To wonder how the UK will look in 3 years time?

[Labradorlover987]

I was inspired to write this after reading the UC post that was just reported - the govt’s welfare bill has passed but was watered down so unlikely to make any real savings.

I earn 40k, have a school age child and just feel like I am living hand to mouth 😩 I 100% think there should be a welfare systems that supports people on low incomes but I wonder how the current system will be sustained in the long run?

Just wondered what other people thought.

I actually wouldn’t mind paying more in taxes if we could be guaranteed more in services etc - for example my council tax just went up and the services seem even worse this year than usual.

No. It was a dire decision. Financially what we did has totally screwed our young people as they work to pay it off. The number of people going onto sickness benefits and an effective early retirement are over 50.

If we want an effective welfare state it has got to be funded. We cannot have a system that is allowing working age people to claim benefits as being an easier solution. If people want state pensions, schools, NHS then we need to look at these benefits again.

The figures are horrific. Not enough tax payers contributing and more and more working age people claiming.

I wish Labour had got on with reforming it rather than the inevitable right wing government that will now come. I am also fed up of the contention that somewhere there are a mass of rich people who can pay for it. The reality is that countries with social provision like ours everyone pays and contributes tax. If we don’t either adjust the tax everyone pays from top to bottom or adjust our social expectations as to welfare the UK is screwed.

@bombastix

*I am also fed up of the contention that somewhere there are a mass of rich people who can pay for it. The reality is that countries with social provision like ours everyone pays and contributes tax. If we don’t either adjust the tax everyone pays from top to bottom or adjust our social expectations as to welfare the UK is screwed.

I agree with that. EVERYONE needs to pay if we want to keep our existing welfare/health/social security systems, and that includes lower earnings, non workers, etc. The ONLY way we, as a country, can recover, is by spreading the burden of the deficit/debt as wide as possible.

Btw I am a leftie. But the mote in the eye that never gets dealt with is the UK tax system. We have not socialised the costs of the welfare state. In effect large numbers of people are barely contributing to the state. Now I don’t think that burden should be solely on individuals, and you can certain look at asset tax but let’s stop pretending that income tax is a functioning system in the UK. It is not. It’s like a charity tin until you start paying higher rates.

Holding down the various tax thresholds is making more people pay higher rates of tax by stealth from a lower base. Just not quickly enough to balance the deficit and repair the welfare state.

Given the increasing demand no it will definitely not be enough. Imagine how desperate Labour must have been to advance their disability cuts bill. The internal projections on claiming these benefits must be dire.

This is not just a case of a few billion extracted from the economy to fund matters. Labour MPs have their head in the sand if they believe that.

It won’t be taken from you.

You’ll be dead. You won’t exist.

Are you very wealthy?

Is that why you think hanging on to your wealth is more important than striving towards a decent standard of living for the poorest and most vulnerable people.

Your kids are astonishingly privileged by the sound of it. Obviously not privileged enough though.

BTW - I don’t think anyone’s planning on taking all your money. 😂

That never used to be true. I remember factories and farms who only advertised OUTSIDE the UK for staff. Often in a different language

Many of the fruit pickers were brought in and given " accommodation " often shared caravans which they had the costs taken out of wages before they received them

I'm not even remotely wealthy. I was born in abject poverty, my parents didn't have sufficient food at times. I worked my arse off to break from poverty whilst dealing with personal challenges and DC's disability.

That's why I have no sympathy to ever growing army of people who won't work or "find it to hard" to make 35h a week. I absolutely do support benefits for people on real disabilities, but it's definitely not 23% of our working age population.

And no, one of my DC is as disadvantaged as it gets. So I'm spending all I can on them rather than giving another penny to this government.

@TommehTenNamesIsAWanker

Too late to add:

It won’t be taken from you.
You’ll be dead. You won’t exist.

That's the crux of it - I paid 62% tax rate with no issues. But this directly affects my DC. And this is where I draw the line.
I assume you're on benefits / don't earn much that you're so happy to tax other people.

If you’re not wealthy, then why are you worrying about inheritance tax?

Re: ‘one of my dc’s is as disadvantaged as it gets’ - as disadvantaged as my child? He has a psychotic mental health disorder, has been sectioned for months at a time, and at 19 was diagnosed with cancer.

If your child is also disadvantaged why are you arguing against the government increasing tax revenue, so it can better meet the healthcare and housing needs of children like your child and mine?

