To ask what should be being done about the economy and the country generally

[AlertCat]

I’m fairly Keynesian in my economics (I’m not an economist) but there are so many problems in society at the moment that I’m not sure even a massive programme of work like in the 1950s would really help.
There’s another thread where people are expressing unhappiness at the levels of tax they’re being asked to pay and it’s easy to find lots of threads about benefit claimants and immigration.

If we take as given that (a) our birthrate means we need immigration; (b) we have a benefits system that’s both overly punitive and (apparently) overly lenient if you say the right things (I’m not sure I personally believe the second part, but it’s an opinion I see a lot); (c) climate change means more and more people from the global south moving north; (d) the days of good state services, free at the point of use may be over-

what would you do differently to the government? Could we get back to the kind of services provision we had in the post-war consensus era (up until the Thatcher government)? Is that a pipe dream? Is it even desirable?

And the NHS scores are absolutely appalling for outcomes. If they’re diagnosing everything later, that may be one factor, alongside the very poor standard of care that is well documented even when the unlucky patient eventually is seen by a specialist or operated on, many months or years after they should have been, using outdated equipment, staying in poor standard hospitals with poor cleanliness, disease control, poor nursing standards, poor monitoring, poor rehabilitation and after-care or convalescence services. But yes, indeed, not bothering to treat patients for years after they present with an issue, or not diagnosing issues long after they would have been diagnosed with timely referral to a specialist, and poor preventative care, low rates of scans, even ignoring some basic vaccinations like the chicken pox vaccine which has been routine in most other developed countries for over 50 years now but is still only available here privately, poor monitoring, no annual healthcare checkups as are standard in many countries…. Etc… no doubt contributes to the extremely poor NHS outcomes.

Regardless, it’s extremely obvious from the data if you look at it that the NHS has poorer patient outcomes than the health services of the vast majority of developed countries, and those who have poorer outcomes but still make it into the OECD data are much poorer countries than ours and spend a fraction of what we spend per year on healthcare.

The NHS is a complete failure. There’s a reason why no other country in the world is trying to copy our system. 18 hour waits for ambulances aren’t desirable. Nor is “corridor care”.

1. Get rid of the NI increase - it is killing employment and thus the economy
2. Raise VAT real luxury items - executive cars, luxury holidays, fuel for private jets, taxes on footballers/teams
3. Raise taxes on fast food, partially subsidise cost of fresh fruit and veg if British grown and low carbon footprint
4. Bill all missed GP/hospital appts
5. implement a system of a small charge each time you need the NHS
6. Anyone continuing smoking/vaping etc to pay full cost of any medical treatment related to their habit
7. Free access to stop smoking services IF the person stops smoking.
8. Farmers to pay enhanced tax on fields not growing produce for direct sale to UK
9. Asylum seekers offered access to work commensurate with their skills but with strict rules on where they live and freedom of movement.
10. House asylum seekers in disused military bases. Review system of processing claims
11. Review of efficiencies in NHS, revamp of computer systems/silo working and dated practices
12. End Right to buy, end tax break for landlords ‘selling’ properties
13. Reduced Stamp duty for local purchasers, significant raise to stamp duty and council tax for holiday home owners
14. Flat high rate of tax for anyone trading a la Amazon etc
15. Non working parents to be vetted to provide around school care to help other parents to work, to enhance their skills and as a condition of benefits
16. Council tax rebates for households contributing to community improvements (litter picking, elderly befriending, general maintenance, community events etc)
17. Council tax reductions for adherence to school attendance, behaviour etc
18. Sixth form students to have coaching and mentoring younger students as part of their curriculum.
19. Universities to move to an official online model except where face to face is necessary. Upkeep funded by overseas students.
20. Remove permissions for families to be granted permission to stay of students/overseas workers
21. Renewable energy to contribute to council tax in areas of their sites
22. Central governance cap of fuel/utility prices - no bonuses paid until any cost rises are fairly absorbed into dividends

Some of my ideas when I should be in bed

Exactly. People say “your kids, you pay for them”. Then lament how the birth rate is falling and women are having children later, when it’s impossible to build financial stability and buy a house before your 30s for most people, if they can do that at all.

It makes zero sense to structure society in such a way that people either have to raise children in poverty, or they have to be simultaneously in the most demanding part of their career at the same time as having small children when they need the most of your time.

A sensible society would very generously fund young adults to have a decent standard of living in a proper family home and take this time out of working life to focus on raising their children without the threat of financial insecurity, knowing that if they did so and enabled people of, say, 25 to have children, they’d then be able to ramp up their participation in the workforce again at around 35 and you’d still get another 30 years or more of full time work from them as well as what they’d done before having children.

