To agree with the expected tax rises

[UpThePole]

There have been so many posts on here talking about how the budget will be awful and what Labour is doing is terrible, but I am struggling to understand what people consider to be a reasonable alternative.

A country cannot consistently borrow money to finance its day to day spending (or at least it cannot run a current account deficit in excess of its growth rate) without that inevitably leading to insolvency (when the country can no longer pay) or hyperinflation (if the country prints money to pay its debts).

Investment spending is different because (if those investments are good ones) they should create more value in the long term than the cost of the interest on the debt used to finance them. Similarly there are good reasons for borrowing short term during a recession etc.

Given the above should be an uncontroversial fact, the only sustainable options are to either increase our tax take to match day to day spending or to reduce spending.

I do not really see how people can support the latter, given public services are already on their knees after 14 years of austerity. The OBR flat out said that Jeremy Hunt’s projections for further cuts were completely unachievable. There have been lots of posts discussing anecdotal evidence of apparent “waste”, but does anybody really honestly believe that there are tens of billions of pounds of savings left to be had without causing further huge damage to the country?

That leaves tax rises as the only sustainable option. Everybody will have a different view about which taxes should / shouldn’t rise, but I find it hard to understand how people can genuinely believe that there should be none. All the responses saying we should fund this from taxing “the rich” miss the point that, even if we made the top rates of tax really high, there are simply not enough millionaires out there to raise the kind of sums that are needed.

I guess AIBU unreasonable to think that most people who are against the tax rises start from “I don’t want to pay more tax” and then seek any argument they can find (however spurious / demonstrably false) to support that position, rather than genuinely considering if increasing tax is the right thing for the country?

As an aside, I particularly hate the Liz Truss “tax cuts create more growth / investments so pay for themselves” / trickle down economics crowd. No serious economist agrees those arguments are correct (trying them out led to an immediate crisis) but somehow they still get air time.

I agree, OP.

Well there’s certainly a case to be made that this is the right analysis of the situation and the right response to it. But Labour flatly refused to accept it before the election and put out their ‘fully costed’ manifesto. The swift u turn makes them look dishonest. No doubt they have discovered more since coming into office but the basic picture was clear and repeatedly put to them before the election. They should have owned it and made their case. Not only that but they have made the situation worse with the promises that tied their hands and alienated many people with this ‘working people’ nonsense. They come across as dishonest and politically inept.

Me too. I think me/dh will need to pay in bit more, I'm ok with that, i think its needed and i voted these guys in agreeing with it.

Those of us with deeper pockets need to share it around to get things growing and bring those more vulnerable along on the journey with us.

I don’t want to pay more tax. I also don’t want to pay £5,000 per year to buy medication privately so I am well enough to work and pay tax.

I wish they would look at all the money they could save by the major companies who are avoiding paying tax first ..

The amount of people in poverty is growing and my concern is how hard it is to get out of .

Local authorities and the govt waste millions of pounds a year on ridiculous pilots, inquiries, failed NHS schemes, blah blah

I would like someone to go back to basics - education, health & police and simplify things instead of making life more complicated and expensive

No I don’t want to give more money because whoever is in charge cannot seem to manage the country’s main pillars!! And I believe that would be the case regardless of how much money they had! It’s not money it’s sheer incompetence

A fair point, but it’s really hard to be straight down the line on this one.

The Conservatives were just as dishonest (but, as with any party that loses an election, will not be held to account for that).

If your choice is either (I) be economical with the truth so you can win power and try to do what you think is best for the country or (II) be completely honest, knowing your opponent will not play by the same rules and you may lose, I think it’s understandable why a party would choose Option I and it do not think it is complete hypocrisy for them to do so.

I agree OP. I don’t want to have to keep buying all my child’s stationary because his school can’t afford it. NHS beds are full of people waiting to go into social care so I can’t get the simple routine procedure I’ve been waiting for for 3 years. Those of us who can afford it need to pay more to invest in a better future for everyone.

Those unhappy with the suggested changes are boomers who paid about 5k in tax during their entire career, 50 quid a month into a pension, and now think they deserve a luxurious retirement funded by struggling millennials.

You are to an extent making my point. The government may arguably waste millions on those things, they do not by any sensible calculation waste tens of billions on them, so it is not really valid to point to axing those things as a solution.

I am interested in how you think that education / health could be improved without more funding, when a cost cutting government was in power for 14 years and could not achieve that. It would be a fairly extraordinary result if there really were some huge savings to made which nobody has managed to uncover to date.

I really worry that this kind of thinking, i.e. we can have everything we want with no trade-offs despite all the evidence to the contrary, is a big part of how we end up making poor long term policy decisions over and over again.

Me too. Someone said the other day that most people want Scandinavian public services and US taxes and they were right.

Well I would have voted for a party that honestly appraised the situation and gave a considered plan for responding to it. I appreciate not everyone would have done so I understand why they did option 1 to get into power but it does make them hypocritical and it also means that they have unnecessarily constrained their ability to deal with the problems.

Nasty, provocative ageism there. I’m more than happy to pay more tax.

Not any government has invested in social care, and there are many people of pension age who are on 689 month , they pay rent ,house tax, food water electric gas, they don't live the life of Riley, If they are lucky to have a small private pension it can take them as one case I know 1pence over to get tax credits, so unable to get the heating allowance, which labour removed, working class people who have paid their taxes worked dam hard , not 16hrs a week as
god forbid it would effect Their universal credit, maybe if people were to get full time jobs then more would pay taxes to ease the burden on the government,Working in social care I have seen a lot of deprivation in this country and to many people who are able to work but say why should we when we can stay at home and get paid for it, that's where our money has gone, money wasted , this government had targeted the wrong people.tax the huge corporations .

I dont mind paying more tax even though i already in 40% brackets, if its for greater good. But i do mind if its for benefits!!!. So many people lying about benefits. So many lazy couch potato sitting and i have to spend my tax on them!. Government should do cheap or free childcare so everyone needs to work!!. This post not for people who are really need it, sick or disabled. It’s strictly for lying bastard who too lazy and prefer drinking at home!.

unfortunately government always molly cuddle these type of people