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?

Yes, intergenerational living could work in some circumstances, however what if you and your partner were looking after a disabled elderly parent and you both had to work long hours? Who would take care of them when you are at work? How does that work in other countries?

(Housing benefit is being phased out, and has been included in Universal Credit payments.)
IMO companies who use the benefits system to subsidies their wages bill and landlords who receive benefits in the form of inflated rents are both receiving money from taxpayers, while its the people who receive benefits who are being demonised.

Council housing stock is an asset to local councils. It should never be sold and used as a BTL.

If you're committed to looking after a relative at home, youd do it the same way other cultures do.

Shift work, help from the village. Relative wouls be expected to pool some money into the family pot (pension, house sale) so the working adults can buy in care for some periods e.g. come in to do lunch and toileting.

@AlertCat Do you not realise that lots of jobs are hard? Teaching is ok in many schools and none of my friends gave up. Some schools are well run. Others not. Some teachers love it, others are in the wrong job. It’s also a fairly recent issue that people won’t accept adversity at work. They don’t want responsibility. We are certainly very poor at job design too but I don’t see the issues you describe everywhere and definitely not among my friends who loved teaching.

Life expectancy in the U.K. is 79M and 82F.
life expectancy in Pakistan - a place where elderly are cared for at home is 67.
Other countries that care for the elderly at home are more likely to have a society where the wife stays home to do the caring.

@Toootss The ONS doesn’t agree with those figures. For 65 year old males it says to expect another 20 years and women 22 years. Obviously there are some regional differences but mid 80s for both is current forecasting. Going higher in the future.

Quite clearly working dc of older people cannot care for them. Neither are we prepared to pay into insurance - Teresa May floated that. It’s the obvious sensible route and I would ring fence NI paid by older people to pay for it - but we need to extend NI to over 65s. We must take the burden off younger people. We also need to keep work incentives in place. People should be encouraged to be entrepreneurs, not told they will be taxed to oblivion if they are successful and employ a lot of people.

We have a stock market to facilitate investment. There’s huge misunderstand here on how the economy works and how companies raise money. Let alone how pensions are invested so people get a work pension. It’s not gambling. It’s investment. Try doing without it and see where we get to. We already struggle to grow the economy so going backwards is not the answer.

The world us a big place, but I have read a lot of articles about how India is struggling as their parents are living so much longer that shdn that culgure developed, and lots are being abandoned on the street. And the work does very much fall on women.

We must take the burden off younger people.

The burden isn’t on young people. Anyone with assets of more than £23.5k has to pay for their own care. In the case of residential care that, rightly, may mean selling a house.

@BIossomtoesI meant tax burden! It clearly is on younger people who also have great expenditure on dc to bear as well as higher housing costs and often grad tax. If we had an insurance scheme, as we should for health too, we would have more money in the system.

Yes, I know people pay for care. DM did. However we don’t have enough money to pay for everyone via the state. Plus I’m definitely not wanting to live into old age if it’s as awful as I’ve seen it. I wish my views on my life to be respected. If others want to linger bedridden for years in nappies, great, but we should have a choice. It’s not for me.

There isn’t really any housing benefit anymore. It’s universal credit, assessed on your income and also any savings/ assets. If we could rewind time back to 79 pre thatcher, we possibly wouldn’t have thr housing crisis in which council homes were sold off and income from rent of socially owned homes weren’t banned from being reinvested back into new homes. People at the time across last 40 years voted this in tho. We can’t rewind time. The only way we can live in a civil, socially responsible society is now thru taking back the wealth out of hands of wealth hoarders - it will take time, maybe generations to get the wealth back and rebalance society. Ireland had a revolution at the turn of 20th century and forcibly took back properties and land Irish toiled on from English over seers - it took violence, war. The poorest should always have the state to fall back on - the issue is the wealthiest aren’t paying their share - and by wealthy mean those with $10m +. Some ofc are - but rather than penalize the poor who even if we threw our morals away - taking from poor doesn’t touch the sides of the crisis we are in. It will take radical for England, redistribution of wealth - meaning, taking back from the wealthy.

This is true. But for some younger generations the only acres or hope they will have to secure homes is via inherited wealth aka of parental estate. With homes being used to pay for older age care, young people even those fortunate to have potential of inheritance may find even that life line is extinguished.