The whole structure of society needs to be changed to support young families and children and make education much, much better than it is as well. Everything that has been done in the UK regarding how business, working hours and life stages and tax is structured creates the precise opposite effect to what we should be doing if we want to encourage higher birth rates, more children and a happier and more healthy population.

The UK is one of the most non child-friendly societies I’ve ever come across. The attitude towards children is horrendous (you often see threads even here, on Mumsnet, comparing children being in public spaces to people being there with dogs, as if that is remotely comparable!!).

These same people will be complaining when their expected state or public sector pensions evaporate into thin air in a few years’ time because they will be literally unpayable, because there simply will not be sufficient workers to pay them.

What do they think will happen? The teachers, for example. When there are hardly any children, so most of the schools have closed, and there are 1/4 of the number of teachers that there are now, how do they think their pensions will be paid? Do they think we’ll be hiring teachers to work in empty schools with no children just so those teachers can pay their pensions from their salaries for sitting in empty classrooms?

It’s nuts how so many people refuse to understand basic maths. So depressing, really.

I think Vogon poetry might not be so bad after all…. I hope? 🤞 🚀

InPraiseOfIdleness · Yesterday 21:44

User450877 · Yesterday 20:55
Also the taxing billionaires thing - we need international agreement on taxing billionaires, their companies etc - another thing there is little reality about. Ditto wealth taxes - I’m interested in the idea but there are very few successful ones that have raised much.
That’s the entire problem. There’s no way to tax these people on their wealth without international cooperation from pretty much every country, and that simply will not happen

@User450877 I would also like to know how will you get cooperation from every country to enforce higher taxes.

Really not seeing this (live in Canada)

I am all for euthanasia

You won’t “see” it yet. The people you see around will gradually be getting older on average, but that’s about it. The overall population will still be rising for now due to 1) an ageing population; and 2) immigration.

But the proportion of young people is falling, and the effect is exponential so of course you won’t “see” the effect much until it’s much too late to do anything about it: it’s irreversible by the time it’s obviously visible just from walking down the road.

No society in human history has ever managed to turn around the exponential effect of declining birth rates once the demographic trend sets in, not one, ever. It’s in motion in Canada (1.33 births per woman: well below population replacement rate) just like it is every other country pretty much, outside sub-Saharan Africa.

It’s weird, I was raising this issue about declining birthrates 10 years ago and people kept saying I was crazy, there are too many people, blah blah. They would not listen to the maths. Now it seems more people are discussing it yet nobody’s doing anything significant about it, not that it really can be changed much, maybe slowed down a bit. Very odd to hear people still denying this is happening though, even now.

@InPraiseOfIdlenessyes for me it’s about my dc and any they may have.

Two of your main themes the problematic reduction in birth rate and the potential automation issue. Could they offset each other a bit?

Given the changes in workforce in say 20 years when dc born now enter it can we get closer to it bit all being so bad?

@InPraiseOfIdlenessNot sure if you have dc in their 30s? I do. It’s unbelievably difficult for women to find a man who actually wants to settle down. Men are perennial dc. It’s a huge contributing factor to women having dc when they are older. It’s not just about housing.

We have way too many people who don’t want some jobs. Teaching is one. There’s teacher shortages because the actual job is viewed as unpleasant. It pays well with a good pension but it’s not perceived as a job enough want to do. If they did, bought a house with a partner who is also a teacher, many could easily afford a house! Not in London but in many other areas it’s certainly possible.

As we do wish to pay people well enough, we end up with expensive overheads for nurseries. In London they cost a fortune. Many women stay in the workforce but don’t have much left after nursery fees. There’s not much incentive to have three dc!

I also don’t agree that people should have a huge leg up from the state in return for not much effort. We have loopholes that make work unattractive because benefits are lost. We must stop that. Even well qualified people don’t actually want to work. We cannot keep taxing the better off more and more to support others who could make better choices but don’t want to. The politics of envy doesn’t work.

@TizerorFizz are you a teacher? The job in some institutions is next level; the profession broke me and I know three other people who it chewed up and spat out. No pension is worth that (and the newer pension is nothing like as good as the old one anyway- probably for reasons that @InPraiseOfIdleness has been talking about).

@AlertCat As I said, it’s not a job people want. However of course some people love it. Many of my friends. You might have been in the wrong job in the wrong school but we also need people to work and not be on benefits and to also have pensions. My point was it’s well enough paid to buy a house in many areas of the uk. It’s got a great pension and yet people don’t want to do it. It certainly doesn’t spit everyone out. Other jobs are hard too with far worse pay and pensions.

