Rishi Sunak no more bailouts

[Elpresidente29]

He said government cannot go on like this...

The point I am making is that the statement that less pay for public sector workers will result in lower tax receipts is false and shows a strange ignorance about how the public sector is bankrolled. The public sector does not contribute to the treasury, it is paid for by the treasury. It's an economic fact. Stating it should not be controversial.

I think most people don't really care to be honest, rather than are ignorant to it. Still not sure what point is trying to be made, so will leave it there.

The money required to pay public sector workers (and therefore all the various tax they pay) is generated from tax revenue raised by the private sector

A private sector that includes public sector workers in its customer base. You’re entirely right to say the two aren’t divorced. What you’re failing to recognise is their co-dependency.

I think most people don't really care to be honest, rather than are ignorant to it

We are in agreement on that.

By the time the young are reaching pension age, they will be screwed over by climate change. This is a much bigger existential threat to them than the economy tanking. Currently, oil prices have crashed. Air traffic has slumped. These things are actually good news for our young people. This needs to be the time for a completely new paradigm. If we go back to unfettered capitalism, based on unending growth, we will have missed our last opportunity to avert disaster. We have abandoned their futures.

I don't have the solutions. I am not clever enough. But I do see that a return to business as usual means the end of civilisation as we know it. This is not hyperbole. If anything, it is underestimating the bad position we are already in.

We have just witnessed a situation where we saw something coming from a long way away, but didn't really respond to it until it got here. If we had acted earlier, we would have been in a much better position. By the time it got here, and we felt it and reacted to it, many of the ill effects were already baked in. Multiply that by a million and that is climate change coming.

I don't know the solution. But I do know that we need to change. We need to stop consuming, live more like we are doing now and less like we were doing before. If we don't make changes to our economy, this will hurt us. But there has to be a way that we can live with less consumption, but not less joy.

I wish we had someone with big ideas to lead us. I wish people saw that climate change was real, and needed the kind of big action we are taking for the Coronavirus right now. I have this idea that if instead of reinvesting in holidays abroad and fashion and oil and war, we got out of recession by investing in carbon sequestration technology, and massive tree planting projects, and green energy, we could truly look after the young people. We're not doing that if we just go back to business as usual.

Well Bovary if you have a better idea that stops most working people except those from well-off families from being killed by the lockdown to protect the over 60s, please do share it. I'd love to see some actual ideas, not just labels and protections of the extremely wealthy.

I swear to God, the amount of public sector workers on here who can’t grasp the basics of your point is staggering

@LaurieMarlow It's quite incredible, isn't it? An uncontroversial statement of economic fact.

And well said nellodee

Since when was COVID class conscious?

I know exactly how public finance works and how I’m bankrolled. I know that if I was laid off the government would save money as net, I am an expense, which is what your saying. But then they are left with an essential job that isn’t being done and an alternative to a public sector worker will always cost more or a gap, which will cost society more in the long run.

An uncontroversial statement of economic fact

And a very simplistic one.

Although that makes me sound far more important than I really am without scale

‘ The payment for crisis by future generations is nothing new. The UK made its last payment against the debt from WW2 in 2006. The detested boomers spent most of their working lives paying for an event that finished before they were born.’

THIS

So let’s give up the nauseating pernicious resentment being stoked that people of a certain age group are without value in our society.

This corrosive mindset hurts people & lessens us all.

Don't be ridiculous Samphire. This is a thread about the economic fallout from Covid, not Covid itself. And of course the British economy is class conscious, and age conscious.

Good, I’m glad he said it. It’s time to stop all these people baying for this to last longer and sticking their hand out.

And why would anyone think it wasn’t a hard enough lock down, or it needs to go on longer? What part of we are locked down to ensure we don’t breach nhs capacity are people struggling with? We have not breached it, time to ease up and continue to tightly monitor it and manage it to stay within the nhs capability levels.

Every single day there is a press conference. Every single day they say protect the NHS. Every single day they tell us the capacity. And every single day someone posts indicating they think we were trying to eradicate it or should stay locked down until a treatment of vaccine is found.

It’s like the cabinet will need to start tattooing it on their foreheads.

anyway, interesting but I'm off to rl.

" by your logic all nurses, teachers and police are a drain on treasury."

Isn't that blindingly overwhelmingly obvious? Indonesia collects taxes at just 12-13% of GDP. In the UK it's 33%.

