, to make UK manufacturing more attractive. And yes, I think the Commonwealth will become very important to us again for the things we have to import - thank goodness we kept up good relations with the Commonwealth over all these years when people were telling us to concentrate on Europe!

It would be good to see more levelling, transparency offshore monies squirrelled away, properly taxing companies like amazon etc.

Which won't happen without international co-operation, although leaving the EU is a good start as we're not then hog-tied to EU rules which allow a company trading in Europe to pay taxes in whatever EU country they like, hence Amazon, Google etc getting away with low taxes by basing themselves in low tax European countries.

But I can't imagine Isle of Man will be happy if they lose their tax haven status as it's the only thing keeping their economy going (as per all the other tax havens around the Globe). There's a reason some places have set themselves up as tax havens - it's because they're screwed otherwise.

While the exceptional NHS spend at present is undoubtedly necessary, I do wonder about automatically covering the salaries of everyone unable to work.

Would it be unreasonable to expect those who don’t have (eg) childcare responsibilities, and aren’t ill/isolating, to seek alternative employment- particularly given the need for additional shop staff / cleaners etc, and only pay out if they are unable to secure other work?

Governments sell debt via bonds which are seen as safe. Unfortunately, many western, capitalist countries are hugely indebted to China. China is relatively cash-rich & has bought staggering amounts of foreign national debt. It is one reason that China is not confronted by the West over its many, many, harmful policies ( wildlife trade, human rights) The West fears pissing China off & then getting their debt called in.
I would love to see more national self-sufficiency & also canning of these ridiculous transport projects like third runway & HS2. CV will be transformational - we will see.

The common wealth is not a viable trading block. All commonwealth countries are part of other established blocks such as those within the Asia Pacific arena. If you are looking to trade more locally perhaps it makes more sense to join a local trade block such as... the EU!

I dont understand who government borrows from. I get taxes. So china owns our debt? Thats going to make interesting conversations.

I think this is exactly what is so unfair about what the government is doing. Loads of people getting 80% for sitting at home and other people not getting a penny despite having their jobs vaporised - and with the cheerful thought ahead of having to pay a lot more taxes in the future. It’s staggeringly unfair.

Lots of people on mumsnet appear to be better off because of this (no childcare costs, no commuting costs) whereas others are losing everything through no fault of their own. It’s insane.

If the government manages it's financial assistance as effectively as it's managing CoVid testing then worrying about who pays eventually is pointless The social disorder that will result is barely imaginable so hopefully they're sorting it out and possibly wishing they'd seen the point of the Civil Service beforehand instead of undermining and dismissing it.