To think there is no more money?

[Rainbowsponge]

And Labour have admitted this.

So many threads saying X or Y needs to be ‘properly funded’ (even though most of the time our spending is actually in line with comparable countries), but no acknowledgment of the fact there’s no money to spend.

And when you bring it up, posters completely ignore you or accuse you of being Jacob Rees Mogg

Wouldn’t the quality of debate be improved if we stopped burying our heads in the sand?

Lol, there may be no more money, but there is always more debt available if a government wants to spend - just look at the insane waste during covid.

Hopefully Labour won’t adopt this mindset!

I'm not an economist, but I don't think a country works like a household.

Like, right now I have £850 in my account and I know my gas bill is due soon and that'll be £250. If I then spend £600 before payday I'll literally have no money left. [Made up numbers]

A country's money is way more fluid, you can sell more bonds or tweak the interest rates or whatever.

I don't think you can ever say "there's no money left".

Exactly. There's an economist on X who explains this really well, I'll try to find his name.

I don’t really know what you mean by ‘no more money’.

Do you think tax revenues are inadequate, or efficiencies in public spending can’t be made, or borrowing can’t be arranged, etc?

There is no more money? I think you don't quite understand how running a country works.

Funny how “there’s no money left” gets wheeled out whenever talking about child poverty, disability benefits, NHS, education and the like, but you never hear it uttered when it comes to military aid.

Everyone needs to be paying more tax, and we need to address our complex in-work benefits system, funding models for pension provision, NHS etc.

Its not realistic to have an expansive state benefits system, with an increasingly dwindling pool of people funding it.

Taxes will have to increase, inevitable with an ageing population.

You are not an economist but you are correct. Not quite sure why the U.K. media can’t be bothered to correct this every time some politician brings it up.

Of course there's money. Austerity was an ideological choice that has destroyed the country beyond repair. It wasn't necessary. There's always been money for the country. It's just going to cost a fucking fortune undoing the destruction the Tories caused. "There's no magic money tree" she says. Suddenly there is a fucking magic money tree for the pandemic and no one says anything.

It's not that there's no money. There is no political will to tax the super rich billionaires and their corporations. Instead they up the taxes on the already squeezed middle class and take away services and benefits from the utterly decimated low earners.

I feel like they've been open about saying they want to go through the books before committing to anything. There will be money for things, of course there will, but there isn't a surplus of money that can just be spent on whim without their being issues.

Funny how “there’s no money left” gets wheeled out whenever talking about child poverty, disability benefits, NHS, education and the like, but you never hear it uttered when it comes to military aid

Literally no point in those other things if the world is further destabilised and the country is at risk.

Question here is, how much tax will workers be willing to pay for pensioners while living a pretty crap quality of life themselves.

Societies are circular, not linear.

Because politicians and journalists inhabit the same grubby incestuous little bubble that is the U.K. establishment

@MidnightPatrol thats the conundrum and a valid question. Personally I think they need to look at CGT, IHT etc as opposed to PAYE but who knows.

It just doesn't work like that. There was certainly enough money sloshing around when £700m was put aside for the Rwanda fiasco!

I’m financially illiterate. Can someone explain why there’s no money please? Most people pay taxes, so where does all that money go?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/22/reeves-to-appoint-covid-corruption-tsar-to-claw-back-billions-of-waste

Hopefully this will claw back some. Or at least prosecute some of those committing fraud.

It's also funny how much there is to give away in foreign aid

Quite.

I’m financially illiterate. Can someone explain why there’s no money please? Most people pay taxes, so where does all that money go?

welfare including pensions and health care are a large proportion

Exactly.

And debt payments for all the money we have borrowed

“Spending on debt interest has increased considerably - that's the amount the government has to pay for all the money it has borrowed. The interest is about 50% higher as a proportion of the size of the economy than it was in 2010. The OBR predicted this would reach £109 billion in 2024/25.”