To ask what the rest of (geographic) Europe are doing differently?

[CanIJustAskAnotherStupidQuestion]

I have friends and colleagues in Nordics, Spain, Italy, Germany and they all keep asking what the hell is going on in Britain, with double digit inflation and 80% increases in fuel costs. They don’t seem to be feeling all of this to the same extent.

So why is it happening here, and not so much elsewhere? I know that e.g. France hasn’t been hit with fuel bills for consumers because EDF is nationalised (but presumably that means they will get hit in taxes). But what about elsewhere?

But what I can’t really understand is why this is the case - where there low level of taxation in the UK compared to other countries what I find really interesting is the public attitude - I think in many euro countries paying tax is not really seen as such a huge negative.

I think people view paying 50% odd income tax/NI as 'enough'. I do.

Not sure where that data came from, but the actual IMF appears to rate the UK as reasonable, currently.

Pre-Brexit we were told that there were 3.5m EU citizens here. Post-Brexit there are now 2.8m with settled status and 2.3m with pre-settled status. How have we lost over a million? Are you trying to tell us that the Remain campaign lied, and under-estimated the number of EU citizens who were already here?

@gatehouseoffleet There is no point saving energy now that we have no way to save for later. The UK decide to get rid of its natural gas storage in 2017. We didn't want to invest. We are grasshoppers not ants. We only have three or four days capacity. Prices have spiked because Germany is stock piling about 6 weeks worth in preparation for winter. We couldn't do that even if we wanted to.

www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/24/how-uk-energy-policies-have-left-britain-exposed-to-winter-gas-price-hikes

You mean an anti-UK thread suddenly contains some anti-EU comments? Oh, the horror 😱 clutches pearls

I've been out in Manchester recently; restaurants and shops were overflowing, no CoL crisis here either 🙄 If you look outside of the affluent urban areas you'll find plenty of people struggling, but from what I see daily there is also a large cohort of those who either aren't struggling, or are just ignoring it and spending regardless.

Govt debt to GDP is high in France, Belgium and Italy. You can't borrow indefinitely, at some point that has to be paid back. Or you can raise taxes, but who is going to vote in a government that proposes a tax rate increase?

Increased taxes don't have to come from personal income tax. Companies in general could pay more tax. Some companies that operate in the UK pay very little tax at all. Boots (the chemist) has a HQ in Switzerland and uses this to minimise its UK taxation - £millions a year - despite much of the company's revenue coming from NHS payments. What if the government said "no more NHS business until you relocate your HQ and tax residency to the UK?"

Or look at taxation another way. I live in a EU country that has twice as many doctors per capita as the UK. I can just walk in and see my GP. The local hospital has no waiting list to speak of - when I recently needed a minor operation, it took less than 5 weeks from seeing the GP to seeing a Consultant and then having the operation. I can travel anywhere on public transport for €1 a day on buses and trains that are frequent, reliable and clean. Pre-school nurseries cost less than €100 a month. University education is free. Trainee nurses receive a bursary and have heavily subsidised meals and accommodation (they pay about €30 a month for each).

How much more tax would you be willing to pay to have this in the UK? 1% more on income tax? 1% on Corporation Tax? 1% more on petrol tax? A 1% transaction tax on share dealing. Any or all of these (and other options) would make this possible, but instead of facing up to the inevitable, politicians of all parties are living in denial. The UK got away with it in the 1970s and 1980s by selling off council houses and spaffing North Sea oil revenues on tax cuts. Now that successive governments have sold off almost all of the family silver, there is nothing left to take (except perhaps the bits of the NHS that might turn a profit).
And Truss's great plan for the future? The complete opposite of what is required. Tax cuts - which will inevitably result in cuts to essential services and more problems for the country.

a loss making nationalised company (like EDF) needs taxpayers to pay for its losses (how else so you think it is funding these losses?). Nationalised companies are also less efficient almost always and so cost the taxpayer.

the current high prices are not due to profits being high (lots of energy suppliers are going bust as they can’t sell even at cost due to price cap) but to high demand for oil and gas globally and low supply.

This. Inflation and energy prices are a global phenomenon and are affecting European countries too.

Pre-Brexit we were told that there were 3.5m EU citizens here. Post-Brexit there are now 2.8m with settled status and 2.3m with pre-settled status. How have we lost over a million? Are you trying to tell us that the Remain campaign lied, and under-estimated the number of EU citizens who were already here?

The number of EU citizens in the UK at any one time varied according to season - so there were hundreds of thousands of EU citizens in the UK during harvest time and working seasonally in the hospitality industry. Many EU citizens were in the UK for short periods only and so were not counted as being resident (the usual definition of residency is being resident and working for one year or more, which also resulted in an underestimate of the number of UK citizens in the EU). Of course there were also people working without being registered anywhere (unlike almost all EU countries, the UK does not have a compulsory registration system).

Nobody is suggesting that any side of the campaign lied. Perhaps the Remain side underestimated the numbers, but just as importantly, the Leave side believed that losing these workers would have no impact on the UK economy either and that the foreigners were "taking our jobs". And then when they all left, they discovered that the UK had too few lorry drivers, too few agricultural and food workers, too few care workers etc. and the country is now resorting to importing indentured labour from Asia and elsewhere.