You have to have private insurance for a year (about 1000 euro per year) Then after a year it’s 60 quid a month to pay for the Spanish nhs service, till you get permanent residency at 5yrs, then you go onto the public healthcare system for free. If you work on a job contract for 6/months in Spain, after, you automatically get free healthcare for life .

I will not discuss my DC diagnosis online but they are sufficiently severe. I live in London so my very modest property is above the threshold and that's before we start talking about pension.

The government will never meet the needs of people like you and my DC exactly because they subsidise millions of people who don't bother to work and use every trick in the book to get UC and PIP.

As I mentioned above and in many of my posts - people like your family absolutely should be adequately provided for, no debate about this. There are millions of people who can and should be made to work full time. And if it results in a few meltdowns - so be it, the rest of society will become much fitter.

I'm not sure why you don't see this.

GPD 4 percent growth in Spain! Much better than the uk!…. We don’t pay tax on income because we are below the threshold… except we do on consumerist living, our house and car tax’s, and plus until I worked for 18 months .. we paid for
our convino especial healthcare into the Spanish nhs system. You don’t know what you are talking about

62% tax? The top rate of tax in the UK is 45%, for incomes over 125K, which would put you in the top 2% of earners. Are you talking about paying tax in another country?

"I assume you're on benefits / don't earn much that you're so happy to tax other people."

My husband is a higher rate tax payer. I only work part time because I care for my disabled mother and my disabled son.

How can people pay tax if there is not enough work for them to do?

Effective tax rate on income £100k-125k is 62%. One is 16 in London are over 100k.

There is enough work, not enough people willing to do it, hence mass immigration.
Remember Rishi saying that if we cut immigration then inflation will be through the roof?

Depends on where you live - there are no British people in two of my local Sains / Lidl/Asda, they are all recent immigrants and some are hardly speaking English. (I am not against immigration at all, don't start this please). Why don't Brits take these jobs? I believe it depends on area where you live but if these millions of UC Brits would start working we wouldn't need to import so much labour from abroad?

This is a very interesting read on UBI - it’s US focused but principles are the same.
https://www.scottsantens.com/what-the-media-isnt-telling-you-why-universal-basic-income-ubi-is-the-answer-to-poverty-insecurity-and-inequality/

There are literally 100s of applications for any supermarket job where I live.
Also in my son’s large uni city, such jobs are hard to come by.

I assume you're on benefits / don't earn much that you're so happy to tax other people.

The assumption, so frequently made, that anyone who isn’t so money focused that they will do anything to avoid paying tax has no money is beyond tedious. I’d be happy to pay more tax, have and will do nothing to mitigate IHT and am more than happy to pay for my own care home fees if it’s needed. Trust me, I’m not on my uppers.

HMRC link for extra tax contributions was shared here many time - how much did you pay? do you need help to find it?

I thought we should all pay more?

There was work till Rachel decided to think she was being really clever by upping NI contributions that the employer pays.

Employers decided they weren’t paying for everyone and cut back on employees.

I work a zero hours contract and from doing 5/6 or even 7 days per week last year, I barely get any work and the work I do get the amount of people doing the same work as last year has been cut by 75% Sometimes more.

One particular days work, last year they employed 15 people to get the work done

Now it is down to 3

I would pay more, but only if the money raised was sensibly spent. Even so, I'm nearly 70 so I would probably not see the benefits.

Infrastructure replacement would get a tick, because one of our serious issues is that we are trying to render/reconfigure Victorian infrastructure for the 21st century having spent inadequate sums during most of the 20th century. We have outgrown it, and it is now falling apart under the weight of a hugely increased population. Until the investment is made, growth will be uphill but it costs vast amounts because of onerous planning issues while the scope for campaigning against change is huge.

To take one recent example, HS2 was a generally good idea.... but the build should have started in the North and driven south to join up with existing (fairly) fast connections that already exist. The first tranche of work should have been seen as economic regeneration investment to bring jobs and skills back. HS2's less recognised goal was to take long distance freight off the road network (I know this because a close friend has been a senior surveyor on CrossRail and all the major London railway infrastructure for about 20 years). To crash it so hard after so many years and £££££££££££ was, IMO, an error that we shall have to live with for generations.

The UK was one of the first nations to industrialise and shift from an agricultural economy to manufacturing and then into services. Other countries are seeing the same shift and the rapid prosperity boost that the UK experienced during the late 19th/early 20th centuries, like most of the newer EU members now seeing 4% growth rates -- including Spain and Poland. But they don't have any legacy infrastructure to work around. And there's more under-developed land available; the easy sites in the UK were developed 150 years ago.