To ask how much you think income tax will rise by?

[Wonderofwimbledon]

We’re absolutely financially at our limit… I’m so incredibly stressed. An income tax rise will break us and we won’t be able to afford it. We won’t have money to eat.

What do you think it’ll be? I just want to curl up and cry- we can’t take anymore increases our bills , mortgage everything has increased we have no spare money at all

So cut pay, in real terms, for nurses, teachers, soldiers.... civil service pay is already v low, with some on or just above NMW.

"Oh but the train drivers" Well, that cost the Govt 135m to settle and the 3 year deal worked out at less than 5% per year...

NHS already cannot cope with the growing demand as we age and get less healthy, it needs more money, not less.

SEN is quite a topic on here, shall we start there?

Yes we can cut some welfare, i'm sure but the amounts don't touch the sides of even a small compensation scandal, we now have a new PO one "Capture" computer system, that another few billion no one knew about.

Yes Sunak did identify £10bn shortfall, so why on earth did he cut NI by £11bn, unfunded?
Or was it done to create this black hole for Labour??? or rather the UK, us lot, because it sure as hell wont affect him.

I really don't think people grasp the size of the financial issues facing the country, its just used by a few on here to bash Labour, pathetic really.

The whole ‘but that’s a real terms pay cut’ I sense butters no parsnips with private sector workers who regularly get 0% pay rises. Not ‘0% above real terms’. 0%. I hsd that for 5 years in a row when my employer was going through tough times. Irish public sector workers took a pay cut after the financial crisis. Because they recognised that their employer was skint. The UK government is skint. Why should the public sector get any pay tier wt all?

Well, i'd have thought that was obvious, recruitment, retention, moral, productivity.
Plus its money that almost always flows back into the economy.

Keep workers on low wages and they'll end up claiming benefits too.

Are you are prepared to accept that the welfare budget needs addressing? Even this Labour government think it does - the obstacle being some callow back benchers, who are simply pandering to their constituents/trying to hang on to a job.

Pathetic? Labour were always going to come in and make up an excuse to tax people they don’t like and who don’t vote for them: prep school children, farmers, business owners, pensioners etc to begin with and then everyone else. You can give them the benefit of the doubt on the first 20 billion, but not the second 40 billion….You simply can’t run an economy on spite, everything is connected. For every 100 kids you’ve managed to close down their prep school, you’ve maybe lost 3 high tax paying families to Dubai. That’s tax for 6 new nurses or 4 police men and 40 extra kids being state educated at 8k a pop each year. For every 5 business owners you force to scale back or close down, that led to 10 people redundant and on benefits. For every family farm that we loose, that’s a slight increase in food inflation. For every person who wanted to rent out their house and try a new business or job in a different city but now is too afraid, that’s a lost opportunity.
I’m sorry, but its ideology before practicality and it’s absolutely blatant.

Also ‘a few’ that’s pretty much comical given the current public sentiment wrt Labour.

Incidentally, another poster just shared the below, showing the direction of travel vis a vis the welfare budget.

Hard to argue against, tbh.

UK attitudes towards benefits claimants and criminals are hardening, according to a survey that reveals younger generations’ growing discontent with the country’s “broken social contract”.

For the first time in a decade the majority of British adults believe the generosity of the welfare system stops people from supporting themselves, according to the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).

The share who strongly agreed that less generous benefits would mean people “learn to stand on their own two feet” has surged to 23 per cent, the highest level since records began in 1987. Among young adults the share jumped from 13 per cent to 28 per cent in the past year.’

Well that’s something but I’m amazed it’s so low.
It’s surely logical that people should stand on their own two feet
What are the majority of the population thinking ?

Quite so.

Vote Labour, get Labour.

It’s positive that these newly-hardened youthful attitudes are showing up not just around benefits claimants, but tax cuts (20 per cent now believe that the government should reduce taxes and spend less on health, education and social benefits), as well as stricter sentencing for criminals (34 per cent strongly agree that people who break the law should be given stiffer sentences).

It appears that young people are starting to understand that there is nothing “fair” about the government stealing money from people who have earned it to give to people who don’t deserve it.

Governments of any colour can't cater to very single person in a country of almost 70 million. Some people will be disadvantaged whatever happens. They can only act in a broad brush way- and in that way, a hypothetical couple on the same incomes as the OP would be expected to have more chance of a comfortable life than many others.

