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?

We need to get the anitbody tests rolled out and get back to work and school (still shielding the extremely vulnerable of course) or a great great grandchildren will still be paying this off even. The recession already will be huge, the eye watering sums to keep us all ticking over will be billions and billions. We need to restart and soon.

We will have one hell of a recession with high unemployment from all the businesses that go bust.

We are in for so,e very grim years and don't bother suggestion taxing the rich to pay. Is rubbish. The very rich leave and the semi rich are a drop in the ocean. It will be good old Joe Public that pay very dearly from this

What hindsight will tell us is whether more die from the subsequent recession with suicides, and loss of living standards and health than are saved by complete screwing the economy....is the cure going to be worse than the disease...only time will tell

I wonder if they'll dare reduce state pension payments/free buses etc for the many many pensioners who don't need it.

They should tax property. Very hard to take it abroad and easy to tax and most people have made huge tax free gains anyway so it will just be reversing those.

They could close Amazon, Starbucks loopholes by Taxing on sales made rather than profits.

Or if they are claiming they are based in Ireland / Luxembourg etc charge an import tax.

Maybe I'm wrong but their has to be a way to close the loopholes.

I know this is a terrible thing to say but their could be a pension saving if many old are victims of the virus.

I know most of you are too young to remember it or maybe too scared to mention it, but inflation will be the answer.

Look at historical graphs of national debt. It was through the roof at the start of the 60s and very low 20 years later in the 80s. Now look at a graph of inflation over that same period. It was 4-5% a year through much of the 60s then smashed over 20% at points in the 70s.

£1 in 1960 was worth between £5.50-£9 in 1980 depending on how you calculate it (there's a calculator out there you can use to verify this). So a 5-9x decrease in value over those 20 years.

Similar inflation will help with this debt too. Just be prepared for the average house price to be £1.5m, average salary to be £150k, and loaf of bread to be £6 in 2040. If that sounds ridiculous to you, think of how ridiculous 1980 prices would have sounded in 1960. Exactly the same.

Looqoo Only two countries tax citizens on their worl-wide income : US & Senegal. In reality, the IRS is pretty toothless outside the US, and the world-wide taxing is only effective on citizens in US who have worldwide earnings. Most countries have reciprocal tax agreements, which means, for example, if you had income in the UK on which you paid taxes, then these would be offset against any US taxes that you may owe. I do not think such a move would raise much, TBH

Bubbly I am not so sure that inflation is such a problem anymore, tho I would never argue that it is not something to keep an eye on. Right wingers such as IDS always wave the spectre of inflation at us when opposing stimulus packages. But we have had quite a lot of stimulus (eg, quantitative easing) in the last decade, with no detectable inflation.

Well those who are self employed and earning more than 50k (in straight profits not via dividends) are going to suffer doubly. No help now, so using savings to survive.

And then higher taxes to help pay for the help given to all employees (irrelevant of how much they earned and their savings level) and to self employed whose profits are below 50k.

• How is that fair?

Please tell me I'm wrong?

Weren't banks given our money a few years ago to bail them out?

How is Richard Branson and the like able to secure our money?

I don't get it. At all. Is there anywhere I can understand this in layman's terms?*

In layman’s terms, Tories are cunts and capitalism sucks.

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.

I take the view that everyone's going to be paid no matter what, if not by an employer then by Universal Credit. So we might as well create jobs for everyone, even if in many cases the value of the workers output falls short of the amount we are paying them.

I know this is a terrible thing to say but their could be a pension saving if many old are victims of the virus

We’ve already established that if every single pensioner snuffed it, there would be a saving of £93 billion - a drop in the ocean of the debt after this.

That saving of pensions at 90bn is annually & I believe the bailout is estimated at 350bn so potentially could help. Moot point though as no one wants to wipe out everyone over the age of 67

@Moanranger. @alsohuman

It’s not an area I know much about (the US overseas tax) but I just thought it worth mentioning given we thought that some of the highly paid may flee abroad, if higher taxes were brought in.

But we have had quite a lot of stimulus (eg, quantitative easing) in the last decade, with no detectable inflation.

I think that's because of where the stimulus went. It didn't go into our pockets. It went into rather weird and abstract parts of the financial system to keep the wheels moving with overnight trades, credit swaps, and so forth. If the QE had gone into our pockets, inflation would have shot up, which is why they didn't do it.

This time though.. they're doing it. All these people on UC, all these salaries getting paid with no actual production occuring.. this is "helicopter money" and risks inflation more than QE did, alas.

Another £13.4 billion in writing off hospitals’ historic debt now. It won’t all be paid off in my lifetime.

They are happy to cheer on rapists, drink drivers and wife-beaters every Saturday so they will forget about the money too

ODFOD, are you seriously including the likes of Sadio Mane, Juan Mata and Ben Foster in that?

I wonder if they'll dare reduce state pension payments/free buses etc for the many many pensioners who don't need it.

More likely that NIC will be charged on ALL income sources, including pensions, property rental, dividends, etc.

As it stands now, if you have two part time low paid employments, you don't pay NIC if each is below the limit. The same could be applied to pensioners so someone with only basic state pension and a small occupational pension still wouldn't have to pay NIC (to protect those with lower incomes), but someone with a hefty pension would pay NIC. It's a win-win - the richer pensioners pay, the poorer ones are exempted.

The last thing they can do is tax middle earners any more - they've already borne the brunt of recent "taxes" such as child benefit claw back, workplace pension, NIC rises, student loan repayments, etc etc - and anyway, the country needs to encourage people to work, and more tax is a disincentive - just like the GPs who have gone part time to avoid the punitive 62% marginal tax rate at a time when we need them the most!

Another £13.4 billion in writing off hospitals’ historic debt now.

So the mis-managed ones benefit.