£500 voucher to spend in restaurants

[Alex50]

Would you go out to dinner, pub shopping if the government paid you to do so?

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/05/sunak-considers-500-vouchers-for-all-uk-adults-to-spend-in-covid-hit-firms

Of course I would!

Maybe not out to dinner or a pub, but if there were places that I felt safe where I could spend them, then yes.

Can you imagine how busy these places would be if the government put this in place.

I'll believe it when I see it tbh.

I'd be quite happy to spend it if it did materialise though.

Our family would get £1750 😮 that’s a lot to spend on eating out.

Is this essentially the same as printing money?

I certainly would use these. There is a great greengrocer nearby who I hope will survive this and number of independent cafes and pubs I would happily support. They propose a year for spending it, which would be good. It would free up my cash to be spend on small business without card machine

*Our family would get £1750 😮 that’s a lot to spend on eating out.
It's not just for eating out

Yes, would definitely use them

Yep, we would

I would use them definitely. I believe it was suggested they would be for hospitality of face to face shopping. Depending on the scheme restrictions I would (if allowed) do all my Christmas gift shopping and buy all my non perishable stuff for Christmas too. I have both dc's birthdays at the end of the year too, and dh, mum and dsis and sil so would shop for all those as well. It would be an amazing boost for us as the later half of the year is quite expensive. If it was strictly limited to restaurants and hospitality (which I don't believe it is) I'd book a hotel somewhere for us as we've not had a holiday for 3 years.

I would appreciate if the vouchers were eligible to be used for live music and theatres! It may be a while til they get going but I will happily do that to ensure the future of some of my greatest passions!

Actually I want to use my own money for that too but there is no bloody restart plan!

I'd also love for them to be useable in theatres and the like, I desperately don't want to see the arts go under as a result of covid.

LOL, this is a ‘dead cat’. I’d be wanting to see what other policies they’re trying to push out while we’re all talking about getting £500 each ‘free cash’ from the government to spend on booze and socks.*

*clue: there’s no such thing as ‘free cash’. That’s taxpayer’s money.

I wouldn't use them in hospitality or the arts. I don't want to be that close to people, and it's not something I do in day to day life anyway.

I would use them, if given, in face to face retail (as suggested in the article), but the things I'd be buying, I could and would spend my own money on... it would just be funding Christmas and clothing me and the kids. It might work, but I imagine that there would be an awful lot of people like me, who would spend the vouchers on their usual outgoings, and save their own money instead.

Surely it would be cheaper to just give those industries another grant?

That seems like a huge amount of money to give away. I don’t know about this - if they decided to do this, I hope they (the government) would get some expert advice on this (an actual expert, not Dom...) to do an analysis of whether this would be an effective policy. Otherwise it’s just giving away money that will have to be recovered through increased taxes.

Nope, I wouldn't, not even for a million pounds.

Australia did this a few years ago in the form of a stimulus package (during the last financial crash I think it was). It worked well and they avoided a recession on the same level as other developed countries.

You could spend it on food shopping, towards rent etc not just eating out and clothes.

Looks like they are trying to cause inflation.

@Herja

I wouldn't use them in hospitality or the arts. I don't want to be that close to people, and it's not something I do in day to day life anyway.

I would use them, if given, in face to face retail (as suggested in the article), but the things I'd be buying, I could and would spend my own money on... it would just be funding Christmas and clothing me and the kids. It might work, but I imagine that there would be an awful lot of people like me, who would spend the vouchers on their usual outgoings, and save their own money instead.

Yes, exactly!

And the type of people who go out a lot (like all my younger, high earning colleagues) will go out either way, and really don’t need a handout.

What I would like to see is a substantial VAT cut.

It slightly reminds me of this.

Still, I would spend it. That said, it might mean that I keep £500 myself that I don't spend and just save.

So I would have spent that £500 on something anyway. Now I get given £500, I would spend that and not spend my £500.

"Surely it would be cheaper to just give those industries another grant?"

I think they are trying to change peoples habits so when the £500 runs out they continue spending with their own cash.

Yes, but I’m going out for lunch today anyway

Surely it would be cheaper to just give those industries another grant?

Probably not, the problem with giving money to businesses is that the equity owners get it all, and then don't need to pass it on to anyone, so it just makes someone a little bit richer (whether that someone is the owner of the business or the banks etc. who are owed money by the business)

By giving money to the customers to spend, then the business has to actually provide the service - that means they have to employ the people, buy the materials etc. so the money goes straight back out and the business only gets the profit, but the employees and everyone also get a share of the money.

As to if it would be an effective thing at all, almost certainly not if it's simply funding people buying imported goods, if it's funding services then it's possibly a more effective stimulus to the economy than anything which primarily goes to equity.