To think we are becoming a much poorer country?

[Felixss]

I keep seeing on threads increase taxes on the rich , increase salaries, increase nhs spending and increase benefits. People are acting like we are still hugely wealthy and everyone wants to come over. Poland is predicted to overtake us economically. I can earn twice my salary abroad and I'm thinking of leaving. Where is the money going to come from with a shrinking work force and low investment in new technology? AIBU to think the UK is hugely declining ?

Nope. I put the salaries in, 2 x £25k earners. All other info identical for the couple other than there being two people earning £25k each instead of one earning £60k.

I used the "turn to us" calculator and the "entitled to" one. I gave all of the figures. You can deny it all you want but it's factual.

I suspect the failure of government to make absent fathers pay child support has a lot to do with it.

Where I live, deadbeats can be hauled into court, and paycheques can be garnished, based on the quaint notion that the taxpayer should not be required to pay for food or other necessities for other people's children.

Oh I completely agree that absent fathers should pay for their children. 50% of the costs of actually raising and housing a child and it be enforced like tax evasion.

However, that is a separate issue from the tax system penalising single parents. None of my posts are about any "notion that the taxpayer should be required to pay for food and necessities for other people's children". If that's what you thought you have misunderstood entirely. I am simply talking about the unfairness that single parents are taxed more on the same household income than a two parent working household. My suggestion is that the playing field is levelled, that we stop penalising single parents. Not for any "handouts". In fact the current system means that many single parent households are subsidising two parent households with the same earnings because the single parent is paying more in tax on the same household income. Why should single parents "be required to pay for food or other necessities for other people's children", as you put it?

most people in this country want those services, but seem to think there is a magical pool of rich people who are just going to pay for it all when asked ("tax the rich"). Average people in those countries pay far more tax than we do.

Yes. We are getting poorer.

Cutting Govt would fix it. But they won’t. So those who can will leave. Go East young man.

I'm on holiday in Europe at the moment. Yes we have become really noticeably much poorer.

That would include the wealth creators who pay the majority of current tax and who take risks in their own businesses and work long hours? How about we focus on growth and generating revenue we can tax first?

Those that hold the most wealth in the country, the top 10%, are overwhelmingly pensioners, 60-64, because it includes pension pots, the house they live in and own, and savings.

Do you really want that demographic to be rinsed by wealth tax, when by the time they are 85, they have very little left? They pay tax on income, they pay cgt, they pay for their care, the estate pays iht. How much more would you like this demographic to pay?

I heard on radio 4 ages ago, on More or Less, that the average baby boomer, so exactly the people you're talking about, have been subsidised by about £200,000 each over their lifetime, by the rest of us. So that's adding up the cost of their education, healthcare, public services etc, each one has taken out about £200,000 more than they've put in. I don't think any generation, before or after, will get such a good deal. I'm right at the tail end of that btw, so one of the big winners myself.

It's an interesting stat, but I'm not sure that subsequent generations don't get more, especially in healthcare. Millions can now be spent on individuals who would have died in previous generations, and only 15% went to university in the 1970's.

I think each generation has it's winners and losers, although the baby boomers do seem a particularly blessed generation. I am just a bit too young, but my three brothers are boomers.

When I come back from the US, I notice how poor the UK is now.

I’m staying here for the sake of my British DH and his elderly mum. I know our standard of living in retirement would be so much higher if we went to the US.

The wage stagnation in the UK is unreal. I am making now what I made in the US about 20 years ago. Husband as an electronic engineer with a Cambridge degree could make 4 to 5 times what he does now, but he prefers working in a small firm and a slower way of life, and his happiness is important.

That said, I can’t help but think though how things would have been economically much easier on us in the States. We are pretty well off here with the house paid off and investments, etc, but we could have retired at 50, not 60, if we were in the US.

I also think the class system in the UK is much more entrenched than it is in America, and much to the UK’s detriment.

Definitely

When I come back from the US, I notice how poor the UK is now.

Really? I suppose if you are well off you don't notice the poverty in the USA. It has poverty you would never see in the UK and let's not get into the gun crime or being a poor person, who drops down in the street ill. God bless the NHS.

Yep. It’s fact. Brexit, Covid, Ukraine, ageing population.

