“Tax the wealthy” (RR budget) what does this even mean?

[gggddjkki]

I don’t remember anxiously waiting for budgets like we have the last few years earlier on in my adulthood. But when you read statements like this (as I have seen in the headlines today) what do you interpret it to mean? What does taxing the wealthy look like to you? Taxing higher earners more? From what point? Higher taxes on industry?

Thank you for replying, but you haven’t really answered my question. What would Reform improve and how?

I can see why some people are attracted to their rhetoric on immigration although much of that is also nonsense. But immigration is very far from the main issue facing our country.

This thread was focused on fiscal policy. How do you think Reform’s proposed policies will affect the national finances? Obviously we cannot judge manifestos that don’t exist yet, however, polls are showing a significant number of people - of which you say you are one - are stating current voting intentions that they would/ might vote for them which is presumably based on their current policy proposals are published on their website.

What is your view on the overall impact these policies would have if implemented, on livings standards, economic growth and public debt?

Spoken like a true Boomer. Are you one? Mysteriously - on the rare occasions when they do acknowledge that their benefits are unsustainable - they always advocate for everyone in the future to have their own pensions cut while theirs remain untouched and everyone else continues to pay for those, even for the wealthy retired people who have absolutely no need of state welfare.

Immigration is of huge importance to this country particularly with regard to jobs and Ai replacing many sectors. We need a very robust immigration policy which we can control without being restricted by conventions like the ECHR. Otherwise we will have too many workers for too few jobs and then logically a huge benefits bill. Reform talk tough on this but also Farage can be believed.

I like their chat on reform of Parliament. Go back to the pre Blair situation. He unbalanced something tbat worked for centuries. Get rid of as many quangos as possible. Put power back into the hands of the electorate. Cancel Net zero. Cancel DEI. Cancel HS2. Lower taxes on individuals and business. Get rid of business rates. Cancel these stupid APR/BPR reforms and VAT on education.

Some of Reform's economic policies like lifting the 2 child benefits cap are not something I agree with. As I said, I am a conservative. I would like a conservative government. But currently that's not looking likely.

That’s a bit unfair - pension entitlement is based on contributions. Contributions you can’t opt out of and invest the money elsewhere.

we have a social contract with the government and if they change things radically then all hell will break loose

State pension entitlement isn't based on contributions sadly. It's based on government policy. The government can't change the public sector pensions (as its a contractual obligation which I've been saying for months) but it can change the state pension.

I know it is a contractual obligation. That doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't effect some kind to move to a funded scheme. It is a bit of a leap to suggest that I want the public sector to collapse. Wanting value for money is not the same as wanting it to collapse. There is so much waste, and there have been so many poor decisions like selling off the family silver. Just screwing tax payers for more tax to pour into an inefficient black hole makes no sense. I am happy to pay tax to fund an efficient pubic sector just not public sector waste and inefficiency.

All these people who are so confident in the benefits of voting for reform are effectively voting for the death of the NHS, an end to flexible working and for capitalists to bleed this country dry. There are some things that central government should have responsibility for because in a global market place the free market cannot be be trusted to deliver them fairly.

It’s not based on the cash you put in but the number of years you pay in. If they were to legislate to means test and people who for 30 years budgeted for it in retirement suddenly didn’t get it there would be an outcry.

of course governments can change the law but they would never get that through either house

Sadly, that is not the case. It is and always has been a welfare benefit as set out in the National Insurance Act 1948 and entitlement criteria and amounts (or even its existence) are subject to change. There is no contract. If it’s not affordable, it’s not affordable. It was known for decades that it would become completely unaffordable in its current form due to demographic changes and nobody put any pressure on politicians to do anything about it so they are hardly in a position to complain if it is changed radically in a short space of time because that’s the only realistic option left now.

What you paid was tax. You had to pay it. That entitles you not to be in prison for tax evasion, not to welfare in perpetuity. I’m sure we’d all love the choice to opt out of tax and invest the money instead but I’m not sure how that’s relevant. Many receiving it made very little contribution and the majority did not pay a sufficient amount to fund it. It’s factually false to claim otherwise.

And that is why the country is in such a dire financial state. People don’t want to hear the truth, so all of the things that need to be changed that would actually make a difference are ignored - becoming increasingly expensive and requiring more radical measures to fix that people are even less inclined to vote for - as time goes on.

Boomer is such an derogatory term. And, no I was not born in what are considered the baby boom years.

So true. And even this government with a massive majority can't make proper change but instead buggers things up just for idealogical reasons..we probably need a good hard dose of dictatorship but (luckily I suppose) that's not going to happen either.

A benevolant dictator is probably not a bad shout. Given the dross that can be voted for at the moment.

The old you’re stupid and racist rhetoric is so 2015, but I do like it being stretched into a 10 point format. Nice touch.

Ok. But these policies won’t fix our economic decline, or even slow it down. Meanwhile the immigration policy that they’ve proposed (withdrawing any permanent residency rights without citizenship, even retrospectively) will be immensely economically harmful.

They’ve proposed multiple policies that don’t stand up to the slightest economic scrutiny, and with no practical way to implement them. Meanwhile they witter on about things like “DEI” which is a complete irrelevancy to the national budget. This is the sort of culture-war nonsense I was talking about earlier used to play to specific people’s belief systems rather than basing policy on economics and outcomes. Sadly the Conservatives have lost all economic sense and are mimicking them rather than returning to the centre ground. Perhaps even the last wipeout wasn’t enough to teach them a lesson.

