What other ways could Rachel Reeves have raised more money?

[Katypp]

As a former small business owner (thankfully former!), the additional costs would have crippled our company.
But according to some posters on MN, we should just have sucked them up from our profits and if we could not afford to do so, should not have been running a business in the first place. If only life were as simple as some (who clearly have never run a business) seem to think it is.

Anyway, I wondered if any other posters would like to contribute to a thread of suggestions of alternative ways money could have been raised. Specifics if possible, not general Tax The Rich type posts.

I'll go first ...

1. Restore employees' NI to the level it was before Jeremy Hunt tinkered with it last Budget. We've only had the uplift a few months so the pain would be minimal
2. Get rid of the pension triple lock and put pensioners on a level footing with other benefits increases.

I have seen you do this to other posters on other threads, attacking and baiting people who disagree with you rather than engaging in genuine discussion

You haven’t actually. I have no interest in engaging with someone so rude either.

No, not pretty at all. Breath holding moment to see what’s next before deciding if we will emigrant for good.

The unfunded public pension will default one day? All of these? Copied from website “The pensions of teachers, firefighters, NHS workers, the police and the armed forces all fall into this category.”

"Something" will happen one day when the can can't be kicked down the road any longer. That something may be effective bankruptcy of the UK, or asset grab of the rich, or hyper inflation, or the UK defaulting on our debts to other countries/lenders, or yes, widespread default of other obligations such as gold plated pensions.

Hopefully, we'll have some sensible politicians who don't let it get to that stage (I'm not too hopeful). There are ways to avoid such a financial catastrophe, such as inflating away our debts (what I believe is part of Labour's plan, but that causes inflation), or radical tax changes such as NIC on ALL income including pensions, or reduction/removal of pension tax free lump sums, additional taxes we've not even thought of yet, "divesting" public sector pension liabilities to the private sector where the buyers hope they can make money by people dying earlier than expected, privatisation/insurance-isation of the NHS, radical changes to elderly health and care, etc., widespread toll roads and selling them, etc., VAT on financial advice and medical treatments, etc., serious clampdowns on tax evasion, benefit fraud, money laundering, organised crime, etc. Lots of ways really, none of which will be popular, but one hell of a lot better than defaulting on our debts, hyper inflation or currency devaluation.

I was.

@taxguru unfortunately the strategy of inflating away the debts won't easy because an increasing proportion of Government debt is being issued in inflation-linked gilts. It seems investors have wised up to that risk!

Ostrich syndrome certainly won't fix any of it yet our politicians and much of the UK population still seem to be afflicted with it so, like you, I fear nothing will be done until the kinds of dire outcomes you set out occur, by which time it will be far too late so salvage the situation.

It's sad to see, like watching a car crash in slow motion and willing the driver to turn the wheel or press the brake pedal to no avail. All countries have their problems of course but refusing to take any action to resolve any of the major ones and pretending it'll all be fine seems to be a particularly British characteristic.

I thought the point is to levelling to non-disabled population rather than provide luxury. I don't think lots of working people would afford to taxi home. earplugs, headphones or sunglasses with your salary, have to be paid by tax payers money? really?

@NothingMatterss surely the point was that those are things that poster needs to manage their disability and still be able to do the things non-disabled people can do?

there has to be a limit.

Believe me, PIP doesn't come close to covering the extra costs of being disabled, for any of us. The existing limit is already overly onerous.

No sunglasses, no supermarket shopping. No sunglasses, no catching the train to work. These are normal everyday activities that my autism makes physically painful.

Taxis home are not needed often, but I couldn't risk going to work if they weren't available as a fallback option.

She could’ve hired Nigel Farage* out as a permanent coconut shy. £50 for 3 balls. They’d be queuing up.
Bottle tombola.
Guess the name of the warship
Water into wine stall
Reduced the subsidy on the Houses of Parliament bar.

*insert name of politician you dislike here.

Thanks for your explanations and sharing your experiences. Hope your employer can help to adjust working hours so you don’t have to face the rush hours etc. All the best.

@NothingMatterss I'm social minded but honestly I think the world's gone nuts. I had some very very crappy neurological things post covid for over a year but am fully aware I wouldn't get a penny, so yes I used sunglasses a lot, monumental amounts of vitamins , magnesium spray, heated eye mask etc - it wouldn't have occurred to see if I could claim-

I think it is not sustainable and everyone should start to pull the weight, disadvantaged or not, unfortunately struggling is part of regular life.

