Please explain to me like I’m a 5 year old. How do we fix the economy?

[bushproblems]

The job market is shocking, the minimum wage rise has not pushed up the salaries in the next bracket, food is so expensive and working hard no longer feels like it provides the rewards it used to.

Im earning more than I have in my life, but I feel poorer than I did 10 years ago when I was just above minimum wage.

I get that employers have more costs so the profits of a company won’t trickle down like it did, but what, or who, can fix this?

Im feeling very despondent about the future for me and for the younger people in my family

The government need to stop wasting vast quantities of money due to inefficiency and bureaucracy.

Defence procurement wastes billions just twatting about. They decided we needed new military helicopters, but arsed around for so long that they’ve blown at least £200 million on top of the initial proposed spend. They overspent by £2.5 billion on aircraft carriers and wasted £4 billion on a scrapped reconnaissance aircraft project.

The PPE scandal cost taxpayers over £700 million, which the government are just shrugging their shoulders over as it’s “unrecoverable”.

Taxing a few billionaires a bit extra is nothing in comparison to the amount the government piss away on a daily basis, and then they’ve got the nerve to blame the low-waged, the elderly and the disabled for the state of the economy.

I disagree. Has JKRowling or Mick Jagger or James Dyson generated 52 x more wealth than someone doing a NMW job. Yes they have, and then some. They are entitled to a significant share of the wealth they generated or why would they bother?

OK, but one driver of depressed wages in the UK is reducing wages disparities between the rich (UK) and poor (China etc.). How far does your commitment to fairness extend?

Wouldn’t it mainly encourage automation and outsourcing? Or professional types moving overseas to work instead?

I was with you all the way until your last para

part of the problem is a lot of voters have no in depth understanding and simply go by party colour or headline grabber. This very thread being case in point!

Instead of mandatory voting, only those who pass an intelligence and comprehension test should be allowed to vote, be they one of the "grey pound" or some spotty 18 year old.

If it was possible to answer that question for a 5 year old we wouldn’t be in this situation. It’s more complex than almost everyone on this thread assumes

The problem is that hands way too much power to whoever decides the intelligence /comprehension criteria for voting.

It also assumes that lower intelligence / comprehending people can leave their interests to their superiors to represent (or that their interests don’t matter).

But they often have very different lives and experiences and so policies affect them very differently. That has to be represented somehow.

I don’t think paying the rich less and the poor more automatically fixes anything.

A strong economy comes from rewarding productivity, skills and risk. Simply giving people more money because they are poor wont build long-term wealth or opportunity, and often just treats the symptom rather than the cause. What works better is investing in education, skills and making work pay, so people can genuinely move up rather than remain dependent on redistribution

Yes it’s naive views like that PP that has led to this mess.
Business that produce wealth and pay taxes are stimied at every turn. Tradespeople are burdened with ridiculous costs, and people so don’t want to pay VAT, so lose out on work to the cowboys.

If it were that simple OP, it’d be fixed by now. No government wants their country in this state.

My first and most serious point is to get politicians who want to fix it and will learn, working with experts and politicians across all parties.

As others have said, we need adult conversations across parties where they will agree that both sides will not point score over agreed changes to the NHS or pensions or taxes.

I agree with others that the NHS cannot and should not be fixing everything and that there should be easier options for semi private care. GPs should sell cheap drugs for things like paracetamol so that prescriptions are not needed and I personally agree with the pharmacists can do more approach. There has to be a lot the NHS could do better or not do at all. But we can’t afford to have people not working for years whilst they wait for operations.

I also believe that the government needs to work with companies to make it so that there are more part time jobs for people in all life stages and also better help to get people back into work. There are people out there that want to work but struggle to find jobs. There is no way that my large company would take on a disabled employee or any employee that couldn’t give 100% all the time. It would be hard to prove as it won’t be policy but I believe that a lot of companies are like this and I believe that if someone can work and wants to work with a disability then there should be a job for then.

Whilst we do need to cut waste, we also need to look at what we can encourage in this country and I would like to think tourism outside of London as one area we could focus on and sorting out empty properties so that they can be re used.

Cut pensions a bit, cut welfare a bit and put the money (plus other gov money) into sports stadiums for teens and mental health support for teens. Get teens to work or in army training just to get them fit and working as teams, then they go to look for a career.