This is exactly the type of comment that destroys a debate. Because my experience doesn’t align with your friends’ experience, I’m wrong, or an indication of “not accepting adversity at work”. Or somehow by saying one job is hard I don’t recognise the challenges in other jobs. You have no personal experience and your friends apparently have retired as you use the past tense for their teaching experience, and yet you think yours is the only correct opinion, rather than accepting that there are multiple experiences and indications of deep-seated problems in the system. It’s a shame that you turned to insults and dismissal rather than making suggestions as to how we might tackle the issue of teacher retention.

Some good points but economy is failing over 20% of our society now - who are in poverty in work. We have run out of options to do anything other than to tax wealth - eg over £10m + of assets/ individuals. Even if we throw morals away, continually cutting state/ poorest in society - there isn’t anything left to cut and the cuts are costing us more ( see - housing crisis). These cuts are short term solutions as we are now living in - austerity has created more costs rather than savings. Add Brexit into mix, I mean it’s bleak.

Whilst wealth in assets is held mainly and will always be held mainly by those who are older, the generational divide is a bit of a smokescreen too I feel. It’s the very wealthy - corporations and individuals who earn or hold wealth of over $10m+ where attention should be focused. Older people may have homes but those that own one home and have families… in previous years that wealth (house sale monies) may have been passed down via inheritance. Now, to find the healthcare of older people the wealth stored in family homes, often owned with no mortgage, will be used to fund health / old age care of the parents. So, the wealth that is held in assets will go back to the state and the children of family members many of whom do not / can’t not afford to buy homes, will not have that wealth passed down. That is why this housing crisis and cost of living crisis is growing - it’s impacting the poorest, the working class and the middle / lower upper classes now too…

The hidden truth of the world is that it's imagined by human beings and could just as easily be imagined differently.

What flummoxes me is every time a politician is asked about redistributing wealth they kind of stare blankly - almost like its an audacious question, or because they feel their hands are tied to do anything. It's really a global question - the vast majority of the world live in countries with terrible poverty and an extremely rich elite. So we need change EVERYWHERE.

In the UK, it will become increasingly polarised with wealth hoarding, stagnant economies, growing poverty over generations. So we have to lead the way.

I don't feel Labour have done enough on wealth redistribution. They could have done much more.

I agree.

The cost of private childrens residential care is huge. If local authorities treated foster carers better and paid them a better allowance then they would recruit more and save money.
Eg Young person, very high need, foster carer was paid £70 per day allowance for 24 hour of care. Everything had to co e from that money.
Private residential care charged £4000 a week in children's home with 3 staff and 1 child.

Foster carer gave up due to lack of support, and limited finds to pay for activities he needed.

So we need change EVERYWHERE.
In the UK, it will become increasingly polarised with wealth hoarding, stagnant economies, growing poverty over generations. So we have to lead the way.

@GreenFressia do you think if UK starts taxing rich people more other countries will follow suit?
Plenty of countries have taxed the rich heavily - the Soviet Union for example - but not many other countries followed their example.

You should really look at Dan Neidle on x - he’s a tax expert and he says even in the good old days of 1970s supertax, rich people paid less tax than they do now. That’s why we need facts and honestly about what’s possible rather than pie in the sky slogans.

I’d be interested to know how he works that out. The basic rate when I started work in 1971 was 33% with 9% NI. That’s the same rate as higher rate tax payers pay now.

Not in Scotland - and it hasn’t been a huge revenue raising success the higher income taxes here.

x.com/DanNeidle/status/1920390817769800125

Not sure if that link works - anyway if you google
him he’s got tonnes of articles, podcasts etc.

So it wasn’t that tax was less, it was that there were endless loopholes and legal ways of avoiding it. That’s not quite the same thing and it’s disingenuous to pretend it is.

If there thresholds had been uprated with inflation then the higher rate tax threshold would now start at around £120k. It’s not just about the headline rates. You also didn’t have the cliff-edge anomalies at various levels, plus the “graduate tax” of another 9%, which mean that marginal rates can go up to 90% for those in the £60-80k bracket and to well over 100% for those earning £100-125k.

Indirect taxes were lower.
MIRAS tax relief on mortgages
Married man's tax allowance
No means tested child benefit
Tax relievable/repayable tax credits on dividends
No loss of personal allowance over £100k
No graduate tax (student loan repayments)

No, they will not. They will simply welcome the rich people who vacate the UK to their own country with open arms because it increases their own wealth. What lossible incentive would they have to drive them out? Ireland’s done incredibly well for itself using its low corporation tax to attract global company headquarters. Taxing large amounts of global revenue earned elsewhere and moved there with transfer pricing - albeit taxing them at a lower headline rate - has made their national income per person shoot up hugely and vastly increased their prosperity. Exactly the same principles apply to countries with low person taxes, no inheritance tax, etc.