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?

Means testing state pension and other OAP benefits such as free prescriptions, free bus pass, winter fuel allowance, etc, could be set at quite a high level, i.e. maybe £100k of income, so it wouldn't affect the majority of people. Anyone with an income of £100k in retirement doesn't need a free bus pass!

We've managed to means test child benefit for people with incomes over £50k (now £60k), so it can't be that hard to administer!

The number of older people claiming Attendance Allowance with massive houses and huge amounts of money in the bank is enormous and the threshold for it being awarded is very low. Wouldn't surprise me if they changed things regarding AA.

Amazing!

Zero mention of wealth/asset taxes, as per usual its the less well off that can make the sacrifices.
Tax unearned income same as earned, council tax rebanding for more expensive houses, get rid of the private sector in the NHS and other public bodies, just duplicates services & drains money.

So many people are on long term sick and much of this is due to not being able to get healthcare, both physical and mental.

Why do you think Labour aren’t doing those things?

So hardly a remotely common occurrence.

People don’t pay tax over and again on their principal residence. House price inflation has been stratospheric. Inheritance of unearned wealth like this should be taxed heavily.

Because they've only been in for 3 weeks.

I think there will be changes announced in the next upcoming budgets that will address some of these, not all but the "Grow the economy" stuff is too long term, will take years before anyone notices, if by the time of the next GE, people don't notice improvements in e.g NHS, Dentistry and Roads, they they will vote for the extremes.

@ll09sm

"All the freebies were spent during Covid when people were screaming to be furloughed and stay at home to bake banana bread and watch Netflix.

Lockdowns cost the taxpayer £1 trillion. Yes that’s right. That’s a lot of zeros at the end of that number. The same people that wanted longer and harder lockdown and furlough for fun then squealed like trapped rodents when rampant inflation followed. They then wanted more freebies. Which they got. And now wonder why there’s no money left.

Money really does not grow on trees. There is only 3 ways to get it.

Earn it. This country certainly not doing that with 6 million people on out of work benefits. And less than half the population not being net contributors paying for everyone else.

Borrow it. The national debt is now more than 100% of GDP. The country borrow almost £20b a month to most for welfare and debt interest. A total Ponzi scheme.

Print it. The country printed so much free money since 2008 that printing anymore will turn it into Venezuela.

So guess what. There really is no money left. The freebies have run out"

Please don't you will soon have posters on here who after vaguely remembering GCSE Keynesian economics will say we can borrow as much money as we want cos it will always grow the economy and can pay itself off.

The interest bill on the current Government debt is the same as what is spent on the entire education budget.

Just to reinforce the point: There really is o money left!!

Inheritance is and people have been taxed previously on the money that paid for the property and also stamp duty on top. They then pay inheritance tax which is plenty. Also it’s not unearned people have worked for it. My parents went without to pay for their house as did we as children. They worked and earned the money to pay for it. They want to help their grandchildren when they die one of whom has disabilities and will need a lot of support and provision.

TBH anyone who thinks that labour aren’t going to hike taxes is deluded. The money has to come from somewhere - taxes and culling benefits are the only option.

The best way would to be means testing all benefits. Kick people back into jobs - people can come at me all they want and say ‘but some people genuinely can’t work’ and that may well be true, but the vast majority are lazy twats - and culling things like child benefits, means test state pensions, means test disability allowance. The State supports to many people - and we cannot afford to.

Stop giving bloody ridiculous pay rises to the sodding NHS and police who have had bloody good pay rises for the past 8+ years. Stop giving aid to countries that are bloody wealthy (looking at countries in Europe here who receive funding for shit they could do themselves), stop giving money to help ‘gender equality’ in sodding Afghanistan etc. - because that money is having no effect - stop handing out money to migrants, stop with the sodding green agenda as it’s not affordable.

But they won’t. Because their core voting base want them to do all the above. So, all they can do is hike taxes.

“Kick people back into jobs - people can come at me all they want and say ‘but some people genuinely can’t work’ and that may well be true, but the vast majority are lazy twats - “

Are they, links and evidence please.

Without a green agenda we’ll have no planet- little short sighted methinks.

The elephant in the room is Net Zero. A strong economy needs plentiful cheap energy. This is not going to happen from solar panels made with fossil fuel energy imported from China and with metals mined by child labour. We need to be exploiting our own oil and gas resource and building nuclear power stations.

A welfare state only works when people honour the social contact and understand it is for times of need and they should use for the shortest possible time. Most people with a degree of disability can work if they choose to. A contribution based scheme would help with higher benefits for people who have paid in for a long time. There is no way under 25s should be accessing out of work benefits. It’s a quick way to ruin their lives. They should have government supported work placements or training. Mental health issues are improved in the vast majority of cases by engaging in meaningful activity. The benefits system frequently disables people by making them dependent.

