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?

Absolutely.

We need cross party agreement to reform spending really - which party would take on pensioners or public sector workers to reform terms? There’s the reason nothing changes - too attractive as a voter group

Hind sight is a wonderful - you complain about behaviours of the oldies. I cannot imagine what younger generations will say about the freedoms of the big tech cos. -the porn, the scams, the people trafficking that happens now - they will ask you WHY did you stand by and let this happen - why are you not doing anything. Well, why?

We are living with a society we didn’t devise -it is what it is and you muddle through life as best you can. No one schemed not to work and to dump costs on younger generations. You just went with the flow as people do now.

Invest in public services and infrastructure. This leads to high employment and more taxes paid.
In other words thus blessed government needs to start behaving like a socialist government which we voted for.
They are trying too hard to please industry magnate and big business.
We do not need water down conservative policies.

While it's true that we can't change the past and that there would have been persuasion and unintended consequences, the truth is that the present CAN be changed. The older generation DO hold the most wealth which is why we need to get rid of the triple lock, get NI absorbed into regular income tax so that EVERYONE pays it, increase inheritance tax and get rid of the freebies (except bus passes because they benefit everyone by encouraging older people who shouldn't be driving to do so less) obviously we could means test to make sure that those who are genuinely struggling still get help but at the moment the scales are weighed very unfairly in favour of pensioners to the detriment of the rest of society.

I have a pension, two actually, at the moment the forecast for each of them is they'll give me income of about £1,000 a year, so not even £200 a month.

I don't have 10's of 1,000's in savings, we live off my wage which is £1,675 a mth take home, there's nothing left at the end of the month.

I'm not planning on retiring for as long as I can physically work. We might also still have DS to care for, I'm hopeful he'll be able to live independently and work and that's what we're working towards but it's possible he won't be able to.

The UK has stringent health and safety laws. They will never be able to compete with countries that do not have these laws. Those workers that live in compounds in China and see their families maybe once a year, none of you are going to be doing that. You buy something from Shein or Temu, the Wests desire for cheap goods, they have done it to themselves.

The triple lock is politically impossible to remove. That’s why we need a cross party grown up set of politicians to come up with long term tax and spend reform. It’ll never happen in the current system…

If you actually read my posts then you’ll see that they centred around how you redesign the economy in order to ensure real-terms salaries and living standards can begin to rise again. This would mean that people have more money available to save and be self-sufficient in retirement, rather than be forced to live hand to mouth as real-terms salaries continue to decline year on year. I also specifically stated how this would reduce welfare dependency in general freeing up more money for more generous support for those who are disabled. As a result, what I was suggesting would enormously improve things for a family such as yours.

There is a difference between “hindsight” and spending your life doing an impression of an ostrich so that you can pretend you had no idea about what was right in front of you the entire time.

Yes, I’m well aware that growth comes from the private sector! I’m an economist. That is why all of the suggestions I made about the economy in response to the OP were about generating growth so that living standards can rise: firstly immediately measures that are entirely within Government control to remove cliff-edges in the tax and benefits system that are strangling productivity; then suggestions on how the additional tax revenue this growth would generate needs to be directed to areas of public spending that will generate long term growth and reduce the national debt interest as a percentage of total tax revenue; and finally the changes that need to be made to the three largest areas of current public spending (healthcare, pensions and social care) to make these systems fiscally sustainable so that they are not vulnerable to changes in the size of cohorts (given the ageing population and declining birth rates) and also to ensure we have family friendly policies which may at least slow the declining birth rate a little (I doubt at this point it is reversible sadly; that’s never been achieved in any country in history once it sets in and I don’t think people have the slightest comprehension yet of what a serious problem this will be in the next couple of generations because the effect is exponential).

I hate to tell you this but inheritance tax isn’t paid by the person who dies, it’s essentially paid by the generation inheriting the money so increasing it definitely won’t affect the people you seem to think it will.

True and looking at recent ways to interrupt that reliance via pricing it won’t happen easily.

While legally it is paid from the estate of the person who has died, in practical terms you’re right, and this won’t help with the current funding crisis because it is people sitting on the piles of unearned wealth yet expecting the vast majority of tax revenue to also be spent on them which is preventing the investment of tax revenue in the areas of the economy that it needs to be spent on in order for productivity and therefore living standards and salaries to rise in real terms. Waiting for them all to die won’t fix it.

The generation who’ve created this mess need to be taxed far more to make up the shortfall in tax payments over their working lives so that they’re not continuing to impoverish working aged people now with their demands for an ever-increasing proportion of tax revenue to be spent on them, which we cannot afford to continue to do.

