The autumn budget should cut benefits before increasing tax

[Leett]

There is talk of Labour breaking their election pledge and increasing income tax by 2p. I doubt they'd do that because voters will revolt. However they need to do something with the state pension due to increase by 4.7% next year.
I really hope they cut benefits / pensions before the deciding to increase taxes.

wouldn’t cutting benefits be austerity 3? I can’t see that it’s any more likely to be successful than 1 and 2.

Cutting money from the very poorest who actually spend that money rather than save it is a fool’s errand.

I'm sure it's not all, but a lot do find some wild things to criticise. I recently knew a woman who got very worked up about binge watching Netflix. Apparently this was symptomatic of young people's inability to delay gratification. This was a particular problem with her daughter who was in her early 20s.

A bit of digging uncovered that her degree-educated daughter worked a collection of part-time jobs to keep afloat in the SE town we lived in, in a shared house. I wonder, after she'd come home from her second job at 10pm to sit in the one tiny room of the house that was hers, what she should be doing other than watching boxsets on Netflix?

This person (who I actually generally really got on with) was in her late 60s, a homeowner, in very good health, with a good pension and working part-time with me at my own part-time job to supplement my full-time income which didn't cover our expenses and I don't think she had any idea what life was like for people who were just starting out.

I don’t think tax should be increased or benefits cut. I think they need to stop wasting OUR money.

All of you who are calling for pensions to be cut, free bus passes and prescriptions gone, triple lock done away with - you're all years away from pension age I would guess. My parents only have state pension and they are poor, had to use equity release which is now all used up. Our state pension is one of the lowest in Europe, and I believe we should care for our elderly and not make them live in squalor so that younger people get an easier time of it.

And, yes, I am in my 60s which does colour your view somewhat.

I don’t think we should. Given the political hit to Labour over the WFA they might give the same backlash a miss.

You need to widen your circle then because I don’t know a single one who does.

The new state pension full entitlement is £35 below the tax threshold - which has been frozen at £12,570 until 2028. If the Personal Allowance remains frozen while the State Pension continues to rise, the full new State Pension will become taxable quite soon for many.

I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the two child cap, and used the PR of that to hide a cut to basic benefits.

That's exactly what the Tories did with widowed parents allowance. They used the "woo we've removed the age limit so MORE people qualify!!!" to cover the fact the removed WPA lasted until the child was 16 (unless the parent remarried) and BSP now lasts 18 months. So it was a considerable cut disguised as wider access.

My husband could not afford to retire at sixty five as we were helping support his children and his parents in their late eighties / nineties. Who had both fought in the war and been injured . They could not afford to keep their council property warm . Their heating was on year round we had to pay towards carers as well

And some people make crap decision after crap decision. Always think someone else will bail them out. My parents brought up 3 children and never went above basic rate tax payers however Dad was quite good at reading the market and brought in London in the 60’s. They then just stayed there for over 50 years. Both had pensions (Mum was a teacher) not large ones though.

As I said before what have people been doing during their working years to not foresee their old age.

Do you believe that it's only the elderly we should care for?
Do you not agree that there should be thresholds for pension age benefits as well as working age benefits?
Do you understand that it's simply not sustainable to either keep existing entitlement age and/or keep increasing pension levels?

Yes. I would. There is no reason for any one, except the poorest, to receive child benefit if we’re starting to cut benefits.

Of course it influences you. I will say it again, turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

What do you think is going to happen to today's 20 or 30 year olds when they turn 60 if keep amassing debt like this? Whatever we do has to be sustainable and fair. However hard it is for today's pensioners, it is completely unethical for young people to be forced to fund something for other people's old age today when the state knows full well that the young people won't be entitled to the same when it's their turn. It is only fair that the (immense) pain is shared by all generations.

In answer to your last question - many believed that the state would look after them, and that they were paying into their own private pot by paying NI.

The same applies to state pension then.

Have you costed your proposal? How much of benefits (and what benefits) do you have to cut to make the same amount that we could get by raising income tax a little bit for everyone?

I don't know either but I doubt that unless you really just leave your most vulnerable to basically die you wont make as much money as by raising income tax.

And I dont want to screw pensioners over even if most of them aren't exactly vulnerable but that's Just personal preference.

Some still think that now. The amount of people on this thread that believe that because they have paid a rather paltry amount of NI that this should guarantee them a comfortable state pension, free prescriptions, free bus passes etc is insane. The general population has completely lost touch with how much these things cost and the fact that the average taxpayer is paying nowhere enough into the system to fund their own expenses, let alone to be in a position to talk about funding other people's.

But what about working age people receiving benefits who have worked?

Yes, I'm aware of this, I was just offering an explanation to the first question.

That’s not the way it works. Benefit spending is allocated via long term spending reviews. If it comes in under budget because of unclaimed benefits, that money doesn’t get allocated elsewhere, it just means that the overall allocation is reduced next time round.

Eh? NI was a private pension? My parents gone a few years now would be mid 90’s so it was fairly common for women to work. They made a choice. My late MIL was a Doctor. She would be late 80’s had she lived

Exactly! And they eat fuck all!

Yes but effectively in reality the money that would have been claimed is spent elsewhere. Government spending isn't coming down and the money isn't ring fenced. So the state will allocate less to benefit spending in the budget in the future but the unclaimed money doesn't just sit there doing nothing.

It would cost to much to means test pensioners and so complex but there is no need for the triple lock.

'Eh?' right back at you.
NI wasn't a private pension scheme, many saw it that way however.
Not sure what the rest of your information relates to.