I'm not deciding anything. If your entire budget can be thrown out by small changes to tax, inflation, energy prices, interest rates etc that isn't a great place to be in my view. I would say that it is more understandable to be in that position if you're on a low income than it is for two doctors. You, the OP and anyone else can think 'ScholesPanda is an evil leftie, so that can't be true' but it won't cut much ice with the mortgage company come repossession time.

I just find it ironic that a group of people (not all Tories are like this) who find it so easy to critique the budgets of people on benefits or lower incomes; who can lecture others on making sure they take responsibility for themselves and save for a rainy day; and that you shouldn't expect the government to help you out; seem incapable of putting any of these things into practice themselves, and look to government policy to help them sort it out.

and that you shouldn't expect the government to help you out; seem incapable of putting any of these things into practice themselves, and look to government policy to help them sort it out.

What a really odd point of view, that’s like saying by asking a mugger to not steal your mobile phone you’re looking to them to sort out your mobile phone contract. It’s this warped sense of self righteous entitlement and utter selfishness that is causing all these problems.

There is absolutely nothing broadbrush about Labour’s policies, in fact they have to keep coming up with new tighter identity boxes for people who aren’t the enemy.

Tell us you're not a young 30s professional in London without telling us you're not a young 30s professional in London 😂

No the government can't consider every individual. But they do need to consider more than their own client voters. They need to look at the big picture, and the consequences of destroying a whole swathe of people the UK depends on.

And I mean actually depend on - not the people serving lattes or filling supermarket shelves, which anyone can turn their hand to.

At some point, even Labour need to put country ahead of party. Or else it will get so bad that they won't survive anyway.

Reduce taxes. Stop suffocating business. Let the economy grow.
There is loads of historic evidence that this works... and that raising taxes reduces prosperity.

Totally, i just said that in my post...

However, everyone wants a cut in welfare that doesn't affect them, hence my comments on SEN, they'd be outrage on here & the Tory media if that was cut!
Reform's Tim Montgomerie doesn't want MH cut because he has had MH issues.
People focus on Welfare because they don't want tax rises, they naturally want to protect their wealth.

Kemi Badenoch has invited Labour to steal her fully-detailed and costed economic policies.

I'd rather she was in charge, but I'd settle for Labour using her ideas to stop the destruction.

Constantly feeling sick with worry over here, I struggle now, if i have to pay anymore out I don't know where it will come from

Oh dear... you missed what happened when Truss tried that?

Our tax burden a few years ago, pre Covid, was one of the lowest in the G7, yet we had appalling growth rates.

We even had low Corp Tax rates, still had low growth or zero growth.

If low taxes were the secret to growth, do you not think everyone would be doing this?

We have piss poor skills, an aging workforce, very low R&D levels, super high levels of sickness.... huge national debt... how would you fund tax cuts?

Really?

We had 14 years of her type of politics and economics, it was a stunning success wasn't it?

I think Truss should have cut spending as well if she wanted to do big tax cuts

Relative to the last 14 months it was a huge success and that was with Brexit and a global pandemic that shut down the economy for months on end.
The only positive of Labour having such a large majority is that everybody can now see what happens under their ideology and they literally have no-one else to blame for the consequences (although Rachel had a good go).

They won’t but they’ll also be very restricted by the markets. It’ll be a tax hike loop.

OP, I'm in very much the same boots as you. We aren't living lavish lives, my home has the same value as those on our local estate.

The potential changes to pensions again, will mean I'm just spending less on the high street. Changes to salary sacrifice around pensions again will affect the young more. The difference between having £1k less a year won't necessarily be noticed by someone aged 60. It will make a huge difference to the pension pot of a 30 year old once they reach age 67.

You can't keep squeezing the same people. That is when the social contract breaks down - look what has happened with immigration. Ignore reasonable concerns for long enough and people will go for more extreme options.

Everyone got an axe to grind, then? The issue is, those who work and contribute hold the capital. They hold the whip hand - the ability to work, or not to work, to mitigate or to emigrate.

The government, and its welfare recipients rely on these people - alienate them at your peril...

I'm not sure if your analogy quite works... The same people generating taxes for others are barely being left enough to make an obvious material difference to those on benefits. You need to have some incentive for people to work hard, if not the same thing will happen as it has with immigration - a massive swing against benefits.