The NHS is something of a national religion and it’s not healthy it sets ridiculous expectations and makes people feel their health is not their responsibility. The danger in any insurance based system is the private companies would simply profiteer but ultimately I believe the NHS will end up for emergency care and cancer care only with most other care being delivered privately.

There is no way Ukraine is going to beat Russia whatever that means. We shouldn’t be supporting the US proxy war with Russia it’s clearly not in our interests. This way should end with a negotiated settlement as soon as possible. The alternative to this is an eventual nuclear exchange which is horrific. I can’t believe the war mongering that goes on about Ukraine, it’s absolutely disastrous.

I think people under estimate how crippling hidden disabilities and untreated MH can be.

The backlog and waiting lists for MH treatment need to be cleared. Young people want to work and not be crippled with mental illness. There is an endless wait and zero support until crisis. That needs to change as it keeps them trapped in a sticking plaster circle. Treat them, get them well,give them coping strategies and they will thrive and pay taxes.

House price inflation absolutely is unearned wealth. A house that was worth X now being worth XXX has nothing to do with how hard someone worked. None at all.

Whilst countries like China, India and the US do nothing to combat it, we won't have a planet anyway. Their emissions are getting worse, or not changing. Our contribution is miniscule.

Spending is different when it comes to a government. If I can't afford an item I want and I take debt to get it then I simply have the item. If a government takes debt to pay for something e.g. healthcare, it generates more money as more people aren't ill and are able to contribute. If it builds infrastructure the population is more supported and more prosperous. If money is treated as simply a commodity and profit is sought above all else (such as in the private sector) there's no investment and money simply swells in one area, in the same way a cancerous tumour grows and eventually interferes with the function of everything else. This is what we've seen over te past 12 years, businesses have profited wildly but the value of money has gone down, because fewer people have money they aren't able to provide s much in exchange for it. This is one of the reasons even businesses are supporting Labour now, try and boost productivity and increase the value of products and services again.

And it is completely absurd that one individual is estimated to have the wealth which would fund a healthcare system for 70 million people for one year. It's not normal, moral or right in any society. If billionaires all paid their fare share of taxes and paid their staff properly there would be far fewer billionaires and far more money in tax receipts for the government.

For example, if places like Amazon actually paid they're staff properly they wouldn't have huge pots of cash to pay dividends to their shareholders and CEOs, instead their staff would be able to contribute a bit more in tax and be less likely to need the state to top up their wages with universal credit etc. How many companies low wage bills and thus huge profits are being propped up by the things such as universal credit?

Taxing billionaires won't solve the problem. The uncomfortabel truth is that other (mainly EU) economies that spend more on public services tax those on average income more than we do in the UK. Because you get a lot more money a lot more consistently buy having a broad tax base.

The average EU average taxation rate for a single person without children who earned an average salary in the European Union was 29.6%. In the UK that's nearer 18%

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1449813/average-rate-of-taxation-european-countries-households/

This Guardian article is quite old, so rates will have changed, but I imagine the general trend is the same.

www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/27/tax-britons-pay-europe-australia-us

Individuals in the UK often have no choice but to buy stuff made in China. Global corporations have bought out so many firms from the UK and Europe and have downsized and make stuff abroad far cheaper.

Plenty of items simply aren't made in the UK anymore.

Surprised to discover the other day than even "Swedish" Volvo cars are now made in China, owned by the Chinese!

Same with Hornby model railways, main production now in China.

When very long standing, well respected firms, have ceased UK/Europe manufacturing, customers really don't have much choice.

The genie long since left the bottle and there's no going back. We are in the middle of the end of the European/USA empire as regards wealth etc. We, in the West will continue to see wealth decline as the East continues to grow and gain wealth. History is repeating itself - look at previous empires - they all come to an end eventually.

Good luck trying to tax billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. (But why do we never mention Arab and Chinese billionaires??).

They'll just move to another tax haven. Without full Worldwide support to ban tax havens, it simply can't happen. And to persuade all the tax havens to stop would require them to be massively "compensated" for the loss of the millionaires/billionaires who live/base themselves in tax havens.

Good luck trying to persuade the Isle of Man to give up its "special" tax rules and charge the same level of taxes as the UK or Europe. They simply wouldn't without billions of "aid"/compensation as they know that most people/businesses would simply walk away once there was no tax benefits of being resident there! And IOM is a pretty insignificant tax haven compared to other countries/islands in the World.

They're coming for our pensions/savings. Rachel's "big bang" reform.

Basically they will milk every working person and every penny over the personal allowance, until you're too old and completely disincentivise working. Attack earners and "high earners" and families rather than the very wealthy (i mean the capital owners) and corporates/businesses.

We need employers to pay an actual wage so that people don't rely on in-work benefits,
Basically- the taxpayer is subsiding business.