Reeves’ Budget Dread

[Niceandkneesy]

I’ve listened to the budget from Rachel Reeves today and can’t help a feeling of dread.
what she’s produced as her budget compared to the Labour Party manifesto and it’s like night and day.

Why do politicians treat us as idiots? Why can’t they tell the truth? And why don’t they appear to give a sh#t about their lack of honesty? Or AIBU?

Don’t be so ridiculous & cringy. You understood.

This. It's quite funny to watch actually.

Wealthyish household here. I think she bottled it and the budget delivered wasn’t the budget originally planned. They spent the first hundred days pissing people off. They had nowhere really to go.

I’ll be impacted by capital gains and inheritance tax but my parents are relatively young. There will be many conservative governments ahead to deal with that.

The only thing that will change for me is I will let a member of staff go that has done nothing wrong. Profit margins are important and I’m not prepared to reduce my own standard of living for someone else. This will become an ongoing theme everywhere.

Extra money for schools and healthcare, and for mental health and SEND, initiatives to try and crack down on shoplifting by criminal gangs, and funding for homelessness /rough sleeping.
The latter issues have honestly destroyed some urban centres which now feel incredibly unsafe, so im thrilled they are attempting to tackle this.
Funding for capital spending for schools - its ridiculous what a state schools are in and having worked with schools i know it's been next to impossible for them to secure funding even for stuff like replacing a leaking portacabin classroom with a proper building.
Im very pleased with the rise on SDLT for second homes, great stuff.
So yep lots of good!

I'm a bit worried about the impact on jobs & pay rises with the increase in employers Nic.
One thing I don't understand though, is I'm a beneficiary of my dh pension. If that was over £325k with his bonds, savings, share of the house, would I as his wife have to pay inheritance tax

I didn’t find it too bad op. Much milder than I expected. However, my 2 issues are the employer NIC/NMW and the fact that I think we’re going to be in more debt.

Transfers to spouses are free of inheritance tax

No, just with brutal right wingers like you.

I'll be giving my staff a pay rise this year just like any other, and a Christmas bonus.

Enjoy your coal Scrooge.

Don't you sound lovely. How about you keep the staff member and reduce your profits? Can't be a very successful business if you can't manage that 🙄

She hasn't bottled it, this budget is in line with the manifesto. You've been reading too much right-wing press scaremongering.

I was thinking this too. If they can let a member of staff go without reducing productivity or quality of work, then they clearly didn't need them in the first place.

Or if letting a staff member go will reduce their output and therefore their income, then they are very short sighted.

Either way, doesn't sound very smart

I wasn't surprised by anything in the budget - much of it was leaked or briefed beforehand, and the rest was in keeping with impacting people with assets rather than those relying on an income.
I just hope it all works as we desperately need to do something to address all those horrendous legacy issues and build for the future

Fortunately unemployment is low vs historic levels and there are a lot of vacancies so your employee should be able to get a job pretty easily.

The money raised should help ease the NHS waiting lists and return some of the long term sick to the workforce, creating momentum in the economy again.

Finally a budget that makes sense.

Yes, loving the way no one can find anything bad to say and it's nowhere near as "bad" as expected because of the way the press stirred everything up.

Also, I think you have to give some credit to Labour for that, they told us there'd be difficult decisions, and they've managed to make it not seem so bad.

It seems to broadly tie to the manifesto to me. Certainly can't see anything to make you feel dread unless you are a non-dom with a jet - in which case you can probably afford it.

Personally I am more worried about things outside of the budget that this government is doing. I think the news yesterday has been neatly overshadowed by the (on the whole) better than expected news that we were all expecting. Exactly how they wanted it.
But hey. The budget is good so that makes everything else OK....

There was nothing in it that costs me personally other than knock on effects of things like minimum wage and employer national insurance.

I’m a teacher so I would be very pleased to see some investment in schools but it remains to be seen what it looks like.

I won’t be inheriting any pensions or farms and MILs house will probably go for care costs anyway so not overly bothered about inheritance tax. My parents are still young so there will be many budgets to change it again before then.

I thought it was quite a good budget and expected it to go further.

£40 billion taxes rises, mostly on businesses will lead to lower growth, less pay and a poorer country in the future.

And then there's also more government debt to be paid off by our kids.

That's before we even get to paying for the aging population in the future.

Yes I'm depressed!!

Well it hasn't crashed the economy instantly so there have been worse budgets

And it doesn't look like the experts think it will crash business as a whole - with very small businesses protected against the NI raise

so if it does raise the cash without any big negatives then it could be good budget

£74 billion extra spending!!

And yet the markets seemed to like it?

I thought as a middle income earner I was going to get walloped. I expected the VAT on private school fees (DD in PS by circumstance over design) so that was already going to have an impact but I have been mildly surprised think otherwise we'll be ok. One thing though, I work for a small company and we were hoping for a pay rise in December but I don't think it will happen because of the planned Employer NI contribution rise. So the pay o have is both subject to fiscal drag (which it was anyway) but now, effectively negative against inflation.

So this means that you're expecting that person's work to be done by other members of staff? Or are you going to not offer the same level of service as before?

Because low growth is now expected. The markets would only react if something unexpected happened.

The markets responded favourably so maybe you are being unnecessarily pessimistic.

The money had to be raised from somewhere .

There's a plan to reduce debt.

Anyone feeling depressed or full of dread after this budget must have been asleep for the past 14 years. Where has prioritising business got us? Minimum wage and zero hour contracts. Where has Tory policy got us? Brexit, decimated NHS, schools barely surviving.