To reduce hours when labour win election

[Parttimeplay]

I fall into the “60%” tax bracket. With the upcoming elections and knowing the government always hammer the middle ground….woudlnt it make more sense for me to cut my hours for a more relaxed life, eligibility for childcare, reduced tax?

The huge majority of taxes are paid by higher earners on PAYE.

Are they?

I assumed @whistleblower99 meant net providers ie they pay in more than take out.

I could be wrong but it would make more sense as only 30% of the working age population are net providers.

Without getting into the political argument, what makes you believe any government can influence the cost of childcare?

Mumsnet: "it's disgusting how low paid carrying professions are".

Also Mumsnet: "it's disgusting how expensive childcare is."

Hear hear.

The "economic competence" idea has been well and truly disproved. Liz Truss was voted in by Tory party members, but she's just the worst of a very bad lot.

At least the Tory government under Thatcher has some sort of legacy in economic terms, albeit at great cost to many communities.

This Tory regime have hammered us into the ground economically, and taken our living standards with it. 🙄

Specious argument about education. It is a luxury to send children to a private school. It does confer some privilege. What we need is not to have some children go to private schools but to have state education uplifted. I suspect that doing this involves selection and streaming in schools, and some exclusion of disruptive children (for whatever reason - the non-disruptive children don't deserve to have their education wrecked as well). That does take money but also courage to fight those who think all selection is bad and that exclusion of violent children is anathema.

I do think it’s the squeezed middle that suffer. We pay more tax, we spend more on help because we have no spare time so cleaner, gardener, childminder outside of nursery / wrap around care. I needed to sign up to nursery that opens 7.30am until 6.30pm so that my husband and I can both get to the office and back as we live in more of a commuter city. I’m living like a student again wondering whether a Starbucks is actually a wasteful treat and our combined pay is £165k!!

We never get takeaways, sometimes get fish and chips we collect as that’s still reasonable. We have never paid for a deliveroo or Uber eats! We don’t have a care on finance either, just a very modest polo that I bought in cash from a dealership ex demo with 300 miles on it!

What I do see is a lot of people on low incomes driving top of the range cars, getting takeaways and always in the pubs on a weekend! They either have a lot of debt or are getting topped up healthily by UC where they get 75% of the £18k nursery fee paid and then some!

I am very disgruntled, I worked very hard for my career which apparently you can’t do part time at my level. Its all a total joke really!

This is just beyond a joke! It is Labour that have a long history of incompetence when it comes to the economy!! As everyone knows - which is precisely why they have been out of office for 14, yes 14 years! They can’t be trusted.

@Polishedshoesalways

Labour and the Conservative 'wets' trashed the economy in the 1970s. Thatcher was an anomaly and was hated by her party - but she was adored by sections of the British public.

I was raised to hate Thatcher, but I now think she was a truly remarkable woman that saved Britain from economic and social collapse. She made mistakes, such as banning councils from spending the Right to Buy receipts on building new council housing, but she also (briefly) put Britain on the road to becoming a meritocracy.

Thatcher's economic legacy was reduced public debt and a thriving economy. When Blair took power, he inherited a fantastic fiscal position.

Labour priced to trash the economy yet again and handed a disastrous legacy to Cameron. Just when things were starting to turn a corner, Sunak spent £400 billion on COVID and steered the nation towards bankruptcy.

I doubt Thatcher would have been seduced by the concept of lockdowns and we'd have been much more likely to pursue the 'Swedish model'. We are where we are, but all the historical evidence suggests that Labour never leave a better fiscal position then they inherit.

Given we're teetering on the brink of national bankruptcy, I dred to think what Labour will 'achieve'.

Things never started to turn a corner. The trajectory of debt was upwards long before Covid.

This is simply not true.

I completely agree. If Labour win we are done for. I genuinely dread to think what will happen. Those of us old enough to have lived through past Labour administrations remember only too well.

At least the Tory government under Thatcher has some sort of legacy in economic terms, albeit at great cost to many communities.

The overall burden of tax in cash and as a percentage of gdp increased over the Thatcher years. Her clever trick was to shift the burden to poor people.

Care to prove that it’s labour that are incompetent financial, as far as I’m aware it’s Tory propaganda. Admittedly Tory’s have had more years in power over the last 100 but overall it’s Tory’s that are feckless financially
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/

Don't be ridiculous. This regime has the highest borrowing and highest taxes for 70 years - Truss crashed the economy. The last Labour government was way more responsible.

Sorry it does show the page on the link

It is often suggested that Labour is profligate and the Tories are the naturally ‘safe pair of hands' when it comes to running the economy. The Tories, it is presumed, do not borrow as much as Labour. This is a hypothesis I have tested before. I thought it time to update to the end of the 2020/21 financial year.
The analysis that follows is based on government borrowing as reported by the House of Commons Libraryand other data supplied by the Office for Budget Responsibility.It covers years since 1946, which is the entire post-war period.
The government in office was decided by who was at the end of a financial year.
I then calculated the total net borrowing in Labour and Conservative years and averaged them by the number of years in office. All figures are stated billions of pounds in all the tables that follow and in this case are in original values i.e. in the prices of the periods when they actually occurred:

The Conservatives borrowed more, not just absolutely (which is unsurprising as they had more years in office), but on average.
This, though, is a bit unfair: the value of money changes over time. So I restated all borrowing in 2021 prices to eliminate the bias this gives rise to. This resulted in the following table:

In current prices the Conservatives still borrowed more (much more) overall, and on average, by a long way.
So then I speculated that this may be distorted by events since 2008. That is what the Conservatives would claim, after all: they would say that they have spent eleven years clearing up Labour's mess. So I took those years out of account and looked at the first 62 years of the sample. I did this in 2021 prices to ensure I was applying a level playing field by eliminating inflationfrom consideration:

The Conservatives still borrowed more, after all, although it was a close run thing.
Then I speculated that this might be because Labour are good Keynesians: maybe they repaid national debt more often than the Conservatives. Or, to put it another way, they actually repaired the roof when the sun was shining. This is the data in terms of number of years:

Labour do walk the talk: they repay national debt much more often in absolute and percentage terms than the Conservatives. In fact, one in four Labour years saw debt repaid. That was true in less than one in ten Conservative years.
But maybe the Conservatives repaid more. I checked that. This is the data in both original and current prices:

It’s from 21 June 2021

Labour literally left a note to say they had left the country penniless on their way out! Or have you conveniently forgotten that?

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/09/liam-byrne-apology-letter-there-is-no-money-labour-general-election

The trajectory of that curve immediately became 'less steep' after Labour were replaced and was levelling off before the COVID insanity.

Reading graphs not your strong point?

It clearly isn't yours.

Debt doubled from £500 million to £1 trillion in two years under Labour. It then increased by 75% over the next 10 years.

But you're looking at debt in £, whereas the accepted measure is debt vs GDP.

If we look at debt vs GDP.

It fell under Thatcher, rose again in the recession of the early 1990's and was falling again by the time Labour came to power.

It then rose all through Labour's time in office and exploded during the financial crisis.

The Conservatives had actually started to reduce it before COVID.

Your graph shows the same as mine. 🤷‍♀️

Reading graphs clearly isn't your strong point, if you think the graphs are the same.

Look again. More closely.

Yes. The graph shows that debt was falling as a percentage of GDP before COVID. Whereas debt was still increasing in £ as per your graph.

The two graphs are not the same.