The outcome is fewer and inferior public services, however the notion that public sector workers are anything other than a big drain on GDP at a time when GDP is down is ludicrous.

Consider this:

John works as a senior teacher in a state school. John gets full salary of £45,000 but is not doing anything. This salary comes 100% out of taxes. Taxes also fund the ludicrous final salary pension scheme, which costs 23.68% of salary, or £10,656

Janet works as a senior teacher in a private school. Janet is not doing anything either. Janet has been furloughed and £20,000 per year out of her £45,000 salary is paid by the government, and the balance of £25,000 by the school. The government won't pay the ludicrous final salary pension contributions, but pays only £750 a year in respect of them, because Janet works in the private sector, but her school is paying then.

Neither Janet nor John are doing anything useful currently. Both normally do, but Janet's salary is paid for by private incomes and John's come out of taxes.

John is costing the tax payer the same £56k year he normally costs, but to do nothing, while Janet is costing the tax payer £21,000

Both do the same jobs and earn the same, but one is being paid in full to do nothing useful, while the other is being paid only 3/8 of her salary to do nothing useful

The problem of course is that if a private school has £10m in reserves, it's right to use them to pay the extra wages, whereas there is no logical distinction between DfE funds and HM Gov funds - both are taxpayers' funds. So the idea is that the burden is shared to businesses and HMG doesn't pay everything

But it's clear that to the extent that workers are employed by the state that they are indeed a bigger burden than those not employed by the state at this point!

Well, the current situation can't continue. Lockdown needs to end. And economic activity needs to resume. Otherwise, multiple industries are facing an existential threat. This virus has wreaked havoc across the globe. These are difficult times and there is no magic wand but things can't continue in the current state for much longer. In Western democracies, it will become harder to enforce lockdown, especially in the summer if the UK has some warm weather. Lack of AC will end it if there's a heatwave.....

hopefully the cuts will hit the things we shouldn't be doing if we want to avoid trashing the planet - new road schemes, airport expansion and so on.

HS2? It isn't just about getting to Birmingham 20 mins quicker but there is a real danger that is all it will achieve as it will go no further. It needs to be concentrated on freeing up space for rail freight.

@Alsohuman

So simplistic it doesn't seem to have occurred to some posters. Gosh. What does that say?

Lots of sectors can reopen. Construction is already back. Retail can open on the same principles as supermarkets, some have already started opening up. Garden centres can reopen etc.

In fact apart from maybe the beauty and complimentary therapy industry every business could open up and enforce social distancing. It might not be fully open or have full capacity but it could open.

Schools ideally need to reopen for this to happen though. And once schools open there is not much point in social distancing. So I can see schools reopening as childcare for working families, or families that have both parents working anyway.

Not every child in primary has both parents working. Not everyone with a job has primary aged children. So to stall the economy for longer than necessary to make sure every parent can get back to work is daft and will cost millions more.

I think they will to start to trickle everyone back in 3/4 week batches to control the R figure. And think schools will actually be a bit later in normal mode than other things.

Or they will allow everyone to have a little bubble of people we can spend time with and cover childcare issues that way.

But the economy needs to move soon.

Since when was COVID class conscious?

There are ongoing studies looking at the relation between recovery and socio-economic factors but it does seem to be affecting BAME and poor communities the most

Im sure there will be some amongst us happy to hear that, personally Im not

Gosh. What does that say?

It says they recognise that it’s far more complex and nuanced than your simplistic argument.

I worked as a supplier to government for many many years and the waste was almost criminal. People constantly off sick, no sense of urgency even when it was in their favour to agree something quickly.

The teaching unions need to stop their usual bleating and try and work together with everyone. They know that the key is getting the children back to school. A teacher friend told me that she does what she needs and no more and appreciates the time off to look after her own children. I get the impression that if it was agreed that schools would close for 3 years until they got a vaccine the unions would consider that a 'win!

The payment for crisis by future generations is nothing new. The UK made its last payment against the debt from WW2 in 2006. The detested boomers spent most of their working lives paying for an event that finished before they were born. Not only that, we also spent most of our working lives paying for the loans to compensate slave owners when their slaves were liberated. Particularly annoying for DH being the descendent of slaves to be paying the loan to compensate the people who exploited and abused them. The loans weren't paid off until 2015 so plenty of younger people also paid but not for 50 years.

I think the 2500 cap was too high and obviously it can't go on forever but so much for "whatever it takes" they always have money for war and for nukes and like the PP mentioned HS2, so I guess make of that what you will.