I'm actually pleased with the mini-budget

[yubgummy]

(Cue hysterical shrieking ;) )

Macroeconomics is complex. It surprises me that within a week, there's such a strong consensus that everything about the mini-budget is literally the work of the devil. Echo chamber...

The UK basically has never recovered from the GFC and has just been stagnant and struggling for a decade. The clear theme in this budget is encouraging people to actually get out and DO something ("supply-side reform"). Tax incentives for businesses to invest in plant & machinery, reducing red tape for infrastructure investment (more North Sea licences, more onshore wind), tax cuts to base rate & NI to encourage people into work...

I would like to see more action on interest rates from the BoE, and I would like to see more detail on the Planning & Infrastructure Bill, but I want to give them a chance instead of calling for yet another change in government. Supply-side reform is a perfectly sane strategy and the UK economy does need to get moving, by which I mean, producing new and useful goods and services not just keeping the whole country on life support.

I beleive it's a deliberate ploy to finish off the NHS and other state funded institutions. The country will be so bankrupt it will have no choice but to sell its assets and seek private investors. ( th3 stories have been deliberately running the NHS into the ground for years ) The tanked pound will make for some great bargains for overseas investors, what's left of the welfare state will have been successfully demolished and some individuals will have made huge sums of money.

The budget makes sense if it is backed by big infrastructure spending and business investment. It also needs to be backed by opening up the jobs market to fill the vacancies. Arguably, these things should have happened first. The optics haven’t been managed well, but the policies as part of a wider package would work. The other things need to follow now, and fast.

Omg, I actually said fuck half way through and it made me actually cry when I got to lack bits….
jeez that’s so powerful
ive just forwarded it to family

thanks for sharing

You listen to the IMF? An institution whose MO is to load debt onto developing nations and make them cut public spending while loaning money to their corrupt leaders to be able loot that wealth and launder it into Europe and US. You should really try and find better sources to confirm your biases.

You should really try and find better sources to confirm your biases.

Like?

This.

Lol. That was an entertaining comic! Thanks.

But The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus perverts the real deal teachings.

The devil’s best disguises include being an angel of light - and a Supply Side Jesus.

For this reason I think that Truss, KK and just about anyone with political power or influence (the media comes under that umbrella) should have their own skin in the game.

With power comes responsibility.

Truss won’t even put the mini-budge to the scrutiny on the Office of Budget Responsibility. She needs skin in the game, otherwise she’s just being irresponsible and potentially lawless too.

^mini-budget

Completely agree. I am a higher rate tax earner. Before the budget announcement, I was seriously considering going part-time because I only got half of what I actually earned after tax (and I work bloody hard in a difficult and stressful job). Now with the reduction to 40% and the reversal of the NIC increase, I will stick out full-time work a bit longer ~until Labour get in and whack it back up~.

I still pay a very large amount of tax so it pisses me off when people call it a “handout” to the rich. It’s not a handout, it’s being allowed to keep of a little bit more of the money I EARN.

As the OP says, the mini budget is designed to incentivise people to work and businesses to set up here. That can only be a good thing.

The OBR has said it offered to prepare a draft forecast in time for the mini-budget but it was not taken up.

Stupidity writ large.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63080164

Meanwhile: Labour open up 33-point vote intention lead in wake of mini-Budget chaos

yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/09/29/voting-intention-con-21-lab-54-28-29-sep-2022

And how do you expect to:

• get to work on public transport or by road.
• have your bins collected.
• have your local dog poo bins collected.
• Have the local kids educated in a free school so they don't have to rob or sell drugs to eat.
• have the local elderly people looked after at home so they're not in a hospital bed unnecessarily.

Taxes pay for all those things. And that's without doing them because it's the right and moral thing to do not just because it benefits you.

You don't earn more because you work harder than other people.

Why have people taken on mortgages so large in relation to their earnings that they can only pay them on historically very low interest rates?

Because houses are really expensive now. Duh. And wages haven't risen at even nearly the same rate.