Then when in 5 years we have a young fit workforce expand the economy (whatever that means) but people with poor health and mental health can’t contribute properly

I think it’s very complicated but I also think there are things governments don’t do for fear of the reaction at elections and being seen as the next Margaret Thatcher the milk snatcher.

I also think there needs to be a more willingness to work together for parties to make significant changes.

I would also increase the VAT limit of 75k on businesses and make it easier for people to set up businesses.

I think some education in secondary school on the basics of economics would help. People are willing to believe nonsense because it suits them and they don’t know any better. And then they vote for politicians who are either misguided or self serving.

Sort out the benefits system- like labour said they would then backed down. Stop paying people for anxiety etc. No benefit top ups for people choosing to work less that full time (unless they’re carers etc) There’s too much taking and not enough giving.

Pay proper wages… minimum wage keeps going up but the wages above don’t move, pretty soon minimum wage will catch up and devalue the levels above.

I think we've being disappearing down a black hole since the death of the empire. Exploitation, at homeand abroad, gave us vast riches to build all our infrastructure. Without it, we can't maintain it anymore. Bridges failing, potholes in all the roads,schools and hospitals crumbling and no way to pay for replacements. Our ancestors wrote cheques we can't cash.

That said, I think min wage rises have REALLY hurt us recently and only fed cost of living crisis - it would have been far better to make childcare realistic to help working age people, who are often parents, able to do their jobs without drowning! Keep things realistic for employing youngsters too by not putting min wage up.

I personally would happily pay more NI as long as it goes straight to NHS only - bang a tenner a quarter on, I dont care if it gets me a decent a&e wait time, a dentist, and better social/mental health care provision in the community.

I think we need to free up businesses to make money and encourage outside investment in forward thinking things.

I think this would partly involve supporting university research in specific areas and the associated business parks spin off businesses. This would mean letting people come to study here so we can be at the forefront of stuff. People that come study for a few years or do a PhD tend to spend a lot. I cant think why we capped them. They can then fund degrees for the brightest uk students on the areas we want to develop.

I dint think this is the whole solution, but i think its an achievable quick win.

I agree with this ⬆️

Broadly the conservatives are better at managing the economy it seems. You can’t keep spending what you don’t have

No. Austerity has caused an awful lot of the current problems, plus Brexit, plus corruption during covid.

Before that, privatisation as an ideology, with all its failed promises of improved public services.

And no, I'm not a lefty lifelong labour voter, I'm a floating voter.

The Tories need to own their errors.

It is a total myth that they manage the economy better.

The welfare bill HAS to come down, one way or another, and unfortunately, my opinion is that public pensions need to be looked at.

I know it doesn't really answer the question but there has been a lot of talk about The Great Wealth transfer which will happen when the boomers start dying off. This will see large sums of cash trickling down to millenials and even younger people. I appreciate that inheritance itself is something that so many people don't get which, I think, might make the rich/poor divide even greater. I think I read something recently that said something about how inheritance will really divide the younger generation (those that are kids now).

This.

Taxes are high as we are supporting employers to pay low wages.

AI is taking the jobs, people aren't being paid enough to survive and people who have been off work (having kids etc) can't break back in to the workplace because AI is gatekeeping jobs and, new research is suggesting, giving them to men over women.

People and companies are too reliant on AI and the internet for information - particularly when you consider how many bots are online making a mess of figures and being paid to "like" things. No one can be sure anything hasn't just been pushed to the top of a search bar because it has been paid for.

Stop over taxing businesses
Stop over taxing individuals
Reduce benefits and welfare
Make access to private health easier
Encourage enterprise through the tax system
Spend on education
Invest in infrastructure
Reverse Brexit as much as possible
Tackle waste and inefficiency
Introduce measures to drive up the birth rate.
Build more council houses.

Yes 100%. Don't companies like Amazon (amongst many others) pay their staff so little that employees have to claim Universal Credit top-ups. Absolutely disgusting.

Redistribute wealth before wealth I equality completely runs away and we all end up in squalid living conditions, universal basic income to address the impact of AI, invest in infrastructure, particularly green infrastructure.

Allow councils to take any care home back into state control if they fail in certain aspects of their care - its a drain on council tax payers being 78% of the core council spending.