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.

Amazon and Google will never pay proper taxes no matter how much they raise tax. And neither labour or tories have any interest in getting more taxes out of massive corporations. It’s small businesses that feel it, unfortunately.

I agree - the triple lock was a messy, expensive and now seemingly irreversible policy brought in by George Osborn during the austerity/coalition era, as a vote-winner aimed at the older generation; they would be far better using funds to support and target the poorer OAPs - he had to have known that this wasn’t affordable in the long-term. Reckless populism.

There was a recent thread where the OP thought all of their NI contributions were personally allocated for their own use and sitting in a pot waiting for them to claim at pension age. They were enraged at the thought that state pension may not exist by the time they get there and accused the government of stealing their money. IIRC the OP disappeared once she’d been handed her arse and posters argued among themselves for the full forty pages !!

It seems very odd to me that you are happy to leave pensions alone because some need it & have worked hard all their lives, but don’t apply the same logic to benefits. To benefits you apply the exact opposite logic that because some people don’t need them, they need to be looked at.
Why not say “let’s look at pensions because some people don’t need them, but leave benefits alone because some people really need them”.

Surely you’d apply the same logic to both eg “let’s look at pensions and benefits to make sure that the money is going to people who really need it, and not to those who don’t”.
Or “let’s leave them both alone because some people really need them and whenever you mess with things, you end up with people losing out when you didn’t really want them to.”

50 years ago banks were reluctant to lend to women, especially in 'menial' jobs. There wasn't a minimum wage, subsided or regulated childcare, benefits to alleviate poverty, landlord deposits went unprotected etc. Add that with many women being sacked when pregnant, so no maternity pay. Many people, especially those in the likes of Liverpool, were I am, had no chance of getting on the housing ladder, putting into a pension, or amassing savings. The men's jobs had pensions attached, Ford, Coal mines, Public transport etc. No-one was singing over summer, life was tough and made tougher by the conditions many were living in, until the 80's. There was still slum housing and prefabs. Even men in full time employment wasn't just allowed to buy a house in any postcode.
We are being told that our birth rate is dropping to the point we must accept uncontrolled immigration, so if we want to spend the money on policing, instead of families, it wouldn't make sense to cap any family benefits.
Reading the thread on paying criminals to be deported, everyone was arguing that in the long run it's cheaper. Well so is making sure people get prescriptions and have disposable income. Posters love to criticise Blackpool, but that's what toens look like when local people live hand to mouth. Granted we save a fortune because most die in their early 60's.

I actually still think they should have to prove they need it to live, like we do with every other state benefit. The mentality that they've 'earnt it' is madness, especially when the average person takes out much more than they put in over a lifetime.
In fact, stop calling it a 'pension' and reframe it as continued Universal Credit, bringing in a tapered age related element (e.g. over 60 required to work 30 hours, over 65 required to work 25 hours, over 70 required to work 0 hours).

Actually average wage increase is 4.7% which is higher than inflation rate. That’s why pensioners are getting 4.7%.

Yeah. Let's just euthanise everyone once they get to 66!

That's just a silly comment.

What a stupidly dramatic response.

You've missed an important factor op. May propose to increase tax by 2% and decrease NI by same. Therefore impacting self employed and those receiving pensions in the most part.

Yes, sorry I was agreeing you.

Blimey- there are some really dense people out there

What a silly thing to say. Many of the minimum wage jobs are essential jobs, someone has to do them. Also people have varying physical and mental capabilities. Perhaps the problem is that a lot of these jobs shouldn’t be minimum wage. Incidentally many of these jobs are traditionally done by women and are undervalued. Try upping your hours as a carer when you have other family responsibilities but not enough money to pay for help.

Oh, on cue here come the euthanasia comments. Every single time anyone mentions cuts to either the disabled or old then you get accused of wanting to kill vulnerable groups of people. We really have to get away from this hyperbole and have mature, sensible discussions about these issues.

It's weird because often the same people that want to protect disability/pensioner benefits are pro cutting child benefit and yet nobody starts accusing them of wanting to kill off all the children.

My experience of threads discussing pensions is that there's a surprising number of people who think this - it's probably because NI contributions were framed that way by previous governments.

Agree, but it’s how you decide who needs what that matters. Traditionally means testing sets very low thresholds so you always get those who have real need missing out on support for the sake of a couple of pounds. It can be a race to the bottom.

As an example, on many of these threads it’s been suggested that disability benefits should be means tested. But how do you means test a benefit designed to help with the extra cost of disability ? Where do you draw the line where you say to someone ‘right, you’re fairly wealthy so you can afford to cover these costs yourself’ ?

IMO you can’t, and for several reasons. One is that disability benefits don’t cover all of the associated costs of living with disability - they are intended as a contribution towards them. And different disabilities attract different levels of cost. Someone who is reasonably well off may have severe disability and higher costs, so without support will burn through funds much faster. Do we really want to reduce all disabled people to poverty levels before we offer help ?

The pension increase for next April is based on average pay increases as that is higher than inflation. Also remember that 4.7% on a pension of under £200 per week is alot less than 4.7% of an average wage which is about £600 a week.

Yes, but the state isn't funding the wage increase, plus many pensioners will have other sources of income.

I don’t think people are dense, or other insults. I do think Gov messaging is precisely to get people to check how many years they’ve paid in, with the idea there’s a reason behind that.

Raises £6bn. Doesn’t affect workers. I can see this happening.

That’s something they inherited from the previous government post-Brexit (along with the Tories kicking the can down the road on the Post Office scandal, miners’ pensions, infected blood scandal, etc., etc.) and reports state that they have reduced that bill by 30% since they got into power, so they clearly do have some sort of plan in place that is working.

This. There’s a very prevalent attitude on MN that if you’re a boomer, you must be rolling in it because you’ve had all of these wonderful life opportunities. It’s just not the case.

I do! Who on earth thinks the NI they are paying is being saved for them presumably in their minds tax free.

I did have a friend though who thought after a family illness thought she could cancel her holiday and claim back from the credit card company. She hadn’t ‘got round to buying any holiday insurance’ as she apparently was too busy.

You have a point. State Pension forecasts can be requested at any time and l do think that some people overlook that it’s just a forecast and they read it as a statement of something they’ve accrued.