Rishi Sunak no more bailouts

[Elpresidente29]

He said government cannot go on like this...

Yeah those bloody pensions, first of all we all have to lockdown because through no fault of theirs they are more susceptible to this virus, we should definitely cut their pensions as well, how dare they.

So many typos, as I am cooking. Sorry

£12,500 is more than my state pension of about £7800 a year will be (although I want to work until I die anyway).

My suggestion of UBI being £12,500 (single person allowance) per adult is however much more than I think we can afford so if we did it it would be very complicated as we would probably only pay everyone something like the typical universal credit sum to families I suspect or £3k or £5k and top up with benefits and pensions. I think the Uk has already decided UBI will not work for our country.

if UBI is 12.5k per annum and you have a 30k per annum private pension you deduct 12.5k from that in ‘tax’ so your annual income woukd be UBI-12.5k
Pension-17.5k
Total= 30k

I can see that flying. Currently you’d get £30k occupational pension, plus £8,400 state pension, on which you’d pay tax, ending up with £33,220. So essentially you’d be asking that pensioner to almost halve their net income. Never going to happen.

The Green Party produced a study on UBI. From memory, adults aged 16 - state retirement age got £80 per week. £50 for each child under 16 (no max. number of children). Pensioners and the disabled got an additional £50 pw. The study was done a few years ago so those figures would probably be higher if the Greens came to power now. Housing benefit would still be paid. Most other benefits would be scrapped - I know they said they would keep Carer's Allowance but I only noticed that because it's relevant to me.

Threshold tax allowance is how much you can earn before paying tax, currently £12.5k pa. So though the lowest paid in society (part timers, people on basic JSA & no other benefits etc) who currently earn under your notional £8k pa, will win out, everybody else earning between £8k and £150k will lose out.

The discussion was about how/if you could use UBI as an acute, time limited alternative to furloughing. It won’t work as a long term solution but as a stimulus? I don’t know. But if you make 5 million redundant and put them on Universal Credit that wouldn’t to me, create an economic get out.

Anyone else got any alternatives to Furloughing that could have worked?

I think a lot of people would go for UBI right about now to be honest. I would.

It can't be a replacement because if it was high enough not to create any unacceptable hardship for even the most obscure case, it would be too expensive.

Look at some of you already trying to get the UBI lower than what some people could live off, the expense over time becomes minimal, switch to a keynesian model of economics (never happen under a neo liberal government whether red or blue) build an absolute fuckton of housing for rent or repurpose brownfields for housing just to satisfy the NIMBY on here, a lot of peoples benefits now and no doubt would be the same with UBI will end up in landords pockets so that monopoly would need to end first and I doubt the vested interests MPs have in this area means it will never happen

Those on furlough you will be demonised sooner rather than later, youve seen people on MN already trying, this is in no doubt current Tory nudge policy in action, those of you who think that isnt fair youre right, I hope you spoke out in 2012 when they started demonising myself and other disabled people after all it was the poor and the public sector that caused the 2008 financial crash and it will be furloughed peoples fault for the current recession, not Tory policy and not Brexit the economy wont be able to recover because its your fault

yes you are right.

UBI should be just above the poverty line, surely.
Then people can decide whether to work or not.
Most wouldn't want to / couldn't live on a low income, so the incentive to work if they could would still be there.
Just looking on here people can't wait to get back to work, so the economy wouldn't go.

UBI should be just above the poverty line, surely.

I don't get the UBI idea TBH..it sounds great, give everyone a £1000 a month.. but surely rents, prices and everything else would just go up because suppliers know their customers can afford it. Especially private landlords, the ones with the cheapest properties. So instead of charging UC claimants, £500 a month, they'll charge the UBI receivers £800?

I'm a LL with a cheap terrace, I'm getting £200 atm, I'm not losing anything, but not gaining. Tennant in trouble and he's a nice lad, would normally be £450.
He scratches my back, I scratch his. His wife is disabled and he's lost most work.
Would they really do that? Not round here they wouldn't.

Monketmytoes The solution to that is to apply some sort of rent freeze/control.

It's irrelevant in any case for much of the UK. Few areas have private rents lower than the UC amount. Certainly not significantly so. It's more common the other way. UC falls short. Hence our high levels of homelessness and thousands and thousands of families living in one room temp accomodation.

