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?

I don't begrudge MPs a pay rise or a decent wage. I think they do a hard and thankless job. And we wouldn't want to return to the days where only the rich could afford to do it, funded by family money. You need a good wage to attract talented, ordinary people.

"Not everyone on under £40k is being propped up.
My DP is on £30k and claims no benefits.
I used to be on 14k (this was actually 14 years ago), and I was not entitled to any!"

You can still be a net recipient of benefits. They calculate the cost of your access to state education, nhs, state pension etc over your lifetime.

Then it's nothing to do with the cap

There's plenty of money.

Tens of millions is wasted going to the likes of Deloitte and Crapita to screw up management in the NHS.

Thames water is planning to give £2billion of public money to its investors as dividends over the next 10 years.

It's just where you choose to spend it.

@XenoBitch my understanding is net contributor isn’t just to do with direct benefits but the cost of state education, NHS etc.

World War 3 is what is coming next, it’s too late to push back.

That makes sense. Thanks.

British population will be falling from 2030 so I wonder what impact removal of the cap would have on that statistic.

Either way, I think it's popular with voters who like to see benefit-recipients making good choices to limit their need for benefits.

Can you link to the details about Thames water please? I'm interested in that.

For a start nearly 50% of people take more out in benefits than they pay in taxes.

Households with the main breadwinner under 44 on average get more benefits than they pay in tax, largely because of the cost of education in the household.

It is only people aged between 45 and 64 who on average actually pay more taxes than they receive in benefits.

So while people say they've worked all their lives and paid taxes blah, blah, blah, it's for a relatively small period of time that they actually put in more than they take out, even if they are working (obviously these are average figures because there will be some younger people who have high incomes and no children who would be net contributors their whole life).

Also bear in mind that direct taxation has reduced since the 1980s/90s.

I used to pay 33% tax as a basic rate taxpayer. It's a lot less now.

The other issue is that we have an ageing population with people receiving pensions and social care for a lot longer period. This costs a fortune.

My frustration though is that people want good public services, a fully-functioning NHS, benefits like child benefit and nursery subsidies. They want a triple-lock pension. They want granny to have a lovely care home when the time comes.

What they don't want is: to pay income tax; higher rate tax; indirect taxes; to pay to park in hospitals; inheritance tax - even though the estate can in many cases be worth up to £1 million before you start paying tax; CGT.

How do they think this is possible.

Track and trace cost £35m.

The billions went on testing kits, emergency hospital provision and everything else that the government was being urged to do.

Over half of people are net recipients from the state.

This is 12 years old and reckons around £40k to be a net contributor on average, though of course varies by use of public services.

there has already been clear indications that HMRC are going on a drive to claw back taxes that have slipped through the net and don’t meet requirements. This can be seen in certain workplace benefits for example eg childcare. I think it’s around 6 years of unpaid tax some will owe. Just an example of one of the crackdowns along with private school tax

“No money left” for schools and hospitals, yet plenty of billions for vanity projects such as:
millennium dome
war in iraq
lockdowns
booze for mps
mps pay rises
hs2
cancelling hs2
massive IT projects

Heard it all before.

https://www.cityam.com/despite-its-problems-thames-water-still-aims-to-pay-2bn-in-dividends-over-the-next-decade/

https://news.sky.com/story/ofwat-hits-ailing-thames-water-with-40m-fine-over-dividend-payment-13146393 £40m dividend paid last year

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/28/thames-water-board-150m-dividend-payout-funding-u-turn and they'd have paid more if Ofwat didn't stop them.

This

Michelle Mone has quite a lot of it.

Economist Professor Simon Wren Lewis wrote 4 blog posts earlier this year on government debt and that it makes no sense to say that the country cannot afford to borrow to invest more. They are worth reading.

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/02/detoxifying-government-debt-part-1-debt.html

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/02/detoxifying-government-debt-part-2.html

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/02/

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/03/detoxifying-government-debt-part-4.html

I think it’s worrying Chancellor Reeves is insisting on sticking to the Tories fiscal rules when many economists believe after 14 years of massive under investment in our infrastructure and services the govt must spend to fix this - as well as trying to attract more private investment - to kickstart stronger economic growth. Poor public services are bad for the economy.

Prof Wren Lewis says one possible problem of increasing public spending significantly is running up against a lack of real resources/labour. To address the economy overheating he believes some taxes need to be raised. Discussed here https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/03/

My frustration though is that people want good public services, a fully-functioning NHS, benefits like child benefit and nursery subsidies. They want a triple-lock pension. They want granny to have a lovely care home when the time comes.

What they don't want is: to pay income tax; higher rate tax; indirect taxes; to pay to park in hospitals; inheritance tax - even though the estate can in many cases be worth up to £1 million before you start paying tax; CGT.

How do they think this is possible.

Forgot the Yep!

100%. Russia has militarised their economy, and the USA are most likely going to be isolationist if Trump wins.

It's going to be a scary world and our defense forces have been hollowed out over the last 30 years. It will take time and investment to bring them back to a reasonable level, and we need to start now.

Thanks! That’s a very succinct explanation.

So basically taxes need to be higher or benefits lower? Or both?

Being the opposition, they will have known this in the run up to the election. But I fully expect Rachel Reeves when she delivers her autumn budget to say something along the lines of ‘we weren’t planning to increase taxes but since we’ve been in power it’s become apparent there’s no money left and we have no option but to increase taxes’ but I’m not buying it. They must have known this before 4th July.

This is real life and I’m worried about the prospect of tax rises because although on paper I earn a reasonable salary, I’m not left with very much at the end of the month. I’ve been having sleepless nights about what the future now holds. Of course I hope I’m proved wrong.

There is more available. But it is stuffed offshore, or routed through convoluted ‘companies’ or employing your spouse as ‘secretary’ or inflated expenses out weighing income. What there is a lack of is paying a fair share.

Keir has just announced £84 million for Africa. There is enough money we just keep getting people in power who prefer to send it abroad than deal with our own, failing services.