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?

Of course! Farm production is vital! Giving tax breaks to millionaires to buy up agricultural land is hardly helping with food production though is it?

What would you have done to stop billionaires with no interest in farming buying up agricultural land purely to dodge inheritance tax? I’m all ears!

It’s amazing that people seriously think this

I don’t agree that what they did was better than nothing on farms @Freeasa - it seemed so obviously avoidably flawed.

we need grants etc for people who are not young too, if the high unemployment AI produces, happens.

arguably we already have people stuck in badly paying jobs or economically inactive due to barriers to retraining.

If billionaires are buying it, they’re letting it to tenant farmers. Iht will hugely increase rents and bring land out of farming

It is. The IHT exemption only applies if the land is being farmed.

@AlertCat your name isn't Rachel is it?

Zero VAT for overseas visitors when shopping/on overseas purchases like there used to be. Encourages more tourism & spending to bring cash in - they can spend on accommodation and eating out & other services, the government would get more than the VAT there that isn't being brought in by overseas visitors now IMHO.

There is no data on how many 'millionaires are buying up agricultural land for a tax break'

It was an attack on farming

Even the example everyone pulls out - Jeremy Clarkson - he is actually a farmer. He is producing food and industry. So..... how is that even supporting your arguement?

If you have watched Clarksons Farm you will also have seen how much he has invested (CASH!) in that farm.

But the primary aim of these investors is to dodge IHT and seek capital profit on their investment, not to produce anything. That’s why they should be prevented. Does anyone look at Clarkson’s farm and think that there’s a man trying all he can do to make money out of farming? He looks like he’s doing it for a hobby.

Not close to, they're already at that point. That's why so many are refusing promotions/overtime if it takes their wage over a tax cliff edge like £60k or £100k, or they pay into pension to get their gross wage under the cliff edge. It's why so many professionals are leaving the UK and getting jobs elsewhere.

Literally all the graduates at my son's employer are planning to emigrate once they've qualified as actuaries and accountants - most of the leaving "do's" aren't for retirements, they're for 20 somethings who are emigrating.

People need to wake up and smell the coffee. We can't keep clobbering the middle and higher wage earners to subsidise those who either don't work or only want to work part time hours, just enough to get their UC entitlements.

We're at a pivotal point where workers are being hammered enough, especially considering workplace pensions, NIC, student loan repayments, not just income tax.

There is no alternative but to get more people working IN the country to reduce our imports, increase tax/nic revenue, reduce the benefits costs, etc. We also have to reduce the costs of public services and public spending so that the current (I think) £38k threshold where workers actually contribute rather than being net takers, is reduced to a more realistic level. We can't keep increasing tax revenue to pay for public spending - we need to reduce public spending too - a good start would be reducing the waste and inefficiency.

It was a pipe dream to think we could survive and prosper on a service economy relying on cheap imports for everything from goods, to power, to call centre staff - trouble is the politicians havn't worked it out yet and still cling to the flawed idea that we can survive on the financial services industry, hospitality and tourism and somehow prosper on the backs of very low paid staff in the Far East! Trouble is those staff in the Far East are now wanting more for themselves too and their wages etc are increasing, added into the profits expected by the factory owners, ship owners, etc., that's driving up prices back to the kind of level they'd be if we made the stuff ourselves in the UK!

Hmm. Why does farming, a low earning industry, need to be the one where we moralise that investment has to have pure motives?

I was talking to some Canadian tourists the other day - Scottish whisky is more expensive in Scotland than it is in Canada.

I think the biggest issue at the moment is the government is running scared following what happened to Truss.

We need large changes in our systems, but the government is petrified that if they try to implement them the same will happen to them as what happened to Truss. This is the real damage Truss did.

That means they will probably try to desperately continue to tread the same old path rather than actually do anything to really change it and improve the countries fortunes. This is why the Labour party at the moment seem more right than the Tories that preceeded them.

The spectre of reform is actually similar to that of Thatcher. Either the government makes changes, or someone else will come in who is willing to take radical steps to try and improve the economy and peoples lives.

I don't believe reform are currently capable of being a credible government. But they are a credible threat to existing parties, and all the while the existing parties fail to make the necessary changes to improve the fortunes of the country their threat grows.