Wealth taxes are not implementable. They’re incredibly expensive to administer, have perverse effects and are easily avoidable by those with large amounts of wealth so would be yet another tax on those who’ve been responsible and have moderate assets, unfortunately.

The exemption from NI for the retired is nonsensical considering they’re the ones consuming most of the services that purportedly it was meant to pay for (obviously this is a fiction in reality, as we all know). So removing the exemption from NI for retirees would be a good first step. Some of their unfunded public sector pensions already in payment need revision as they are much, much too generous and far exceeding anything they ever paid for in their working lives. Why should they get to keep these when the current (still overly generous) public sector pension schemes have been reduced? Why are lots of them still being allowed to retire at 60? As a minimum the index-linking should be revised and downgraded significantly.

I think there’s also a good argument to build accessible housing like bungalows and make this available to retirees, built in little self-contained areas with shops, GP surgeries, community activities, delivery of decent meals daily available when they become very old and frail, community nurses and carers assigned specifically to support them to continue living independently there to the end of life except in very extreme cases, everything within a short walking distance. They will need to sell their houses to access these and pay a significant fee to “buy” living there with this dedicated support for the rest of their life, including an uprating to contribute some additional taxes on top of the cost of it, to contribute to general taxation.

The cost charged would be calculated on an actuarial basis this can be calculated so that overall they will pay significantly more than it costs on average, and the rest of that money can go towards general tax revenues. This would be something many older people would welcome because it would stop them being stuck in hospitals for months, or put in care homes, but protect the remainder of their assets from the risk of being put in a care home or the horror of the reality of having to live in one. It would give older people security and dignity, reduce bed-blocking and the costs of them being in hospitals for prolonged periods unnecessarily costing us all a fortune, give them security over what assets are left to pass on to their children (and indeed the ability to be able to do so earlier by selling their home, “buying” their space in such a community for the rest of their life, and passing on the remainder of their assets to their children at an earlier stage to ease the pressures on younger generations of their families), protect older people against falling through the cracks and loneliness as they would have a proper community but in nice bungalows with gardens not grotty retirement flats, and be more appealing that the current “retirement properties” system available currently as these are a huge rip off and often extremely hard to sell when they die/ sold at a huge loss whereas in this case the person wouldn’t actually be purchasing the house itself, just the right to live there until death). It would also make social care and health care far more efficient also because they could operate just in these small areas dotted around.

Such a plan would improve elderly care, increase tax revenues, reduce strain on the NHS, lower social care costs, given older people financial security and enable them to be independent for longer, reduce loneliness, free up housing stock for families and enable them to pass some of their wealth on to younger generations earlier without worrying they’ll be left in some dire hell hole of a care home if they run out of money.

There’s no way a developed country would be able to compete with the likes of China on high volume, low value manufacturing. It’s pointless to try to do so and tariffs are not going to fix that, just impoverish the countries that impose them, hence China being not remotely bothered about Trump’s behaviour and standing up to him. He really doesn’t understand the Chinese mentality at all.

The solution is that we focus on high-value industries where we have strengths such as pharmaceuticals, defence technology, software development/ AI, robotics, the arts, plus of course our high value service industries like financial services which we’ve crippled with Brexit i.e. sectors that are high-productivity and in which we have competitive advantage and skills. But being successful in this strategy requires wholesale reform of our education system and business environment as I said earlier. We also need a major focus on construction skills given the enormous amount of infrastructure that needs to be built to bring things up to scratch.

Gosh @InPraiseOfIdleness you make it sound so attractive!

Sorry, but it's a hard no from me to your 12:55 post; I have no intention of being moved into a geriatric ghetto because it would suit your agenda. We might not agree on what makes a decent meal -- or anything else.

I can't see many people agreeing to your proposals frankly, so you would need a hefty degree of compulsion. Good luck with that!

One of the reasons lots of elderly people give for not downsizing from the 4/5 bedroom homes they are rattling around in is having to pay stamp duty on purchasing somewhere smaller. This system would avoid that as well. Also that smaller properties don’t generally have much living space and they still want that but fewer bedrooms, more accessibility, their own detached space and a decent garden etc. The cost of maintenance etc could all be factored in like in social housing but including cleaning services and gardening services so that the properties would be nicely maintained for them. I think for that security many people would be happy to do this, and obviously the charge would be actuarially based depending on age and health etc - it’s perfectly possible to calculate at scale to ensure the costs are covered and it makes a nice profit for the taxpayer, just as actuaries calculate how much to charge someone to buy an annuity based on their circumstances. But this would also be a good deal for the pensioners in question as it gives them security of tenure in a nice place, vastly reduces the likelihood of them having to ever go to a care home or being stuck in hospital for months, gives them security and a community and care as required and protects the remainder of their assets which they can then pass on prior to death.

