Rough' tax rises on the way

[Violashift]

What does this even mean? I can't take much more. Not with the rising energy prices and the absolute mess up of the mortgage interest rates rising.

How will people survive? Already we have not had pay rises and now we will all probably be taxed more.

I feel at the end of my tether. It's really affecting my mental health.

Yep. All of the above. Absolute waste. No accountability from the tories.

Also what @WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll said

‘Whatever they claim, there is ALWAYS plenty of money for what they want to spend it on - be it nuclear willy-waving, HS2 or whatever’

The tax is a % of the pump price. The higher the price, the more the tax take increases. I’d quite like to know where it’s gone too.

What did people think would happen when they were sat at home enjoying the leisurely lifestyle for months with the economy completely shut down? Did they think there would be no consequence of printing half a trillion £. Folks couldn’t get enough of the restriction and wholesale destruction of the economy

Quite, and it's also worth remembering it was Rishi who was in charge of lashing out all this money when Covid was the only thing some wished to focus on

Some of us tried pointing this out even at the time, but were drowned out by screams of "there's no alternative", called murderers and all the rest

To borrow that hackneyed old phrase you'd hope lessons have been learned from the reaction to it all and what it's brought about, but sadly I doubt it

Are you saying you want to get rid of central govt and make local councils all powerful ?
Because if so, who will sort out stuff like what to do with public sector pension deficit, the national housing shortage, asylum seekers, national security and cyber defence, national transport infrastructure, foreign development aid, international trade and a million other things?

Or if you are saying you want a central government to handle all this stuff AND powerful local councils you are saying the opposite of “it’s all fat and bloated” - you are saying let’s have more layers of expensive government and administration someone has to pay for.

We could put a 10% wealth tax on the country's 177 billionaires and clear the fiscal hole and have enough left over to fix social care too

We could try, but it's been attempted before and doesn't work - because the very wealthy have the wherewithal to protect their money via schemes which would tie the rest of us in knots

Yet i don't see all the other countries across Europe who also furloughed, some more generous than UK, having public services destroyed (if thats possible, given the state they are in) and huge tax hikes?

Why are we helping the rich with their energy costs?

The money for all the stuff the government pays for has to come from somewhere.

I confess I'm no expert in other european countries' economies, walkinginsunshinekat (or in the UK's come to that) so honestly can't say exactly what they spent and whether it was wise

The "Why are we helping the rich with their energy costs?" is an easy one though - as with the so-far-retained triple lock on pensions it's so they'll keep backing the Tories

It is a balance and too many tax hikes lead to a greater recession. I think they are just trying to restore the value of the pound and how the UK is seen globally, it needs to be seen as fiscally responsible. I suspect there might be a 0.75 interest rate hike later this month and then things will calm down a bit. A lot of it is talk to calm markets and restore confidence in the pound/UK government on a global scale.

The money for all the stuff the government pays for has to come from somewhere.

That's just the point - they have been wasting OUR money on shit, over and over and over again. Greed and incompetence at a level that has cost us billions upon billions of wasted pounds.

And now they have the nerve to say we're in a serious financial situation and we're all going to have to pay higher taxes because of it.

THEY put us in that situation and conveniently made themselves rich while they were doing it.

By God, I'm starting to think we're celebrating the wrong side on Nov 5th.

Sadly the non dom billionaire types are very mobile people. Getting them to pay some tax is all most governments can hope for. Frankly, the power some of these people wield is mind boggling, subversive and frightening to me.

The left off centre goodie type billionaires like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates are the exception.
In the current world there are people who have more money and power than many governments and that is a problem.

It’s not going to be worth going to work soon.

Unfortunately, reading the various news stories these last few weeks, the realisation has hit me that we are now going to have to:

Worker harder
Have lower pay
Pay more tax
Have (even) worse public services

At least for the next few years. Though I loathe the Tory government and hold them responsible for a lot of the mess we're in, even if we got a Labour government tomorrow, there's not all that much they could do differently about our economic plight - at least not in the short term. Unless they were willing to take us back into the Single Market, which I don't think they would be.

I hear you about the toll it takes on your MH, OP. It is extremely stressful and worrying.

Yes, it's going to be rough, but it's always been clear that government spending during the pandemic was going to have to paid for somehow. There are lots of things we, and the government, could have done differently, but we can't change that now. No-one expected the Ukraine war either, with its impact of fuel prices.

All we can do now is to look forward, plan as far as we can for that future, and help those who are struggling. We are all in this together. But we do need to take responsibility for our own needs, and not rely on 'someone else' to pick up the pieces for us. Harping on about 'what could have been' won't help us either.

Some of the spending was ridiculous. £8.7 billion wasted on unusable PPE. All to companies with links to government ministers. And how much for that app that didn't even work?

I see @OminousBirdAWing already gave us some figures. It makes me so angry.

It's not just COVID that could be treat like a war loan if we were in a surplus in normal years. However the last government surplus was 2000 so we need to cut spending we are in effect spending more than we earn. We can then use that surplus to pay off the debit, we've tried to spend our way out of it for years and it isn't happening.

It's where those cuts fall that's the question. We can't afford the welfare state as it is that for sure

We can't afford the welfare state as it is that for sure

We can’t afford it to get any worse either, it’s on life support as it is.

You re qualified to be the next Chancellor then!!!

Well, i m not talking about even higher rate tax payers, some whom aren't actually that well off.
I'm talking about millionaires (2.4m in the UK) & corporations like Amazon.

www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/why-the-uk-government-is-trapped-in-a-spiral-of-economic-decline-337950/
Interesting article.

Cancelling HS2 would be a start.

I can't believe people are still trotting out the 'bad flu' line. Seriously. Maybe ask the government what happened to the 37b they spent on Track and Trace and the billions wasted on PPE via the VIP lane. Or the amounts they spend on government private jets. Eye watering. We're not all in this together.

“Another driver for growth would be to accelerate house building, especially energy-efficient affordable homes for rent or sale, combining significant public resources alongside private funding including from pension funds,
and facilitating the compulsory purchase of sites not in use, or suitable for conversion from office to apartments, alongside simplified and time-limited planning procedures.

This is not popular with Tory donors and voters. Property developers resist stricter controls over the quality of build or to oblige the respect of affordable housing quotas. Tory voters tend to oppose relaxation of planning procedures. And there is a deep attachment to a perverse, but a familiar model for growth based on the accumulation of unearned wealth and rentier income from a stagnant pool of property assets.”

Successive governments have been told for many years that we need to build more. That is super important for England, and also the green and technology revolution. We could do so much in the technology sector.

I would also really welcome suitable old age housing. Would be so much better for the very elderly. We do need to focus on dignified dying as a society rather than medicating unnecessarily until the very end.

People have incredibly short memories

The same people who said lockdowns should be faster/longer/more draconian are now moaning about the cost of furlough and bounce back loans. Who do they think was going to pay for all that - the fairies?

The same people who pre COVID complained the Government wasn’t borrowing enough and should be maxing out its credit card to pump money into infrastructure, education and the NHS are now criticising it for financial imprudence and stoking inflation!

The private sector has completely and utterly failed and failed for decades, to provide safe, good quality, affordable homes. The state should take over and build itself.