To think the proposed NI increases for social care are unfair?

[shouldbeworkingmore]

I recognise that social care needs funding but think that this proposal unfairly targets the younger generations. Plus we already have income taxes by stealth as the thresh holds have been frozen & wage stagnation is likely to continue for the next decade.

@shouldbeworkingmore

I agree and would have supported this idea. Seems to work fairly well in other European countries. But once it was dubbed ‘the Dementia Tax’ it and Mrs May were done for.

I actually thought this was quite a fair proposal & didn't understand why it was hated so much.

The reason people though it was unfair was that if you had cancer, or heart disease, or some other purely physical ailment your treatment was paid for entirely from central funding, general taxation. If you had dementia then your treatment was funded from your own assets.

I am all for increased taxation to fund health and social care, but it should apply to everyone, not just those who happen to get dementia rather that cancer.

[quote EstuaryBird]**@OnlyFoolsnMothers

Because we couldn’t afford to, we had to go to work.

University may have been free and, if you qualified, you got a small grant but nowhere near enough to pay your living expenses. Working class parents couldn’t afford to subsidise their children through Uni.

I know that as a working class girl I was actively discouraged by my school from aiming for University, although my grades would almost certainly have been good enough. It was something that ‘people like me’ just didn’t do 🤷🏻‍♀️[/quote]
I don't know if that's true, I left home at 16, worked in a call centre at night and went to university in 1994. I wasn't the only one at all. Very few on my course had parents chipping in for anything at all

But people should be encouraged to take more responsibility for their health and lifestyle choices. Taking ownership over their decisions (such as whether to smoke or drink excessively, or not, as the case may be.) Of course this is a segment of the puzzle - I'm not disputing the people who have higher-level needs warranting complex care. It's the prevention agendas that need targeting.

[quote shouldbeworkingmore] Wages have not stagnated at all

I was talking statistically

fullfact.org/economy/employment-since-2010-wages/[/quote]
I think those stats will be dramatically different in 12 months time.
If you've not had a payrise in 5 years as I know many haven't now is a good time to be job hunting and start demanding a wage you can live on. The shoes is firmly on your foot right now.

@JaneKing75

I do think downsizing needs encouraging via taxation, lots of widows by us staring out the window all day, not knowing what day it is whilst their money goes on cleaners, gardeners, maintenance companies for their 5 bedroomed detached houses in the catchment areas for great schools. It's not right whilst children are growing up in houses you couldn't swing a cat in.

This post just reeks of ageism.

@Whycangirlsbesonasty

I’m not pensioner bashing, but 80% of pensioners I know are absolutely loaded. And they are not proportionately taxed.

And those pensioners generally have private health care, and pay for their own care costs. They are not taking from the system. What's your point?

but you won't pay as if both parents or one surviving parent require residential care the house will have to be sold to pay for it.

Residential care is one factor, your house is not included when having care in the home. The majority of older people don't go into a care home. I believed Teresa Mays proposal was to factor it in to care at home costs.

Seasonschange:

We are already subsidising people’s wages with UC. If you take away some of the personal allowance you push more people into this poverty bracket which means you have all the admin costs or adding them to the UC pot. Taxing someone to then give them it back through UC is inefficient. It’s something we already do but why do more?
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I would also modify UC and the system overall. Abolish er's NI, but raising the minimum/national living wage 20-25% would be a good start, for most employers it would cost them very little, but the end result would be more cash in the pockets of the employee. I also think UC is both too generous and too stingy, from what I can see those who genuinely need help do not get enough (especially the disabled), but there seems to be a group of people who game the system, so they work the 16 hours to qualify for a whole host of things, but no more, they then get large UC and housing benefit payouts to live in areas which most taxpayers could never afford to rent a box room in.

I think those stats will be dramatically different in 12 months time.

That may be but that's not relevant to the fact we have had wage stagnation in the UK.

YANBU but I have a different take.
The main issue isn’t the lack of money. There’s plenty.
The issue is the waste, cronyism and contracting to private sector companies! Pp have pointed this out.

I earn a good salary and I’m happy to pay if it means everyone, myself included, will benefit. But more taxes just mean more money in private pockets. When my time comes I’ll probably have to pay privately anyway. So why should I pay more?

@JaneKing75

I do think downsizing needs encouraging via taxation, lots of widows by us staring out the window all day, not knowing what day it is whilst their money goes on cleaners, gardeners, maintenance companies for their 5 bedroomed detached houses in the catchment areas for great schools. It's not right whilst children are growing up in houses you couldn't swing a cat in.

