Would you pay more tax to boost defence spending

[trainermush]

Obviously we are now in a more precarious position & defence spending has been underfunded for some time. RR had just said we need to spend more money & she will but without breaking her fiscal rules,

"So we will stick to our fiscal rules. But recognising the priority of defence spending in the world that we live in today means that we will have to make difficult choices so that we can spend that money that is needed to keep our country safe."

Mulling it over & even though I think I pay enough tax I would pay more each month towards this (cut back in other areas) as opposed to labour cutting back on something else. I guess thinking about my dc & other loved ones has changed my mind somewhat now things appear more bleak. What do others think?
Conscription of young people terrifies me even though my dc are too young.

I'd like to know just what our tax is doing now. We could be so much smarter, not give huge greedy sub contractors immense sums for what could be done so much more cheaply if shareholders weren't involved and we had good individuals to manage our country. Defence can benefit technologies that go far beyond war, bring peace, stop migrations, but we need better management of UK Limited first!!

Who is going to design, test and build complex weapons who don't have shareholders?

Some questions I've been pondering on. If you were Trump and Musk, what would your ultimate goal be? What do they need those minerals for? What could they manufacture with those minerals that would help them reach their ultimate goal?

@Alexandra2001

"But one can only do what is best for the UK and a stronger military carries many benefits..."

As you know I fully agree with a stronger military but by agreeing to come to the aid of a European country that has deliberately chosen to be militarily weaker then that comes with the risk of being dragged into a war the UK in a manner similar to the pre WW1 alliances and support treaties, that simply creates bigger conflicts out of smaller ones.

I would simply say that if you don't spend either 2% or 2.5 % of GDP on defence then you lose the support of NATO.

I don't think any more taxes need to be levied or increased for most people. There's plenty of other ways to raise that money.

Eg. Financial Services are exempt from VAT. Why? That would raise several billion.
Investment Income : this is taxed less than income from actual work - at least at the upper end. Billions here.
Tax Relief on private pension contributions - align it with the basic level of income tax. Just stop featherbedding the uber wealthy and the corporations. They won't go short ffs. There's probably lots of other loopholes they could close but I wouldn't hold my breath. Gordon Brown promised to shut the tax havens back in the 90s....

Hmm. Trump wants Europe to spend 5% of GDP on defense. The USA spends 3.3%. He just thinks of a number and starts riffing doesn't he?

Europe has many more gaps to close and deficiencies to correct than the US military. He also wants to increase American defense spending.

In your opinion.

I think its a way for Trump to carry on support for Ukraine but say "look at what i got..."
Their resources aren't that amazing and most are in Russian occupied lands.

Russia held at bay, the Yanks get Europe to spend more, Ukraine happy ish! no US troops at risk...

He'll spin this as big win for the USA!

@Alexandra2001

"I think its a way for Trump to carry on support for Ukraine but say "look at what i got..."
Their resources aren't that amazing and most are in Russian occupied lands.

Russia held at bay, the Yanks get Europe to spend more, Ukraine happy ish! no US troops at risk...

He'll spin this as big win for the USA!"

A blunt but brilliant analysis.

Also after many threads on many different topics of being opposed to and arguing against each other - I think we are both unusually agreeing too much recently 😀😀😀!

No.

@MissTrip82

"People really are extremely stupid if they think spending less on foreign aid and climate change makes them safer."

Dang it - I guess Ukraine has been getting it all wrong these past three years. If only they had been spending more on foreign aid and climate change and less on defence then those pesky Russians would never have dared to attack them and any attack would have been much more easily resisted.

Now let's look at "extremely stupid" ...

Far too much money is being sent to other countries

Seems we've got to really and I'm a peacenik. It's new times and rather than overlay old history onto the present - best go with the flow whilst building good 'flood' defences and a strong defencively/attack force too.

Though it pains me to say it.

I'm neither a peacenik, nor a warmonger, but the wife of a man who does quite a bit of work for the services. And I am the daughter of a (now very old) naval officer, a helicopter pilot (mostly search and rescue). So, yes, I follow the debate, I live near Plymouth too. The defence budgets have contracted very tightly, too much IMO, and money has been spently wrongly... on two huge floating targets without adequate air defences, to create work and buy votes in Scotland, for a former Prime Minister, while more useful vessels have been sold off or scrapped. Meanwhile the surface fleet is down to a level that couldn't help the coastguard police the UK's 7.5m km coastline. I don't pretend to know the answer but I recall my dad's comment 30-odd years ago that we would end up with a littoral force. To save anyone bothering to look up the term, it means the coastal shelf before the ocean floor drops away. It is about 20 miles off the coast on the Atlantic facing coast of the UK.

Absolutely 100% not. It sickens me that the world is tooling up for war because of the actions of insane megalomaniac men. I want no part of it at all. We should be paying tax on social care, healthcare, education. Not pointless wars designed as penis comparison exercises.

I understand why you feel that way @ItsCalledAConversation but unless you personally are ready to step up and argue, fiercely, for what you believe, nothing will change. I also believe that you are wrong to deny the importance of defence.

Agree with what @Papyrophile says

Our navy needs to look more like the navy of Norway plus the Nuclear deterrent

We should seriously ask for their help in modernising our Navy. They spend a fraction of what we do to defend a larger country and coastline.

Instead we waste money on the equipment required to fight wars in far of lands which we have no possibility of winning, mainly so our politicians can pretend they are big boys. It’s pathetic.

We find ourselves agreeing far more than I’d ever have thought possible.

To be fair, it is a very sensible opinion. Foreign aid promotes stability, limits the spread of pandemics, and generally makes for a more stable and safer world.

That isn't to say that, faced between a choice of increased defence spending or cutting foreign aid, I wouldn't choose the former given current circumstances (I would), but ideally we would do both.

Unfortunately, and whilst it's easy to understand why, this might be another instance (like the NI Increase) where Starmer's campaign pledges have boxed him in and limited his options.

It's actually more the climate change amount I disagree with, not foreign aid in general.

To be fair, the carriers were planned to have a full compliment of planes, Austerity saw that plan shelved... and the surface fleet in the 2000s was almost double what it become under the Tories.

We already have totally inadequate frigate numbers, we can only deploy about 6 at anyone time....

Always amazes me that the Tories are seen as good on law n order, defence and the economy.

Reeves cannot increases general taxation, nothing to do with her fiscal rules or election promises... its because the public, in general have no more money to give & she cannot borrow due to Truss giving us very high gilt yields ie high borrowing costs.

So it'll be cuts and reallocation of current spending ie cuts.

Decrease by 8% per annum I read - or was that faked fake news?

Why? It's about the only thing in the USA that is properly funded. They have 12 aircraft carriers. Russia has 1. Literally thousands of jets , tanks, missiles. While people die because they can't afford health care.

I see the Orange Manbaby has today flown Andrew Tate by private jet out of incarceration in Romania to the US. I wonder how much that cost.

I assume there are already plans underway to broker a sale of the Falklands to Argentina in return for a percentage of future oil revenue. We could send a destroyer to look angry.