You can’t vote to leave a massive bloc of trading partners and remain as rich as you were before.

You can’t pay half the population to do nothing for two years and remain as rich as you were before.

Also aren’t 1 in 4 of them millionaires?

Oh, it's Blame The Boomer time. Regular as clockwork. I was born at the tale end of the boomer era (61). I had no choice or influence as to when or where I was born. I'm also nowhere near being a millionaire.
Divide and rule, works every time. Try blaming your ruling class who have been syphoning money from the bottom and middle to the wealthy for the last 50 years, and managing to convince the population that they're doing a good job.

My husband is a post war boomer. He grew up in poverty which would be unimaginable today.

Having said that he is probably the last generation who received the state pension at 65. My generation will be eligible at 68.

All it would take to lose everything in the US is to become seriously ill.

Don’t get me started on the scam of court appointed guardians for the elderly, where they swoop in and take everything.

I think it’s one in five. But it’s fairy money because it’s all tied up in their houses. Realistically it’s not exactly hard to be a millionaire on paper if you own a London house.

@OoooohBobMonkhouse Oh, I noticed poverty in the US. I grew up there, and my family was poor until I was about 12. We were eligible for food stamps. At that age, My dad finished his university degree as a working adult, and our fortunes changed as he received a huge promotion at work, and we moved to an affluent suburb. I’ve seen both sides of US society, rich and poor, and lived in four different states (Western, MidWestern, south, and east coast).

That said, the UK is definitely a poorer country since when I first came here in 2004. More homeless, infrastructure decaying, problems accessing the NHS, trains don’t work well anymore, massive wage stagnation, rolling strikes, insane housing prices, heating bills, etc. I am a uni academic, and in the past couple years, we have had students and faculty using food banks. Never saw this before. I’ve been increasing my donations to the food banks and doing what I can to improve the lot of students and those academics early in their careers. A lot of my colleagues have left for the Continent, US, Canada, Australia as the wages just aren’t cutting it anymore.

I don’t pretend the US has all the answers. The politics are crazy, the gun violence is now unreal, and health care is out of control expensive. People work too hard, and there is opiate addiction because of poor diet/unhealthy lifestyle. Public transport isn’t great (it is a huge country devoted to the motorcar and it is challenging).

But several of the things I came to the UK for—-a decent standard of journalism, NHS, trains that mostly worked….well, not there anymore. People seem more stressed and fatalistic than a decade ago. I stay because it is DH’s home, his elderly mum is here, and we’ve done well by being frugal, doing house reno overselves, saving as much as we can/investing/pensions/one car/cheap holidays and we don’t have kids. But even I admit that we missed out on a lot of fun to do this, and the material reward for that hard work pales to what it would have been in the States.

We’re actually rich, £5 for a shit cup of coffee, Maccy’s meal £8, olive oil £5/ltr, high cost of living, and people can still pay these prices.

Unfortunately. Demographic and economic indicators show this. Several British cities are ranked among the top ten for crime in Europe: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=150

NHS and ambulance wait times are shocking, more like a developing country. Confidence loss in policing and political corruption are also concerning.

Stop deluding yourself.

Both things can be true at the same time.

Boomers are taking out much more ££ than they ever paid in over their working lifetimes, and the wealthy are capturing more and more income (and paying less tax on it).

All of that is being subsidised right now by the working population - specifically the £50k to £150k tax band.

Top 10% pay 60% of all income tax.

Thats why life in the UK feels so terrible. Working age people have less money because they have to subsidise the old, the dependent, the sick, and the wealthy.

Something vaguely representing their own costs, which they did not fund over their lifetime. They voted for low taxes and now expect working aged people with far less real-terms income than they received for the same jobs, far worse pensions and far higher taxes to pick up the tab for the pensions and services and healthcare that they did not pay anywhere near enough to fund.

Pounds aren't worth much these days...

Thirteen years of austerity and Brexit have largely done this. COVID and Ukraine have made it worse. Sunak has just given Banks huge tax breaks (and taken the cap off of bankers bonus) while rinsing the rest of us.
A lot of Brexiteers said they didn't mind an economic hit as long as we had sovereignty so presumably they're happy.