My parents bought their first house in 1970 for £1.5k. It was a two-bed maisonette. It's now worth £325k. Sadly, wages haven't risen 300% in the intervening years.

OP own up, are you Liz Truss???

It's a bit. As are the sock puppets.

Worth challenging the BS though as people may believe it.

This is a big gamble, but I can see why Truss and Kwarteng took these drastic steps.

We all know why Liz refused to implement a windfall tax on the people who donated £100k to her leadership campaign sorry, her ex employers sorry! The energy companies.

Yes, because only higher rate tax payers work hard in difficult and stressful jobs, not firefighters/nurses/carers/paramedics and the rest of the endless list without whom society would collapse. Tax cuts will impact on that (already inadequate) funding for them.

These same people pay the same prices for petrol, food and heating their homes as the "higher bracket" taxpayer. They just have less money to do it with and certainly won't have the option of going part time if they want to survive.

This shouldn't even need saying.

You’ve earned the privilege to work part time and still earn a good salary.

Other jobs (essential workers included) that are equally stressful and hard work don’t get the luxury of your position because the pay isn’t competitive enough.

It’s just a game really. You played it well to get into the higher tax bracket and have the luxury of choosing part time. Count yourself lucky…

Maybe supply side reform will squeeze out zombie companies which have been such a drag on the UK economy for so long (China recently did something similar I think). Truss is pretty focused on improving the UKs (shockingly low) productivity. Worrying that the markets and the IMF are so concerned about the latest policy announcements though😕

You’re giving Truss a lot of credit to assume she knows what she’s doing. Her economic policy comes from her ideology and beliefs more than anything else.

I agree with improving productivity… but I’m not convinced that Truss knows how to achieve that.

Trickle down economics is a lazy way to be the next Thatcher. The policy has never worked before. Why would it work with Truss?

A cut in additional rate for the highest income earners means Bank of England will have to raise interest rates higher to clamp down on inflation. This will affect all homeowners who pay a mortgage, and also mean Govt will have to pay more interest on its own debt. Collapse in UK gilt market that followed (prob because markets believed that debt was unsustainable) led to near collapse of pension funds which required Bank of England intervention again funded by the tax payer. Also to make debt sustainable there will be cuts in public services, possibly less public sector investment and a possible reduction in universal credits for the poorest at a time of cost of living crisis. So additional cut in taxes for higher income earners is to be possibly somewhat funded by benefit cuts for the poorest and lower public investment. Hard to belive that's going to lead to higher incentives and 2.5 per cent economic growth. The markets don't believe it. The £ tanked. Why should we? On a more positive note subsidising energy prices for everyone was a necessary policy which they got that right!

A woman on Question Time just now had been offered a first time mortgage at a rate of 4.5% After Friday, that was withdrawn and the best she can now get is 10.4%.

For context, on a £250k mortgage that would take her monthly repayments from £1400 to £2400. Now she will almost certainly not be able to buy a home.

"The budget makes sense if it is backed by big infrastructure spending and business investment."

"Speculation swirling Chancellor might cut planned state capital spending (rather than day-to-day spending) to try to reassure markets.

State investment set to rise to around £70bn a year - big increase.

If taken back to 2010-19 average of £40bn would yield around £30bn...👇

important to note that most economists would argue that this - infrastructure spending etc - is precisely the wrong spending to cut if goal is to boost UK supply side & future productivity growth."

twitter.com/benchu_/status/1575469526157762564?s=46&t=5EvLXTupsKhHlp1BTOabDg

The idea that these tax cuts will somehow increase people's incentives enough to generate 2.5 % sustainable growth is unbelievable! More likely it will be inflationary leading Bank of England to raise interest rates and increase likelihood of really high mortgage interest payments in the future

Mark Carney doesn't agree with you. I don't know either of you but I'm going to go with him and the IMF.
I'm guessing you're not working 40 plus hours in a minimum wage job just to try and stand still (and not managing the inevitable slide backwards into debt/hunger/being cold).