To want a budget which puts young people and families first

[HFJ]

In advance of an upcoming budget that will likely hammer working people (again, despite the rhetoric), I’m consoling myself by imagining my own budget. You’ll notice a theme. This is because I believe young people and families are the future, deserve to have hope, aspirations and goals. Please feel free to contribute.

1. The first 5 years of young people’s full time earnings to be tax and NI free. This would enable all to save for a house deposit, rather than only the few who inherit. Imagine the incentive to work hard!
2. No increases to any tax that primarily affects working age people, including fuel tax (because working people need fuel to go to work)
3. No stamp duty for young people and those with children under 18. This enables them a fairer chance of buying property rather than have to compete unfairly with cash buyers
4. Complete removal of the pension tax free cash allowance. This is because 100s of 1000s are poised to take their 25% lump sum and plough this into the property market (tbf I think the gov has got wind of this, hence the landlord tax changes)
5. instead of massive increases to NHS budget (which does not really benefit the young or families), a £10 charge to see the doctor, so people start to take ownership for their health
6. Removal of the free prescription for over 60s. Instead, use this money to bring back the school nurse and perhaps even school dentist visits

Any other ideas?

The fact that public services are generally poor with purchasing decisions doesn't make the idea wrong. Perhaps they need to engage better procurement practices, and actually aim for value for money and competitive pricing, rather than being conned by suppliers who rely on their lack of experience and poor knowledge of purchasing procedures. It's amazing how much better deals that private firms manage to get despite far lower purchasing power. Same with the NHS, not just schools. They're far too easily manipulated and conned into accepting expensive contracts and deliberately false price lists etc.

Todays young people don't KNOW that things wont ever get better

The ones that can read know. We never recovered from 08, we have an ageing population, services that have been starved. Why do you think our economy will suddenly improve?

Or at least make it so that workers commuting using public transport can claim the costs against their wages as a tax deductible expense like in some other countries.

YANBU by any stretch of the imagination. The younger generations are now having to deal with an unprecedented recession caused by the major fuck-up that Brexit has been. They did not vote for this shit and now they are paying the consequences. So yes OP, I am with you. They need to be prioritised.

Exactly, why "should" it improve? There are no signs and no reasons for any sudden improvement in the nation's finances. All signs are showing a one way direction of travel. It's not just the UK, it's the entire developed Western World. There's a shift of World wealth away from the West to the East and Middle East. The best that Western economies and governments can do is some kind of managed decline to try to avoid huge economic crashes. All empires have suffered this - Russian, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, etc - all had their periods of being major "super-powers" and all ended up collapsing. Britain and the rest of Europe, North America, Australia, etc WILL go the same way. We've "peaked" and there's only one direction of travel now.

I have spent a little bit of it on books to help improve my toddlers speech. Plus wasn't child benefit a way of women having some of their money rather than the husband drink it away?

Not just Brexit. Leading economists mostly agreed that the 2008 crash would cause a decade of stagnation, zero real growth, etc., and that turned out to be spot on. Unfortunately, just as we should have been starting to grow again, we suffered Brexit and Covid, and now we probably have another decade of stagnation and zero real growth. The 2008 crash, Brexit and Covid have really done a number on us, with the younger generation bearing the brunt, especially the younger workers!

I don’t think you have a full grasp of the tax situation. Have you not heard of capital gains tax payable when you sell a house or stamp duty when you buy another, or VAT when you make any improvements to your house. There are lots of devious ways governments can make a grab for money. Tax relief simply mitigates the effects of high taxation, it doesn’t negate it.

There is no capital gains tax on the profits you make on selling your home if it's been your home for all (or most) of the time you've owned it, so that's an irrelevant point really. CGT is only payable when you're "home" is actually an investment, i.e. where you don't live there as your home, where it's rented out, etc.

Oh yes, I had forgotten all about capital gains tax which you pay if your spare house goes up in value.

So are the older generations. Most people didn't vote for this shit (only just over half of those who did vote, and not everyone voted).

The outcry over the WFP isn't due to the principle of means testing its due to a failure to means test properly. An appropriate means test for WFP would have looked not only at receipt of a passport benefit but at income levels overall, whether there were non dependent adults living in the property, and introduced a taper rather than an all or nothing approach, simular to calculations for housing costs. But obviously that's expensive and cumbersome, so here we are.

So you agree with me then 👍

I think you should come back when you're over fifty and reread what you have written, see if you've changed your stance

I am only in my 50s - cinemas were a birthday treat, coffees and takeaways - we had fish and chips the day we moved house- cars - gadgets, days out to zoos or Christmas lights or anything really - we had a picnic in the hills , house had water running down the walls of the third bedroom, I recall my grandparents getting an inside loo and heating ... and we were quite well off I would say.

This.

I’m in my 60s - just born at the end of the 50s and o e of those awful greedy baby boomers I lived in house shares till I was 33. Two years after I bought my first house (tiny, no central heating, no proper bathroom) interest rates started to rise and only stopped at 15%

I learnt to sew my own clothes, as my mother had before me - we never had shop-bought clothes and I had two new pairs of shoes a year - summer and winter. Plus new school shoes once a year if needed.

I don’t think todays 30 year olds realise what an easy luxury life many of them have lived.

. They did not vote for this shit and now they are paying the consequences.

If anyone 18 or over in 2016 (so 26 now) couldn’t be arsed to vote in the EU referendum then it’s their own stupid fault.

The younger generations are now having to deal with an unprecedented recession caused by the major fuck-up that Brexit has been. They did not vote for this shit

Neither did plenty of us over 50. My mum voted remain in her 80s. Why are you blaming us?

I thought statistically more older people voted for Brexit. This does not mean every single older person voted for Brexit

The statistics showed that the older groups voted for Brexit and the younger groups voted for Remain.

In the Brexit referendum of 2016, 73 percent of people aged between 18 and 24 voted to Remain in the European Union, compared with just 40 percent of people aged over 65. In fact, the propensity to have voted Leave increases with age, with the three oldest age groups here voting leave and the three youngest voting to Remain

interest rates started to rise and only stopped at 15%

interest rates of 15% are similar to interest rates of 5% in terms of impact on household finances. This is because house prices are higher than in the past.

And interest rates of that level were for a very short period of time anyway.

Statistically it was younger people who didn't bother to vote in the Referendum!

And those pesky Northerners were partial to leaving, don't forget them when criticising us oldies. Well, in 2016 I wasn't over 65 but I am now and don't want to be tarred with the Leave brush!

In the Brexit referendum of 2016, 73 percent of people aged between 18 and 24 voted to Remain in the European Union

That should say 73% of those who bothered to vote.

People who didn’t vote can’t be included in vote statistics. In the Brexit vote, older people were more likely to vote Brexit.