In not having much sympathy with a couple on £45k plus per year having some benefits cut?

[ssd]

There is loads of this on the news just now about how "middle income" families will be having some child tax credits cut and might be paying more tax. They news are showing what to me looks like comfortable off families having to do with a bit less. Is this really so bad? I know an income of £45-£50k per year might not be much in central London but will keep you in style in parts of the north, but how bad will it be? So people might have to change jobs/give up the second car/holiday at home instead of Spain every year? SO WHAT? There are plenty of us living on less than £25k a year who have had to cut back since having kids and take this as a fact of life.

I know MN is made up of mostly middle earners and I'll get pelters for this, but I don't really care. Anyone I know on a middle income can afford to give up some things _ its called life.

I think people are fed up with all this talking about london prices-and i dont blame them tbh-because Londoners moan a lot, even so they have chosen to live here.

It is a big city and it is not just Fulham and Hamstead, they are cheaper areas too. If you compromise a bit you can find affortable accomodation.

Also, you save on commuting cost. You can even cycle to work, many of my friends do.

dh and I fully intend to pay back every single penny we owe. It will take us time.
I dont expect the government to be throwing money at us left right and centre, but was a bit shocked to know that dole only lasts for 6 months.

I agree with pickledonkeys really, wow I wish that i was rich with my dh on £40k. For starters I am a STAHM, mum wage as a community worker bearly covers the childcare, so it is better for us if I stay at home for the time being. My dh pays more tax on his earnings as a single earner, than a couple both on £20K. We dont have holidays, shop in Aldi and have to be tight with the old purstrings. Wish i could go shopping in Waitrose or M&S, some of you are so misunderstood. Oh and run one car which is over 6 years old.

dont forget the high Nat Ins contributions to that have to be payed, at the end of that does not leave us with a grand wage in which we can holiday in Keeenyah and sit in Starbucks drinking skinny lattes

But since when was not affording a holiday or running a newish car grounds for receiving benefits?

No gaelicsheep just dispeling the myth on here that people earning £40k is loaded, which we are not!

and deserve to pay lots of tax on earnings, the threshold should be much higher .

We all have to realise that cuts have to be made somewhere, and everyone recieving child benefit when some clearly do not need it is a bit . Like tax credit it should be means tested, the more you earn the less you get.

OldMacEiEio
"Uk military is smaller than that of Japan, and way smaller than that of Germany"

I was talking about after WW2 when the allies declared that Germany weren't allowed an army. As a direct result of this their economy grew to be the largest in Europe, leading people to question who really won the war.

Japan doesn't have a military. IT has a self-defence force. US forces are based in Japan, which is again a remnant of WW2. The might of the US military is enormous in Japan. The deal was (same as Germany) that although Japan is not allowed an army, the US is therefore obliged to protect it and gets a lot out of the deal by having an army bang in the middle of the south-pacific. Perhaps your sources are refering to American expendature on military?

Any more questions?

expenditure

OldMac,
I though your coments at me were unecessarily snide TBH. I do rant, but only about things I feel strongly about like feminism and socialism. I don't keep track of grudges from thread to thread, I don't suck up to people who agree with me, there are a worse things than having good old rant about politics.

Well I dont feel strongly about much, I dont know if that makes me lucky or unlucky, but
you are just dead wrong here.
The Japanese can call their military what they like, its still bigger than ours. In fact I cant think of many countries that dont call their forces defence. Its the ministry of defence here right. MOD.

I dont think we should disband our military, full stop

OldMac, the Japanese military (or whatever you want to call it) is basically the US military. The US has a huge base in Okinawa and is about to expand it even more. I just wonder whether the funding for this military base, which is a US base, has come up in the figures you sourced about how much is spent on Japanese military.

If not, then we have to eliminate this as a reason why Japan is able to return the taxes so fairly to its citizens while the UK is not able to do so.
I don't think it's No 1- because British are greedier.
It may be No 2- the expenditure on military

It's very likely to be No 3- education

"I dont think we should disband our military, full stop "

I'D say that was a pretty strong view.

Well, I have told you that you are wrong twice, so I wont bother again.
The reason why the economies in Germany and Japan took off after the war was down to two main factors.
#1 During the war their economies and industries were wrecked, and flattened by bombers. This gave them a unique chance to reinvent their structure and start from scratch. They could discard the useless and the inefficient processes and ideas.

#2 After the war, the west, in particular the USA , wanted to avoid the mistakes of versailles and so they invested mightlily across the war-ravaged countries (The Marshall Plan). Germany and Japan were the main recipients of this largesse.

These two factors, more than anything else, created the economic powerhouses that we saw after the war.

The German armies were reconstituted in the middle of the fifties, the Japanese two years after the war. Both are now much larger than the UK.

For your info, I am a trained historian and currently working as an academic researcher. I would probably be sacked if I even looked at Google

As to the efficiency of the redistribution of taxes - I have no idea

I'm not saying there weren't other contributing factors. But fair enough. I was taught (European Politics degree here) that not having to contribute to an army played a part in this growth. If it played no part, and my professor was wrong, then I admit it. In trying to understand why Britain has the social problems today that Japan does not have I made the mistake in thinking it was connected to military spending.

It begs the obvious question of where the is all the money going then?

"As to the efficiency of the redistribution of taxes - I have no idea "

I originally began talking about the military in reply to the person who asked me if I thought that had something to do with the fact that Japan has a very fair re-distribution of wealth compared to the UK. I thought it was connected, but obviously there are other factors here.

Do you think that cutting down on military spending would be useful? If they started putting that money into schools or housing for example?

I personally don't think any country should be without an army (unless there are reasons like there were for Germany & Japan) - the size of the army is a different matter and the format it takes (national service/professional)

If you were to cut down on education, you could spend more on health.

If you were to cut down on health, you could spend more on eductaion.

It's so obvious that it doesnt need saying. Yes if you were to cut down on the military, there would be more for eductaion and health and housing.

The two real questions (in my mind) are
#1 how far can we cut back on the military
#2 how can we make the cake bigger in the first place, so we dont have to cut back on anything

"It's so obvious that it doesnt need saying."

Not really.
I mentioned the military because I originally believed spending less on the military would result in more spending elsewhere. But clearly there is less spending on military in the UK and less spending on education and other social policies. Japan has been in recession for about 20 years so its not strong economicaly anymore, I think the UK is a bigger economic power. Japan still manages to create fluff jobs with its surplus, even though it spends more on its military.
So where is the money going?

OTOH Migg, how about if no country was allowed an army

Would be an interesting situation... you'd have to ensure your security in some other way but that is never going to happen is it?

True, only in my fantasy world

well now

are you talking about the state
or are you talking about the economy generally?

socialists often treat the two as if they are the same, (and I am not being insulting to you here)

if you are talking about the state, you can probably get the size of the cake and how it is divided up from the ONS, and I would guess that social security would account for anything up to 75% (I will check it out if you like)
With health and education taking the majority of whats left.

I doubt if the defence budget or foreign aid etc would be a bigger slice than the width of the line it takes to draw them

If you are talking about the wider economy, where does all the money go ? I dont know.

The real question would be, how much of it stays in this country , either as reinvestment, salaries, dividends or taxes

I am not an expert on economics

charts

check it out. looks like I overestimated the social security by a fair bit

for those who cant be arsed
welfare + health +education+pensions = 72% of state spending
defence about 6% (bigger than I had thought)