But thankfully all our pensions are invested in the big companies (apparently owned by friends of the gov) and are doing very well . Whew.

and the country is now resorting to importing indentured labour from Asia and elsewhere

We're not paying Asian people who work here? 🤔

I think it's maybe to do with where abouts you are on humanity's food chain. I see your perspective, but at the same time I'm basically reading it as "sacrifice the poor so the not-as-poor have a better chance of survival" because that's what's going to happen if people go without help, hypothermia and illness because they can't afford heating, starving because they can't afford food, homeless because they can't afford housing, jobless because all these things affect ones ability to perform well at work.

a loss making nationalised company (like EDF) needs taxpayers to pay for its losses (how else so you think it is funding these losses?).

True - but it doesn't mean that the shortfall has to come from income tax. There are company taxes, capital gains taxes, luxury taxes and transaction taxes too.

Nationalised companies are also less efficient almost always and so cost the taxpayer.

This is only an opinion. An alternative view is that private utilities are less desirable because they extract a dividend or profit instead of returning any "profit" to the consumers in the form of lower prices, increased investment (or both), and that earning a profit on essential services is fundamentally unethical.

No, but I think being a tax haven probably helps them income wise

This. And things like free train travel or subsidized energy for all regardless of income is a very costly bribe.

@MarshaMelrose
"We're not paying Asian people who work here?"

They, and people from elsewhere, are being paid but the Government is turning a blind eye to how they are being exploited by "Agents" and only being paid a fraction of their wages, as well as being charged illegal recruitment fees.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/19/ukrainian-workers-flee-modern-slavery-conditions-on-uk-farms

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/may/27/migrant-fruit-pickers-charged-thousands-in-fees-to-work-on-uk-farms-investigation-shows

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/how-nurses-recruited-from-zimbabwe-are-being-caught-in-uk-bonded-labour-schemes/ar-AA11boCI?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=d0da13e82b310e01c0995307b7747ef0

(The last report is from the Telegraph but is behind a paywall on their site)

They, and people from elsewhere, are being paid.

So not indentured then. Rather, underpaid.

This shows inflation in EU countries for July, using HICP which is directly comparable to our CPI. The EU average is 9.8% and the UK is 10.1% - very close to the average.
UK would be 17th in this list just below Belgium (10.4%) and also below Spain (10.7%) and Netherlands (11.6%).

Regardless of which tax is paying for it, loss making nationalised companies need to be subsidized by the taxpayer. They are taking money that would otherwise go to schools and hospitals, etc.

Why is that a good idea to give money to ALL energy consumers when the vast majority of energy consumers are not poor?

its not an opinion that privatised energy companies are more efficient. It’s a fact borne out of decades of studies. Efficiency itself brings lower prices. I don’t see that making a profit out of energy is immoral - people make profit out of healthcare, food, transport and so on.

And anyway as the prices they can charge for domestic energy are regulated there is a balance of interests.

a loss making nationalised company (like EDF) needs taxpayers to pay for its losses (how else so you think it is funding these losses?). *

True - but it doesn't mean that the shortfall has to come from income tax. There are company taxes, capital gains taxes, luxury taxes and transaction taxes too.*

All of which are taxes and most of which are personal taxes. Back to the same point of it having to be paid for by somebody.

Even raising corporation tax isn't a clear cut positive. You end up disincentivising some of the big corporations from locating in the U.K. Not only does the government end up with a net loss in corporation tax revenue but there's a knock-on impact on employment, and by extension, revenue from income tax too.

Energy prices are sky high due to global supply and demand, not helped by war in Ukraine. It's not specific to the U.K. Economically there's not a magic fix without a corresponding burden to the tax payer, in the short term at least (granted that alternative energy may be the answer in the future),

I should have read those two articles before commenting!
The first one is nothing to do with money. The woman didn't like the conditions and is now working here illegally.
The second one is being overcharging for recruitment. But they're paid the going rate while they're here and I can't see where the company they worked for kept money back to pay off their debts. It looks to me like like she paid the amount upfront. The recruitment agency has wrongly taken advantage of her but you can't say any of this is indentured labour.

@MarshaMelrose

They are indentured, or bonded - as in they are bound to the Agent for the period that it takes to pay off the (illegal) debt. The fact that they being paid a subsistence wage does not mean that they are free of the debt or the contract.

From Webster's dictionary:
Definition of indentured:

• required by contract to work for another for a certain period of time

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/indonesia-to-investigate-claims-fruit-pickers-charged-thousands-to-work-in-kent/ar-AA11ejHw?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=ee1a5a4f81c1328dfdd49b8853d1b7ea

Lol. The government has actually cut right down on permitted migration (I don’t personally think that’s a good thing as a second generation migrant). There’s no evidence at all that they are deliberately turning a blind eye to anything.

Of course they should enforce minimum wage laws better but public sector is often inefficient.

They’re not indentured as there is no valid debt as you point out in your post above.

we are not « importing indentured servants from Asia » at all. There are some criminals carrying on criminal activity in respect of the (very few) people who come to the uk on a seasonal worker visa. It’s not at all what you said.