Government scraps cap on care costs to help tackle spending ‘black hole’

[FiddlyDiddlyDee]

"The social care plan would have introduced an £86,000 cap on the amount an older or disabled person would have to pay towards their support at home or in care homes from next October.

After spending £86,000 on their care, people with a high level of need would have had their care costs paid for by local authorities."

My take on scrapping this is that it looks like another move that's punitive to the lower middle class. Many of the lower middle will burn through everything they've got in short order and leave nothing to their struggling children that need it.

Considering much of the west is facing economic challenges & shifting demographics I really don’t understand how taxing key workers hardly anything or nothing will fix things. You are clearly far more intelligent than me.

The cap was very unfair to people living in the north.
The average property price in the North East last year was £177k. So half the house price would be used to fund care.
The average property in the South East was £520k, so about 17% of the value of the property would be used to fund care.
I am really pleased that this policy has been scrapped.
People should fund their care to a percentage of their wealth. Then it would be fair throughout the country.

@Avabiscuits I said similar, the idea it was protecting the poorest is a nonsense.

Nope what they pay for care should be capped proportionately. I didn't actually propose this btw, you should read about who did, and the fact that Labour agreed with it.

Could have tried understanding what the thread was about before you came in here.

People with a high level of assets are almost always business owners. That’s how they create wealth. These businesses are generally pretty mobile. If they move elsewhere, so does their business (and the employment and taxes it creates).

you tube creators (being your example) generally would only very very rarely generate sufficient revenue to pay a wealth tax. But I suppose it’s a creative business and for those who are very successful they are paying a lot of tax. They generally employ others - camera men, guest bookers etc. It’s a very mobile business they could do from anywhere so rather than give 10% of their wealth every year to pay your care, they will likely go live elsewhere. But it’s very rare to make much from you tube

Why should people pay for care for wealthy people who can pay themselves?

Done with this bad faith debate. If you want to cite Chancellors as an authority may I point out to you that the care cap has only been rejected because the country is in a serious hole, not because any chancellor thinks they're a bad idea.

Could have tried understanding what the thread was about before you came in here.

I understood your OP but disagreed with it.

Your subsequent posting have been confusing.

The lower middle class aren't wealthy, they're struggling

@FiddlyDiddlyDee I never claimed chancellors are clever. I asked what countries operated the easy model you proposed. You didn’t answer that question though.

For me it is the fact that it's a complete lottery. I would be happy to pay towards my own care costs and other people's care costs, but I would like there to be a system where we can pay in more equally.

For health care we have the NHS which is funded equitably (ish) via taxation, and if there was no NHS then presumably we would have health insurance instead. I think we should have something similar for social care costs - so we all pay in (either via extra tax or a specific insurance or some other route), and it pays out as needed, same as for health care.

I want to avoid a situation where person A (from age 80-90) has various health issues all paid for via the NHS and dies in their own home having paid nothing, whereas person B (from age 80-90) is in a care home with dementia and has to pay £900k. Whether I end up being person A or B, I'd rather it was made fairer.

Bad faith argument.

I take that as no countries then.

if you can’t answer the question just say, no shame.

They have family here, and I would go over there and when they travel there already it is first or business class, usually on Emirates.

My children are thinking of moving over there and I would follow.

Ok, so basically if I ask you to pay a one off 200k tax and it costs you a few million to sell your home and move your business, you're going to move it?

Yes but this so called cap was never introduced by the Tories as it’s just not financially workable . This penalises the rich not the poor ( and I speak as someone whose mum has been in a care home neatly 6 years ) I’d rather know under the Labour govt that’s it’s never going to happen than the tantalising “ it could happen but just not yet” we’ve had for the last few years

I’m sure you would but it’s a complex matter and I have neither the time nor inclination. Look into it yourself.

i want a society where we take care of the most vulnerable with our collective resources. Not one where we pay to subsidize the relatively wealthy.

No that's clearly the answer. The question is why you were asking me for my input in the first place if you just wanted to point out everything is just fine and dandy in the western world and functioning well rather than think about how that would work.

Again bad faith. And you should probably get back to this hard work you're on about.

I have looked into it as have many economists, and it's fairly easy to raise a large amount of money from property taxes. That's political barrier and not an economic one.

@FiddlyDiddlyDee You talk about people who can't afford to pay for their own care as if they've ALL been "living recklessly", but many will have been the low paid key workers you were advocating for in a previous post, who were unable to.

I'm all for radical changes. For example, why do we subsidise businesses to pay low wages by providing a low-pay working benefit to the individual? This allows the companies to pay a low wage whilst turning a working individual into a "benefits claimant".

Instead, why not mandate the business to pay a proper wage then make the business claim the benefits - I'm sure society would take a much dimmer view of businesses claiming direct subsidies in this way, just to increase shareholders' profits.

But I haven’t claimed the western world is fine. You said we need to tax the wealthy and I asked how you would do it. I thought your answer was rubbish. That’s not bad faith 🙄

is anyone really surprised??

we discussed it here on many threads before election, that there will be "oh, it's much worse than we thought" soon after election and then horrific raid of middle classes

just wait for 30th October

I think a lot of people in their 50th will start retiring earlier - this will be no point in working more as everything you gain will be taken from you

Ok, bye then.

It doesn’t cost millions to move many businesses - certainly not you tube content! And yes of course - anyone would move their business if they were taxed 10% of assets a year.

Anyone I will leave you to it. Have a look into economics and tax revenues. The state pension alone costs over £100billion every single year. If you’ve chased away all the wealth creators, how you going to pay for that?

I'm all for radical changes. For example, why do we subsidise businesses to pay low wages by providing a low-pay working benefit to the individual? This allows the companies to pay a low wage whilst turning a working individual into a "benefits claimant".

Same with housing benefit to landlords.