Reform’s tax policies proposed to date will create a tax shortfall in tax revenues of £90bn and they have not proposed any spending cuts of this amount (in fact, their policies also involve a significant increased cost to the treasury on top of this), nor have they suggested any way to generate growth to fund this eye-watering amount.

Per my earlier posts I agree that a lot of tax changes need to happen to remove incentives to growth, including lowering the overall tax burden. These are not what Reform is proposing. Spending also needs to be reduced overall, but primarily redirected to productive areas. Guess what? Reform isn’t proposing that either.

It’s like the Liz Truss lettuce on steroids.

How do you think the bond markets would react to people with such a policy prospectus even being elected, before they even tried to implement them?

What do you think would happen next?

It’s the social contract - not an actual contract

m fully aware nic is just a tax but when you tell people they will be entitled to a pension if they pay that tax then they will expect one - now governments can tweak the age you can take it and the amount but if they wholesale removed it from certain people it would cause a loss of faith in that government.

I would much rather we had a system like Germany where you pay in and get back on that basis for pension, unemployment benefit etc.

government's over the last 40 years spend everything they get in (and more) and then are surprised they can’t pay what they’ve promised too in the future

Nope. You didn’t bother to read it, did you?

I specifically stated that there were many reasons people might be considering voting for them, and that not all would apply to all, of course. Clearly the racists had to be mentioned because we know they’re part of the picture. They weren’t mentioned until point 8 though, were they? Meanwhile I stated various other reasons such as: being wealthy people who will benefit immensely from their policies (like Reform’s financial backers); (understandable) desperation with the trajectory of UK living standards; a misguided belief that “things can’t get worse”; a lack of economic education in schools; misinformation being targeted via social media; some people living in areas highly impacted by rehousing of asylum seekers and therefore this being the key issue for them despite country-wide and in terms of national budget the impact being minuscule…. Etc.

Hope the shorter summary helps you. Stop trying to misrepresent other’s people’s comments due to your own laziness to read them. Or if you did, then your response falls clearly into the latter part of point 6) in my list: falling for “divide and rule” tactics and treating everyone who says anything you disagree with as “the enemy”. It’s boring, and it isn’t remotely constructive.

If you think anything remains of any notional social contract then you haven’t been paying attention for the last two decades. Young people have been completely impoverished in comparison to the living standards that their parents could achieve with the same level of education/ the same occupations. They have had no real-terms salary growth whatsoever, pretty much, for nearly 20 years.

What are the retirees doing to fulfil their obligations to young people under this “social contract”? What did they do to ensure they left a better situation for their children and grandchildren, with the demographic impact that their own cohort would have being entirely foreseen decades in advance?

The ship you are hoping to board has long sailed, I’m afraid.

Yes I read it, it was 10 different variations of saying stupid and racist.

Who knows what will happen in the future but under pensions on the HMRC app it shows how many years you have contributed and your projected state pension. If there is no correlation, why do they do this? Also Martin Lewis is advocating buying missing years to get a full state pension. Again, why do that if it isn't a thing?

Any changes would need to be introduced gradually.

The comment wasn’t directed at you! It was sent to Fraudornot because their comment exemplified the entitlement of that generation. Not all of them, or course, but a significant proportion of them don’t care if the country goes to hell in a handcart, only about what they can extract for themselves.

You can give your opinion as to whether you personally see their policies as good or bad of course. But (politely) I didn't really ask you and I of course disagree with you. And I'm the one thinking of voting Reform not you presumambly? Labour policies have been far worse and more destructive than Truss's. She was on the right track but messed up because she didn't cut spending.

Unfortunately the APR regs are probably irreversible. Because of the bond market. One example of the law of unintended consequences. And an example of how utterly appalling this government is.

As I said, I'm voting and I'm not voting for a left wing party. So it's conservative or reform. Sometimes in life you've just got to chose.

Because those are the current entitlement criteria. It also specifically states that they are subject to change, as has always been the case. There are also a large number of exemptions where people on benefits or who have been stay at home parents or for other reasons receive “credits” as though they had contributed in years where they have paid nothing in at all, sometimes for decades. It’s simply not the case that it is “contribution-based” in any meaningful sense, and even less so now that what is paid out is paid at a flat rate and not remotely related to the amount contributed (like state pensions in most other countries).

Absolute bullshit. For years we have had people vote for a party on the basis on that is what their parents did before them. People are seeing that there are now more credible options than the career politicians who fill the Labour and Tory Parties.

Well for a start they are talking about raising the age you get a pension. There's no actual pot of money with your name on so we really are at the mercy of government policy. And obviously government finances. As if we are bust the state pension will be the first to go. (Unlike the pension of the blessed public sector. Ive seen what benefits a doctor gets for example. Eye watering).

I wasn’t talking about my personal opinions. I was talking about the economic impact of their stated policies.

This thread is about the impact of fiscal decisions. Those that Reeves is making are causing a doom loop. Those that the Conservatives made were also very unwise and caused stagnation, and then self-inflicted economic harm. Those that Reform are proposing would be catastrophic. Independent economic analysis of their stated policies and the impact these would have if implemented - by various reputable and independent organisations - has shown this to be the case. Not one credible economist has anything positive to say about their proposed policies, understandably. It’s not like you need to perform a detailed economic forecast to see that they don’t add up, you simply need to read them.

So my question was how is voting for them going to improve any of the issues which are making people unhappy with Reeves? What do you foresee being the effect on the economy of them implementing these policies?