I’ve just come up with that idea off the top of my head after looking at some of the posts on the thread about the lack of availability of accessible housing for the elderly, so if I can devise the basics of such a system that would benefit everyone on a random Wednesday morning and be fiscally beneficial (due to the huge costs of unnecessary hospital stays and care homes for people who don’t really need to be there, the huge social costs of inappropriately allocated housing stock etc) it’s difficult to see why it’s beyond the wit of Governments to solve such issues.

In your dreams. Your generation can live in a ghetto, I’m most definitely not, let alone paying over the odds to do so.

Nobody said anything about compulsion. It’s about making an option available to people that you might not want but many, many would.

The point about food was for those who’ve become too frail and old to cook so would otherwise find themselves in hospital or a care home or having “meals on wheels” which I can assure you would result in far worse quality of food than what I’m suggesting with a community centre with its own kitchen on site, a restaurant where people can meet and socialise and deliveries of said restaurant menu cooked by proper chefs and taken to the nearby houses of those who’re too frail to cook for themselves and either don’t want to go to the restaurant or too frail to do so.

Personally I’d much rather spend my late retirement in such a place than be a worry and burden to my children, know that I will have care and people visiting daily as needed and be able to stay in my home and have privacy, a nice garden to live in, food when I need it, not be isolated, and not be stuck in a hospital corridor or care home, and can also pass assets on to my children years earlier. But of course anybody who’d rather continue with the current situation and stay in their house, wait until they have a fall and no way of calling anyone and lie on the floor for hours with no way to call for help, having carers turn up once per day to help them get to the loo or lie in a hospital bed for months being ignored and getting so frail they lose all mobility, and then shipped off to a care home and lose all the assets they’ve worked for, while their children worry about them immensely, would be quite welcome to continue with doing so.

Ghetto? You people are insane.

We have needed more working in construction for decades - people don’t like these jobs! They are not interested. They want to design computer games and sit all day. You cannot force people to do work they refuse to do.

Ghetto! 😏🤔🙄😆😆😆

Have you ever been to a ghetto @Blossomtoes, actual ghettos were people live in real poverty? I have. Excrement on the pathways, structures built from rubble and scrap metal, starving children. The fact you could characterise what I described as a “ghetto” shows the sheer cluelessness that was being discussed earlier in the thread.

A ghetto by definition is a place of poverty, not somewhere that people live in detached bungalows with spacious gardens, regular cleaning and gardening services, community halls and local amenities, restaurant food/ restaurant food delivery services and free carers and nursing available 24/7 all with no additional charge.

You make comical comments frequently on various threads but this one really cracked me up! Thank you.

Implementing a wealth tax for the top two per cent of earners would apparently bring in 26 billion which could be spent improving public services.

I heard on Lbc radio last night that 75 % of the public wants this yet Labour does nothing. Instead of improving the country society prefers to scapegoat illegal immigrants.

A wealth tax would really help.

I think there are many, many young people who would love to get into these trades with proper training routes and meaningful apprenticeships leading to a guaranteed job at the end if they pass their training. There are many, many young people with practical skills who are stifled by the current education system who would snap up the chance to go to technical colleges that covered core subjects plus training in a trade at 14/15 with a real work experience as part of the curriculum leading into a paid apprenticeship role at 18.

The current system forces the non-academic to continue academic study as their primary focus for too long. This makes them think they are incapable because their more practical skills are not valued, and makes them disruptive as well which prevents those who are academic from learning properly. And there are very few meaningful training routes available because there are insufficient apprenticeships available afterwards and those that do exist are often low-quality and teach them very little, used more as a way for employers to gain cheap labour.

We need to reestablish technical colleges and fund proper apprenticeships to make them viable for small and medium sized employers, but with strict conditions to ensure they are a genuine route into trades and technical occupations, designed with colleges and businesses working together to ensure they include the right skills and work experience.

System needs total overhaul. Stop all benefits immediately except for those who are prepared to work for the local council. No effort no money. This would also put an end to native freeloaders and economic migrants. Only when people realise that there is no such thing as a 'free lunch' can we then hope to rebuild the system.