But his farm is actually "farming", i.e. producing food etc. It's trading whether you think it is or not.

HMRC could easily have imposed a rule where only farmland that is actively farmed by the owner (not a tenant, not left as an investment) keeps the IHT relief and that which is let out to tenants or left unfarmed gets the full charge to IHT. HMRC already have similar rules for deciding whether a "business" qualifies for other forms of relief, i.e. for CGT so that some, say, caravan sites qualify as businesses because they offer other services like swimming pools, onsite gym, onsite shops/restaurants, whereas others don't qualify as a business because they're literally just a site, with no facilities beyond water, power and drainage.

It's not rocket science to "build in" checks and balances, but the Treasury, HMRC etc seem spectacularly incapable of basic common sense.

Because farmers were hoovering up vast IHT exemptions.

Farming is low profit on trading, but potential for huge capital gains on the land values. That's why it's a popular "investment" for rich people - especially if there is any likelihood of them selling the land for something like HS2 or a housing development or even a solar farm, where the underlying land value increases enormously overnight when it changes from being farming land to development land.

People in low income areas worked hard when the jobs were there, if they had continued investment in other manufacturing plants from the start, it wouldn't be in this state.
In Dublin city when they changed the docklands to mechanical machines, all the men were unemployed, the city plunged into poverty. People who thought they'd would never steal starting stealing, men were depressed, started drinking, taking drugs, some the children became addicts and criminals the knock on impact of removing a families means of earnings, it rippled through 3 generations.
It takes a lot of money to untangle.

"Farmers" weren't - it was investors who were, but genuine farmers are now going to be penalised by IHT on land that they have no intention of ever selling but instead to be passed through the generations like it's always been. At the very least, there should have been exemptions for faming land that wasn't actually sold, i.e. like the extra IHT exemption for family homes that are passed onto the deceased's children there should be extra IHT exemptions for active farmland passed on to the deceased's farmers children.

Agree @Badbadbunny and HMRC has the tools to differentiate this ought not to have been an impossible task.

Same with mining, shipyards, steel plants, car plants, mill towns, etc. We all liked the idea of cheaper goods imported from low cost countries, but failed spectacularly to appreciate the entirely foreseeable societal costs of unemployment, run down towns, poor health and addictions, etc. We really need to bring back some of the manufacturing - yes, it will cost us more in terms of higher wages, but we'll be paying less shipping costs, and societal costs of unemployment and all that goes with it will reduce substantially. We really can't go on letting the run down towns, cities and regions get even more run down with the resultant increases in poor health, addictions, crime, etc. We're supposed to be one of the richest countries in the World, let some places in the UK look more like Third World hell holes.

Absolutely - not to mention the security implications of having run down the defence-tech sector in some regards so thoroughly it will take a while to rebuild capacity.

Working from home & Flexible working is / was a great way of moving jobs out of London, and out of City Centres, into areas of lower employment.

I work in the CS, and we were able to offer more roles to people with disabilities who found it hard to physically get into an office; more roles to people living in small towns not well served by public transport, who couldn’t get to a Government Hub in a major city; more roles to people with caring responsibilities, who found 9-5 in an office hard due to travelling time.

All groups, who found it hard to secure employment.

Our ability to do that has now decreased due to mandated office days, mostly because the Media & Reform think WFH is for Shirkers, and they unable to see it’s actually a really valuable tool in Economic Mobility.

The type of care that's needed for frail, elderly people here is very different from the care that other countries provide for their elderly. Would you be able to provide 24/7 supervision, a special bed and air mattress, two hourly turns, pressure area care, tube feeding/specialist diet, weekly polypharmacy to -force them to remain alive- keep going, monthly antibiotics, airway suction during chest infections, wound dressing when they fall over and hurt themselves, diabetes monitoring etc.?

Thought not.

Many of those countries don't keep people alive to that stage with that level of intervention.

I dont want that level of care for decades on end, nor do i want to pay for it. If you, the taxpayer, or the government, want to keep me going the you can pay for it.

Its no surprise people are trying to offload their money to dodge fees.

Comments like Voluntary euthanasia would massively reduce care needs and draw down of state resources and immigration requirements send a chill down my spine

Beware the slippery slope https://www.betterwaycampaign.co.uk/canada/canadas-slippery-slope/