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?

@EggnogNoggin agree with all of that.

@itsnotabouthepasta
Housing - I've said a million times. A huge issue is the focus on first-time housing, and not last-time housing. We need developers to build final homes - possibly bungalows, but ones that can allow people to remain living independently at home for much longer. Making hallways wide enough for wheelchairs/walkers, having downstairs bathrooms, removing the need for steps into the front doors - these are all minor things but we know that bed blocking is a huge issue in the NHS. Elderly people want to remain living in their homes and that's why they dont want to downsize or move - but the reality is that in many circumstances, their homes aren't appropriate for their changing needs. There should be incentives - perhaps if you're downsizing, you are exempt from stamp duty.

They need to be priced low, where my parents live three bedroomed terrace houses are according to Zoopla on average £150,000-170,000, looking at the bungalows currently for sale they're more like £300,000. You'd need to build a lot of them to have them halve in value.

Bungalows take up as much space on the land as a house. They cost about the same to build. Often more as roofs are bigger. Here new bungalows are £750,000. Retirement flats £550,000. Massive shortage of both hence the prices.

Bungalows are always going to be more expensive. The footprint is bigger so they occupy more land.

You seem to think there’s some magic point at which one changes ‘cohort ‘whilst completely missing the point that there sadly isn’t a political mechanism to make the changes that benefit the majority of the population. There never was . You seem to feel some sort of financial revenge should be exacted on ‘the old ‘ , including presumably those feckless women who didn’t have equal pay or promotion and were not able to get a mortgage or bank account without male permission.
The political class very rarely ever makes changes to help ordinary citizens. We are , quite frankly, at all ages , disposable . The old ‘ you seem intent in clumping together into a meaningless ‘ cohort ‘ had / have their own battles . Many , many of us struggled / struggle against ‘the system ‘ . We aren’t ‘outliers ‘ . I was on a clean water march in London recently , thousands of people coming together to demand proper accountability of the water companies. It barely got a mention on the mainstream news & the Labour government who promised to fix this situation in their manifesto do not now seem resolved to meet their pledges . It is as it ever was

Not enough though. I have an existing property, already almost ready to be lived in (roof, windows, doors, stairs, plumbing heating etc), but the planners won't allow it - I have battled them for years and failed to get permission. Unfortunately the planning system is no longer fit for purpose and is stifling smallscale development in favour of the big builders ruining our countryside. Pointless bureaucracy is to blame for the vast Government overspend and lack of efficiency across many council run services.

And what have Labour announced today? A trade deal with India whereby Indisn workers are exempt from paying NI for 3 years. They've just handed Reform a gift 🙄

As other have said, your given are not really givens, they are your left wing biases.

It is not a given that we need immigration. Immigration at these levels is a Ponzi scheme. We have 10 million people of working age choosing not to works so we import low skilled, low wage labour to do do those Jobs. So neither the non-working locals, nor the immigrants per capita are earning enough to pay for their use of the system. That basically leaves you with an ever smaller number of people already here shouldering more and more people. And then the non working locals and immigrants get old, never having paid enough in the system to sustain themselves. What do you do, import more immigrants. And so the crazy upside down pyramid scheme continued until the number of people shouldering the vast net takers collapse under the weight.

Benefits are too easy to get. Over 10 million people of working age on benefits tells you they are. If it was that hard, millions wouldn’t be claiming.

And it’s not a given that ‘climate crisis’ leads to borders being overrun. People from the global south move because of their corrupt government sponsored by other corrupt governments around the world. Climate change happens, the climate crisis is a way for the authorities to rip off western taxpayer. Unlimited immigration benefits these people, they don’t care about those who pay the cost of it.

So basically you have an agenda and will not move from your left wing views, yet you are expressing faux interest in hearing other peoples views.

If you want to argue your leftie position do so. Why the pretense?