The firm my DH works for simply will struggle to open and pay all its staff full time again as they providing training, which isnt possible during social distancing. So if the government remove support for businesses and workforce then theres a high chance the entire firm will go bankrupt as without people to train it cant make a income and therefore cant pay its bills including wages >.

Would they really do that? Not round here they wouldn't.

There was a landlord being talked about on my local FB not long ago. Evicted a woman and three kids because he was going to live in the house. 1 month later it was up for sale for £50k over asking price. 2 months later it was back up for rent for £200 more than the woman with 3 kids had been paying. Guy owns 23 other properties nearby and has done this several times apparently.
So I wouldn't be surprised if Landlords saw profit if UBI came in.

I'd welcome UBI, I believe it would be cheaper to run and easier to manage than the current UC / Sanction shambles.

ToffeeYoghurt

I know my rent part of UC is based purely on LHA rate. When I moved to this property with a social landlord it was £200 cheaper than most others and UC still doesn't cover the entirety, there's a £45 shortfall and then I get a percentage removed due to having a spare room, which I wouldn't mind.if I'd chosen this place, I was forced here by the LA saying it this or they'd remove me and my daughter from the lists... Apparently not wanting to move a then 6 year old into the middle of a renowned druggie and prostitution area counts against you when looking for housing.. who'd have thought it..

@MonkeyToesOfDoom - I had the same thing when I was moved, by the police btw, out of my marital home for my own safety. Housing wanted to move me to another town, 7 miles away from the kids school and my work. I was really lucky because my brother lent me the bond for a private rental, otherwise we would have to have moved.

There are plenty of issues with UBI, definitely, but I still think it could work if it was done with the right people organising it and not bowing to political pressure. Especially in this climate. But I think power is a heavy influence. Look at the narrative ‘as a country we can’t afford this’ ‘there’s no magic money tree’ etc. The crisis has shown that as a country we had a lot of money sloshing around. ‘We can’t afford this’ should read ‘We don’t want to spend it on x, we want to spend it on y’. Who knows what the right thing to spend it on but be transparent while you do it.

The crisis has shown that as a country we had a lot of money sloshing around

I don’t think that’s true. The government is printing the money to pay for this.

Sorry, yes, government debt had increased massively. But in terms of personal wealth, the richest 1000 families doubled their collective wealth between 2010-19 from 333.5 billion to 771.3 billion so there’s plenty of money sloshing about if you are in the right place. I don’t know how or why government spending and borrowing increased so much as services were cut significantly. I don’t know where the money has gone. No idea. I know about economic models but not so much about government spending.

Austerity was an ideological choice. It would have been completely unnecessary if corporations had been rigorously pursued for the tax they should have paid and the 1000 richest had paid an extra 5% tax - which they wouldn’t have even noticed. Cameron’s government will go down as the most heartless in modern history.

Alsohuman absolutely 100% correct. Austerity was one of the worst things that ever happened to our Country, it decimated our public services (most notably NHS and social care). And meanwhile the rich got richer. But it was easy to convince the masses (well the Tory voters anyway) that it was absolutely necessary.

Before this we were spending 5% on defence and 5% on national debt (of people's income tax and NI), 12% on education, 12% state pensions, 20% on health and 23% on welfare and then bits on other things.

We pay about £40 billion a year on debt interest and presumably that might double after the bailouts we have had so perhaps we will be more like 10% of spending on debt interest and 5% less on either health, welfare or education

From.where I sit, Austerity was the very wealthy convincing the well off that unemployed people had too much. That if only they stripped the unemployed of their big TVs then the well off could also become very wealthy.

When I looked at the stats, unemployed people accounted for a tiny percentage of the welfare bill, but still the very wealthy pumped out Benefit street, Benefit Britain, Benefits By The Sea etc. Mass billion pound media companies convincing the well off that the unemployed numbered in their millions and were taking billions and billions of their money just to have kids and free houses etc. Successfully labelling the unemployed people as scroungers, druggies, alcoholics and having babies for cash.

But I am biased, being a scrounger and all.

perhaps we will be more like 10% of spending on debt interest and 5% less on either health, welfare or education

In your dreams @Xenia, all those areas are already cut to the bone and there’s no way Johnson is going to break his election promises on them. Brace yourself, those taxes you regard as theft will be going up.