This sounds very basic but … it’s all about money. Where money is stored, who has the money and why is money for most people and for government in short supply. There is PLENTY of money. But the money is mainly held by a tiny percentage of people. For the past few decades, governments have just ignored this. They have sold off assets owned by state - (essential services like rail, water) and buildings to create more wealth. But. This is a short term fix and is actually handing money over to those with the most, again. It is entirely possible to reverse this - we aren’t talking about things out of human control like weather. It’s just money. But it requires political will, the ability and courage to withstand pain - and for politicians to be altruistic. It will take time. Change will mean the richest and the media going to war, literally, with governments to stop their wealth being reduced.
immigration is not the problem. We have plenty of space for all to live and plenty of wealth - it’s just being hoarded. Over 50% of England’s land is owned by 25 companies or families…
england has a deep history of being revolutionary of fighting for the common good - in recent history think of the poll tax riots, going all the way back to wat Tyler and the peasants revolt. But we don’t see change without a fight unfortunately.

things that could start to reverse the situation…
A new wealth tax on those earning over / having over £10m in assets. New laws banning off shore banking. The state capturing properties that have been vacant for over a decade, owned by overseas entities, used as bank vaults rather than homes. Just as some examples.

One important shift is for the City of London which since the civil war has functioned in a unique way to the rest of local authorities.
It is a corporation and unlike other local authorities never had to open its accounts or books. Every other local authority by law has to. The reason behind this is historic. In the civil war, the city of London made a deal with parliament against King James that has enabled this special situation. Why does this matter ? Because the City of London is really where the countries wealth is kept. Just think of the wealth that Empire created / stole alone - that’s where the wealth is banked. People living as residents in the city of London in most wards are not allowed to vote in local elections only the owners of businesss there are able to vote - not even their employees. It really is the most corrupt and strange situation that speaks volumes about the nations attitude to wealth. By opening up their books we would see the billions that are banked and also hoarded off shore in the last remnants of Empire - in commonwealth entities owned still be the crown - off shore banking.

We must keep the NHS free for all. Those who can afford to pay for private health care are already doing so and will do. The NHS is creaking and is not working BUT it needs state investment and services becoming integrated not fragmented. This feels impossible but it is possible - it needs government to be quite radical in how they are both capturing funds and also how they are managing funds. Our government is basically broke but it CAN find ways to capture money again. Once we agree to a paid insurance system for some, and we are almost there, health care in UK will become two tier. We are already seeing the huge spike in people not going to dentists, dental and gum decay due to fees charged. No to pay for healthcare.

But my point (and apparently, the point of many people trained to do the job and experienced in it) is that at the moment, the demands of the job, in far too many cases, are intolerable. At any price.

There is more to life than affording a house- you can’t afford it if your mental health is destroyed. One of the people I know actually lost his house because of the way teaching destroyed him. So the state of education is one of the problems we need to address. Teachers and many children are very much the canaries in the coal mine for the mental health crisis.

I wonder whether the internet is actually the source of many of the social problems we are facing.

Low quality people … what on earth do you mean? Lower quality than you? Upgrading or removing ? This is a strange post that sounds a little hateful?

@Rosie8880

Absolutely agree with your post.

People opine about lack of money and tie it up with morality, with constructs around the deserving and the undeserving, laying blame at various often disadvantaged cohorts rather than examining the pure fiscal facts.

However, money and it's distribution (or lack thereof) is the construct of humans, who could alter the paradigm if they so choose. Stock markets are essentially respectable gambling, and money itself is now largely a digital and etheric concept. Economics is framed as a concept that mere mortals cannot possibly understand, loaded with theory and philosophy as is every underpinning of the human condition, yet it is ring fenced for discussion by smug and often elitist "experts" with bizarre and distasteful ideological leanings, ripe for exploitation by the rich and powerful who intend to stay that way, and hang the rest of us.

I too look to the future with trepidation for all the sections of society being hammered while the obscenely rich keep us busy at each other's throats.

You’re not wrong in some ways about London. But. London has become a doughnut city - anyone but the most wealthy love on the outside and thr wealthy in inner London. London is madly expensive - for those that don’t know London it’s divided into zones. 1 being the center and 9 being well, basically 1.5-2 hours travel time away. it can cost a grand to rent a ROOM in zones 1-4/5. To get across London by public transport 1-4 can cost £20 a day and take 2/3 hours there and back. Some of England poorest communities are in London. The majority of jobs in London don’t pay enough to pay for the housing and travel and essential costs for many alone. A 2-3 bed house to rent on average is £3000 in zones 1-3. An average price tag for a two bed flat in zones 2- 3 is around £450k +.

london yes has jobs but it’s becoming impossible for many - incl the young - to actually afford to live in London. Let alone think about raising a family. We talk about declining birth rates - people can’t afford to have families they can’t afford to house themselves…

So what do we have? A situation where people (remember London population is app. 1/6 of overall population), are leaving London to find cheaper homes, raising house prices and rents elsewhere, while also not being able to secure decent wages or jobs - it is chaos!