@BIossomtoes @EilonwyWithRedGoldHair @TizerorFizz

thats the issue with the last home houses isn’t it? I completely get that people don’t want to spend £200k more for something half the size. But I look at my parents who moved to a bungalow ten years ago when they turned 60 - they’ve had over a decade of making it their forever home, installed a wet room, and generally made it safe. When mum had a fall and broke her coccyx she was able to easily return home without any alterations.

in contrast another family member was hospitalised and spent weeks in hospital waiting for occupational health to send some adaptions to his house as he couldn’t get up the stairs, they don’t have a downstairs loo, he can barely walk…

my biggest concern with housing now is that new builds are so small. In my old house the hallway was so narrow that I couldn’t even get the buggy inside. If u carried a handbag, I would be touching both walls. It always worried me what would happen if someone needed to be stretchered out or needed a wheelchair (even temporarily)

that’s why I think new builds need to be accessible. We need to normalise downstairs bathrooms, wide hallways, etc so that those last homes are functioning when bungalows are not possible

@LakieLady There are considerable costs associated with repurposing disused sites. They can take years to get planning and planning permission does not last forever. Development plans change too. There’s a huge cost associated with lots of brown field sites that push up the price of the finished product. Often beyond what customers will pay. Councils are not going to take this on either. They have been told to rein back commercial projects. If Labour want to build, they probably need to make clean up grants available. Also most planners are very reluctant to get rid of employment zones and so we have empty unproductive areas for decades.

Replacing UC with UBI. Flat rate paid, no top ups per child or housing benefit. Those employed would not receive wage top ups either.

As well as saving money it would save hugely in administrative.

Government employees such as nurses would have the option of living locally in nursing accommodation (as happened historically).

How about building proper infrastructure correctly and to time and keeping promises.

HS2, new nuclear plants, tunnel by stone henge, rail electrification, new prisons I can think of loads of things that just don't get built or get delayed again and again. By all governments. It just cannot be this hard to actually do things.

It is. The projected costs are always incorrect. Design mistakes and over specification (HS2) delay building.

That was out and out pure corruption. HS2 was a way for government officials and contractors to steal from the taxpayer.

What did the civil service make out of it? The government awarded the contracts via the HS2 ltd. Are the trains being built in the uk? There’s lots of jobs created.m regarding design and build. However it was not necessary but people like shiny infrastructure projects. Don’t they? Keynesian economics at its best surely?

There’s been some really interesting points made on the thread, just caught up after being at work. There are lots I would have responded to if I’d been around when they were made!

This point about lower expectations- were expectations lower, or was it possible to support a family on wages at the low end of the scale? My understanding is that the vast majority of people claiming UC or using food banks are working, sometimes two adults in an household are both working and can’t make ends meet. That’s shocking and shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Effectively subsidising companies like Uber, Asda, Amazon etc to pay below what’s actually needed to have a basic standard of living. Those who can’t work should be supported, but those who are working shouldn’t need that support!

There is also a lot of people leaving state service jobs like teaching because the demands of the job are in many places intolerable. Teaching should be a decent job, with decent pay and conditions, but for too many it simply isn’t.

It's not about not wanting to spend the money it's how do you, at retirement age, move into a more accessible house that costs more than your existing house? And then you might need to spend 1,000's on top of that.

You plan for your retirement and save over many decades, as a responsible adult.

What about if you have nothing spare each month to save or pay into a pension?

This.

And this.

But that’s my point. If houses were better accessible from the outset, people wouldn’t need to relocate.

but there is an issue that there is a prevailing belief that when you get to a certain age the state should pay for everything. You just need to look at the number of posters asking how they can avoid their parents paying for care to see that.

am I saving for care now? No. But when the time comes, do I have that money available as equity in my home? Yes.

quite frankly I supported Theresa mays idea of an insurance policy - getting one at perhaps age 40, similar to life insurance could be a great idea.

T Mays plan was destroyed by the opposition party calling it a dementia tax and the media agreeing with that and the electorate being too stupid to see that it was a good idea.

edit - a dementia tax is what it more or less is - a good idea to have a way of providing for people in their later years

@AlertCat In an area of lower housing costs, teaching is a decent paid job. It still has one of the best pensions going. Overall it’s a decent package. Lots of jobs have people switching in and out of them. Many in the private sector can only dream of nhs and teaching pensions though. The huge input from the state gives a massive boost to the remuneration package.

We also have a crisis of people not working or choosing to work part time and get benefits.

I agree that wages went further years ago in terms of buying a house but millions didn’t do this. They rented council houses. When I was growing up quite a few families didn’t have a car, a holiday and no colour tv! No central heating and we walked to school. Veg were home grown and we didn’t have a supermarket. It was simpler but a hell of a lot harder in many ways.