@NothingMatterss my26 years old son has medically adult diagnosed ADHD - but works full time in a responsible job, takes his meds, pays his rent, drives etc - I'm all for helping those who have serious disabling conditions but can't help but feel it's gone a bit too far in 'some' situations- see the thread today with the woman who wants to medically sign off work for 6 weeks because she's finding working 3 days a week and has kids a bit tough with not much help from partner. Sorry but that's normal life- there seems to be a total lack of resilience in some perfectly well people - if you want the income then you accept it can be like that and you catch up at weekends, get a cleaner in or insist your partner does more at weekends etc

My OH has treatable but incurable cancer so is basically on borrowed time, although currently living a "normal" life, going to work, hobbies, short break holidays, etc.

He's been offered all kinds of "freebies" from free hospital car park passes, blue badge, consultations with "advisers" about claiming carer's allowance, PIP, motability, etc., offer of some "disability" advisor from the council to provide us with disability aids at home, etc etc.

Thing is, he's neither asked for any of this, nor needs any of it. It's like a whole industry of its' own has sprung up. In fact when first diagnosed, his appointment with some kind of "benefits" advisor at the hospital came through before the date on which his first round of Chemo started!

Fair enough for people who actually need it, of course, the support should be there, but when you're bombarded with offers of freebies and advice/support that you've not asked for and don't need, it kinds of sticks in the throat a bit!

We've no doubt the time will come when we do need help and we do need things like car park passes and blue badges at the very least when mobility starts to become a problem, and there'll be a time when he has to give up work and go on disability benefits/claim carers allowance, etc., but it's not yet.

If only they were so quick and efficient when it comes to medical things, like dealing with his monthly battle to get his chemo drugs prescribed properly which they simply can't manage - they either get the wrong date, or issue the wrong drug dose, or lose the blood test results needed to authorise the prescription, or make an appointment to pick them up but don't bother telling him the time/date, etc! That's what causes us the most stress, not paying a couple of quid for the car park!

I work. That is how I pull my weight.

I'll get into bad trouble for being flippant but I don't have a 'problem' with gambling and I do like a little flutter so a national Guess The Name Of The Warship, tickets maximum spend £5, every Friday evening for one year, quite appeals to me.

During WW2. when the country was in the doodle-poo, there were some things called post-war credits. I don't know if it was a choice for people in the services or whether money was wrested from their pay, for the government of the day to use for a while and then pay back something later on. I knew adults who got the pay-out in the 1960s.

Two people with the same condition can be affected to different degrees though. Asthma can be a mild inconvenience or can mean going out in certain conditions can land you in hospital. Epilepsy can be managed and controlled or life threatening. Many health issues can vary like that from a mild inconvenience to completely debilitating depending on severity, so one person with a certain health problem may need PIP and another with the same condition may not.

If someone needs taxis etc funding so that they can go out, go to work and pay tax, and do the things everyone else can do then the benefit to them and everyone else outweighs the cost, aside from facilitating disabled people being able to participate in society being the right thing to do. The amount paid in PIP is meagre for all but the most serious and life-limiting conditions so I really can't see why people get so hung up on this when there are problems orders of magnitude more serious to fix in terms of economic impact.

If someone needs taxis etc funding so that they can go out, go to work and pay tax, and do the things everyone else can do then the benefit to them and everyone else outweighs the cost

This.

Disabled people are less likely to work and more likely to be impoverished than non-disabled people. Those of us who do work are less likely to be high earners, even if we are good at our jobs. Life costs us more and we earn less.

PIP, and a more work-focussed scheme called Access To Work, offset some of the extra costs we face. They don't compensate for the lower earnings. And for some of us, PIP makes work financially worth doing and ATW makes employing us affordable.

What I'm detecting here is people seeing that disabled people are being given a small amount of money and are jealous that they aren't getting that money too.

To which I say: would you like the daily pain and utter lack of social skills that goes with my autism? Would you like the sensory overloads in supermarkets, the panic attacks on crowded trains, and the endless rebukes at work because I failed to meet a social expectation that I didn't even know existed? Because you don't get that small amount of money without those things.