There is only one way through to remedy this situation. And that is radical reform on wealth. That’s it. There isn’t any other solution unless we agree to a 21st century feudal society where the majority are paying masters / landlords: wealth hoarders just to survive. Sounds extreme but we are pretty much there.

and we haven’t even touched on climate change…

good post and you can write! Yes it sound so basic but money is our invention - when strip it back to basics it’s in our control. Change is possible always when it comes to money, we need courageous change makers to make it happen - and we the public - we are their masters - we vote them in. If we all could remember just how much power we all have, really, we do, then change can come.

one thing people forget and we never had a chance to vote in this - when a new monarch is proposed - like King Charles was after Queen passed - the public are asked - do we want the king (or queen)? But we weren’t really asked. It all happened so quickly. We could say yes but we want change for example. It’s mad we spent so much time on the nonsense of Brexit and nothing on this potential seismic change. ( I mean really until farage came in, was the country clamoring to leave Europe? No, it had better and more pressing things to do).

If I could make one change to this country right now, I would centralise the funding of social care, so that this statutory service is funded partly or wholly by the Treasury. Trying to fund it solely via local rates has proven to be completely unsustainable in the long-term.

A properly-funded social care sector would reduce the costs to the NHS from delayed discharges i.e. bed-blocking and enable better support for schools. And no doubt there would be additional benefits such as reduced crime.

Underclass isn't necessarily a value judgement. It applies to a group of people who are not economically productive long term, and have no assets or savings of their own, or family, to mitigate this. (Not children or seniors will will work or have worked.)

Sometimes people don't include those who have reasons like serious disability or illness, but only those who have for some reason no will, or where there is a large unemployed class due to something like a recession, but it depends a bit on context. So they can be people not being served by economic structures, or people who are exploitative of the system depending on your POV. Or both, which is probably often the case.

There's definitely a group of long term socially and economically excluded people in society. Better to give it some name than ignore it or what would be worse is arguing that structural inequality hasn't gotten as bad as it has.

I feel language is important. How would you feel if you were termed part of the underclass, firstly? Underclass means below, underneath other classes. There is something unpleasant and rather Victorian about this phrase - it says something different than working, middle, lower class to my mind. We are a strangely class obsessed country - mainly due to the aristocracy and landed gentry. In Ireland and Finland where I am from and live we use different language that feels more human, not always but mostly. Lastly, this constant drain on the poorest - we should always look upwards - there is more money and support to be found with the wealthiest not the poorest, and there is more $$$ corruption to be found with the wealthiest. In purely financial cold terms - if the focus could be on the corruption, tax dodges etc of the wealthiest this would if successful, being in 10 + X more $$$ than any small fry benefits dodgers. And really, let’s commission tv shows about tax dodges, the loopholes legally that state allows. Stop penalizing the poorest - leave them alone. Don’t be distracted by the smoke and mirrors lies of it’s your neighbours over there who are poor and cheats, or have an accent and are different to you - the issues everyone middle class to poorest are facing is down as it always will be, to some of the wealthiest hoarding and using loopholes to not pay their way/ cheating the system

@Barbadossunset yes, that’s the point isn’t it? Gordon brown wrote a book on it but there is no current international consensus, that too needs to be rebuilt. But it’s the only way that wealth taxes can work meaningfully.

the international consensus has frayed just as the domestic centre grounds are failing around Europe and America.

I think about getting rid of emails/ internet all the time … internet is great obvs, google maps transformative, online shopping, banking, podcasts, Spotify, digital books… all great. But. My idea of luxury is no phones, no emails being uncontactable living in peace in middle of nowhere. Never having to answer emails. Somehow society managed just fine before this. Essentially society is allowing and is constantly in a state on constant surveillance - documenting ourselves. We live at the non human speed of technology - we can never keep up. Money has become a simulacra, it’s not tangible or real and moves so fast - it’s contributing to the wealth inequality issues we face today. Oh for faxes and written post, walkmans and vinyl… into my dusty box I go… ;)

Yes I found the mention of voluntary euthanasia chilling too. How long would it be before elderly, sick and disabled people would feel pressure to take this option because they feel they are a burden to the government, particularly as it already feels like the government's attitude feels.pretty hostile towards people who are economically inactive due to health and disability and the nhs isn't doing so well.

How does housing benefit work. Surely the poorly paid workers in London are being subsidised to a huge degree by housing benefit payments-paid by the taxpayers all over the country. Into the pockets of mainly private land lords. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford to live there. If the benefits were cut the huge profits made by landlords would be cut and possibly houses would go on the market. Or low paid workers paid more to keep them there.