What a series of utter nonsense random anecdotes.

@HarebrightCedarmoon

But council tax isn’t uniform across the country. My 2 bed house up north is worth £180k but I pay more council tax than my relatives house in London which is 4 bed and worth £1.2m

That's why we have a banding system, if it were purely based on house prices some councils would end up a hell of a lot more money than others. And it doesn't necessarily mean people can afford more money to pay for council services just because they live somewhere where houses cost more.

I’m not sure I follow. Council tax varies by council not just across bands. My house is band B and I pay £130 per month. If there’s is band B they would only pay £77 per month. I am not sure what band they actually are but their house would have to be band F before they paid more than me. They live in a wealthy area with a bigger (nicer) house but pay less. So if we increased council tax by 1% across the country I would pay more than them. Banding doesn’t make it fair.

@Whycangirlsbesonasty

NI is NOT ringfenced! Hasn’t been for years! It’s just another tax!

I think you may have been reading some odd sources.

It is ringfenced. It can be borrowed from, for things like school building, paying for more police, but it is is still, technically, ringfenced and isn't lost in the general tax pot!

@HarebrightCedarmoon

i We will all benefit from it our later stage of life.

Not really. Not everyone needs social care, thank God. No-one in my family has every needed to be in a home apart from for very short periods for medical care.

None of them ever been pregnant or off sick?

@MatildaIThink I agree with that & didn't know it excluded other conditions. What was the reasoning?

@JaneKing75

Wages have not stagnated at all. I've had a £12500 pay rise since December - by moving jobs. People in IT are demanding and receiving 25%-30% rises to keep up with food inflation. Of course the tax brackets won't move so most of us will be in the 40% tax bracket by Christmas at this rate !

IT is an in demand industry but ‘stagnating wages’ mean the general population. You know like nurses, teachers, cleaners, people who keep the country running. Not everyone can just ‘up and get a new job’.

I think more needs to be taken from inheritance tax.
More need to be done to close tax loopholes.
At some point someone is going to have to have the balls to get rid of the triple lock.

Inheritance tax is already 40%

Above a very generous threshold that excludes the majority of estates.

Instead of sending money aboard in aid... why don't they use that money for social care? Problem solved. I don't agree with raising taxes when we are giving our tax payers money away and most don't agree with forgien aid.

@DynamoKev That's what we walk past every day on our way to work. It's sickening and nothing to do with ageism, I'm quite old myself. But the property met their needs at one point and doesn't now. The most obvious thing to do is release the property back into the pool for those who need it. They'll make a substantial sum of profit so I don't see the problem myself.

@Whycangirlsbesonasty

Pay council tax per person? I don’t disagree, but that’s what poll tax tried to do and was unpopular.

I entirely agree, I think there should be a charge per property as it costs no more to empty a wealthy person's bins than a poor persons, and a charge per adult occupant, with the charge per occupant deducted and distributed via the PAYE system so people cannot go AWOL as they did with the "poll tax".

I would also add that I see a lot of people aged 75+ who have taken active responsibility for their lifestyle choices. They're healthy, fit, socially engaged and able to contribute meaningfully to their communities. So for the majority of people who have low-level needs or who have perhaps recently developed low-level needs, the ethos of "Prevent, Reduce, Delay" can and should be utilised to get them the support their need to manage their condition(s) and stay out of the system of needing funded care.

Funded social care is not a solution, it's a band-aid at point of crisis, as I've said before. It increases reliance, and dependency and people who are otherwise able to take control over their needs with the right avenues of support (be this in the community, through social connections and/or charitable or condition-specific resources) should do so as the aim here for this tier of individuals is recovery, not to give them a disproportionate response that will take away that potential for recovery.

@TractorAndHeadphones I take that point & I agree with you that if this does go ahead it's a drop in the ocean & will need further funding

@MatildaIThink (can’t quote) these days the bulk of council tax goes on social care. It’s not just about emptying bins.
Mine rises by a significant percentage ever year for the ‘adult social care precept’.
Galling but short of moving into a smaller house elsewhere what can I do 😂

[quote shouldbeworkingmore]@MatildaIThink I agree with that & didn't know it excluded other conditions. What was the reasoning? [/quote]
The reasoning seemed to be that a tax rise was needed to cover the cost of dementia treatment, so tax those with dementia and assets. It was a poorly thought through policy and incredibly unfair. I did not support the dementia tax, I would have supported an income tax rise to fund dementia care.