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?

Have you been asleep for the last five years? Don't you have any idea how the Tories have spent our money? Shall we start HS2 or wasted money on PPE, or money for mates, wallpaper?

I think the fact that he owns it is slightly more pertinent than him posting on it.

Why? It’s the medium for the activist left. He hasn’t changed that.

Those are either good ideas gone bad, like HS2 (unlike Brown’s mania for PFI which was a bad idea gone even worse) - trivial (wallpaper - also see Derry Irvine under Blair) or untrue (‘money for mates’ 🙄).

Every time Labour has been in Government, they have borrowed well beyond their means. They end up getting voted out and the Conservatives have had to bail out the country. It has never been any different in the past, don't expect it to be any different this time.

Oh you want to be political. Unfortunately the nation has decided. You don't seem to have a clue, other than repeating Daily Mail headlines.

Top response. Really good. 🙄

Not true.

Of course he has.....

It was certainly different in the last administration.

Then most people’s pensions would be worth less. So they’d have to save more for retirement. Back to square one - no better off.

And carers.

Many people have no company pension, and if companies profits were lower, prices would be lower, lower pensions would suffice.

Nearly 80% of employees have a work place pension. Sure, that includes government employees, but they make up less than 20% of the workforce according to the Office for National Statistics. So I’d quite like to see your workings. I don’t see how that can add up.

then there’s the minor issue of lower profits leading to lower corporation tax and less income for HMRC. Who will then have to put up tax rates, which means companies will have to put up prices.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/workplacepensions

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/db36/pse

But not all Tesco workers are claiming in work benefits, so your analysis is incorrect.
Same with Amazon...

Tesco etc make billions each and every year, its absurd to suggest they couldn't afford to pay their lowest paid workers more, thereby reducing the reliance on the state.

The same goes for many other companies making billions eg The Range.

Agreed @MidnightPatrol The bigger problem than the state pension is the DB schemes for nearly all public servants so millions of ex teachers/ NHS / military / police etc are on pensions for life at about 50% of their salary if they work for 25 years! This is an unfunded liability that is just growing every year as life expectancy is longer and salaries increase

I'm sure you're right.

lol you’re a little bit too obtuse and argumentative. Don’t you have anything better to do— when a comment is over your head?

Demographics is killing us. More old people and fewer young people to tax. Our tax gap is forecast to be £89B for next year. Income tax alone raises around £250B, for context.

If we continue to believe that we can spend more with fewer taxpayers we have to borrow, and loads that debt on our children. If that spending doesn't increase future taxation (i.e. if return on investment is 0) then it's unsustainable. e.g. funding social care is not going to raise tax revenues in future compared with building a nuclear plant or better roads (I expect).

We are a middle income country with London attached, no longer a rich one. We must come to terms with that - public services will be more like a middle income country unless we make serious changes to drive up productivity and GDP per capita. I don't think people understand that.

The more I travel the world the more I realise that we as a country are super entitled and believe there are all these rich people we can tax to pay for these services but we don't want to work for them or be more efficient. In other countries people don't feel entitled to these public services. Here we want everything to be paid for by someone else and blame everyone else for our troubles.

Lol

Debt to GDP in 2010 was 65%, this after the GFC.

Now its 98% and set to increase.

We now have a black hole in the public finances of £19billion, mainly caused by the Tories cutting NI without having the growth to pay for this tax cut.

The idea the Tories are good with finances is totally false i.e look at the costs of Rwanda? £700m for 4 asylum seekers sent back and we even paid them to do this, total costs estimated to be £10 billion.... for what???

There will always be money for war.

War makes money, all that extra production of arms and then the rebuilding.

Yes, it is not like those countries would distribute the money or use to fund their own people. They would just steel the money. This is ridiculous and is we are still thinking of sending money to countries where leaders are corrupted. Lazy and stupid way to deal with the issue.

What a solution and people still come here in masses.

In a society money doesn't run out. It just gets passed from person to person. There's massive wealth inequality in the UK. So a very small number of people have the most. Those people need to be taxed. Not people earning 100k before I incur the wrath of Mumsnet. People with £10 million assets.