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?

Taxes are currently 40% of the size of the economy and they're going up and up and up as the population gets older. The old social contract - high-cost public sector pensions, expensive welfare state, free health care isn't going to work unless we have a big rethink.

This is not the most unequal time in human history.

Certainly not in the U.K.

It's less equal than the 1970s but considerably more equal than most of human history.

It's currently about the same as the 1930s

equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed/

Pushing the retirement age up higher will be awful for people doing hard labour as their job.

My dad was in one, and his body fell apart before retirement age. They tend to be poorly paid, so no chance to have a private pension.

It's not so much the lack of money that's the issue but the amount of money wasted due to poor management, terrible structures, too many middle managers etc...

My FIL worked for the council for a few years. He said although it was well paid it was exasperating as he couldn't just get on with a job. There was one person that had to do one bit. Another person for something else etc... when he could have done it in a fraction of the time himself and saved them a fortune.

What happens if nobody wants to buy bonds? What happens if we can’t pay the bond yield?

We can always print money, sure, but then we have to cope with inflation. Which sends up interest rates. That was the nub of Truss’s problem with market reaction: she wanted to cut tax and borrow.

But even if we do tax we’ll need to do so in a way that doesn’t depress growth and doesn’t create unemployment.

In fairness to Labour, they are making noises about driving down welfare payments and getting heavy with the NHS.

Where the money to house the refugee seekers came from, where the millions thrown at the Rwanda drain came from .....

The tax share in the U.K. has gone up and down over time and has very little to do with the aging population.

It was last over 40% under Margaret Thatcher in 1983.

ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-have-government-revenues-changed-over-time

We need to understand what is a realistic retirement age. Even beyond the state pension, state-backed defined contribution pensions are absolutely crippling and the sum paid in is nowhere near the cost. If the state is going to be obliged to fund 20-40 years of retirement its needs to be funded by those receiving it - not future workers IMO.

healthy life expectancy hasn’t increased. I’m not sure how you can change the pension funding model though & there would be outrage from a large sector of the public.

I’d be 1000x happier being taxed more to make schools better vs allowing Jean, 97, to stay at home in her final years fully-funded by the state so she can let her 68 year old millionaire child inherit her home

I don’t disagree but people won’t vote for it.

Honestly, if they just gave working rights to some of these refugees, they would work and pay taxes. For tens of thousands refugees millions given to Rwanda. What was all that about

Most of us in the UK will never even get close to paying in enough tax to cover what we take from the NHS never mind anything else… sorry but we simply need to work more if not already fully employed and pay more tax….

But the problem is the public WANT that level of red tape, they just say they don’t. How many posts do you see on here about ‘have they done a risk assessment?’ ‘they should’ve known X or Y was a mad idea and not rushed into it’ ‘how was that allowed to happen?’

At present parents are campaigning for CCTV on school transport!

Liz Truss tried a spending spree and look what happened. It isn't as simple as 'borrowing more' because without a plausible plan to repay any borrowing, the markets react negatively and the cost of borrowing increases.

The only way to have excellent public services is to raise taxes but that's a vote loser.

Or invest in growth. Encourage businesses and trade. Made more difficult by Brexit. Made more difficult because tax breaks for business are sneered at, 'looking after their mates' etc

And everyone moans about foreign aid but we don't do it out of kindness. We pay to protect our interests whether that's to encourage trade with those countries, or to stop immigration at source.

I agree - but, I also think people
aren’t paying enough ‘in’ to fund their retirement.

Auto-enrolment was one strategy to offset this.

But that doesn’t stop the issue of the cost of state / state-backed pensions.

People need to save more during their working lives.

@Rainbowsponge We desperately need to accept that we must pay more tax. No one likes that idea of course but surely it must be possible for these clever people to share the burden so that the increases fall on those who potentially can afford it.

The sad thing is that Labour seem to have fallen into a trap to gain power [as I suppose they had to] and promised not to increase VAT and Income tax. They have punished those of their MPs who tried to rebel so as to lift the Child Benefit cap

Most people don’t pay taxes.

Or invest in growth. Encourage businesses and trade.

On here that is deemed a vanity project, waste or something to do with ‘their mates’

It feels like people only accept spending on social care and the NHS and see anything else as money wasted

Can’t wait for this!

Pension rules are constantly changed! Introduction of auto-enrolment , lifetime allowance. It’s never ending.

I assume there will be radical reform to address pensions in the next 30 years. It will probably be painful.

I don’t know if we are still a rich enough country to fund the retirement of several million people for decades. Probably not.

If Jeff Bezos gave away all his money (or rather, sold his businesses to someone else who happened to have 220 billion dollars) that would be enough to fund the NHS for 1 year.

The money that billionaires “have” (and many don’t really have it, it’s imaginary valuations of their companies) pales in comparison to the cost of the modern welfare state.

And what of those who never pay in? Again not those who can't, those who won't, of which there are despite the concerted efforts of those who insist there's never anyone who would choose not to work and live of off benefits.

Most people don't pay enough taxes to cover the benefits they receive.

54% of households are net recipients, taking more than they pay in. This includes use of state education and nhs services.

😐 it’s sobering isn’t it

Exactly and everyone else is expected to pay more and more

This. Well said.

That’s a very good post.