If Labour raises taxes what will you think?

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Typing on my phone so not sure I can do a poll? But, if the government raises income tax or NI at the budget, will you think:

A - let’s get real, they had no other choice
B - those duplicitous / inept bastards

But increasing taxes eventually leads to lower tax returns.

I agree with this. We need less bloody flip flopping about 🐟

But to caveat that I understand why they feel that it is the only option left as they have to raise money fast. They tried to reduce benefits.

My proposals wouldn't get me elected so it comes back to the electorate not wanting to acknowledge the reality.

After 14 years of Tory underinvestment, our infrastructure is falling apart. More borrowing is not the solution, so increasing taxes is the only sensible course of action.

Also the Tories increased taxes and no improvement to growth.

Reform social care for young and old. Sounds harsh but like to see a lot more pragmatism in the NHS. So much time and money is spent on very elderly people with poor quality of life. I had an aunt who had a terrible last couple of years after they amputated her leg. It did save her life but it was pretty awful and in hindsight it’d of been kinder just to let her go.

So let’s just kill off the elderly because they cost too much?

Better then killing off the young surely from
an economic pov?

All of those cost more than we are putting in at the moment so will require tax rises.

If we take that approach, why stop at the elderly? Why not disabled, low IQ., anyone with a long term illness, those on long term benefits. Unemployed for more that a year? Sorry it is the chop for you! The Nazis would have approved.

Eventually. But IIRC they have done research into what the level is that that happens and the U.K. is still below that.

@RoostingHens we don't have to go that far. Just rebalance towards the young somewhat and start investing in them and we may generate some growth finally to support the state.

It's crazy how people are so comfortable with the damage we have done to children and young people.

"The latest government statistics show that 4.5 million children were in poverty in the year leading up to April 2024. This is a new record high, and a 100,000 increase from the previous yea"

"In the decade leading up to the pandemic, improvements in life expectancy stalled, and healthy life expectancy stalled or worsened"

But that pension age up though to protect the triple lock for today's pensioners.

But what is to stop us once we accept the principle that it is reasonable to kill off economically inactive elderly?

Who said it was reasonable?

Logically from an economic perspective with dwindling resources you need to prioritise the young.

It would be great if we could live in a world where an elderly person could receive all the free medical treatment under the sun. But we don't live in that world & I don't agree that more children should be pushed into poverty to afford it. You can disagree though.

The NHS exists because of the money paid in by those pensioners. Logically, why should anyone pay for it at all if it is not provided at the point of need?

The NHS exists because of the money paid in by those pensioners.

😆😆

And this is why we are in the situation we are in, as I said so many just don't want to acknowledge the realities of our economic constraints or even understand how the models actually work.

Where do you think the money came from then if not NI and tax on businesses run by people who are now retired? It didn’t appear out of nowhere with all its assets ten years ago.

They don’t need to raise taxes, just extend the fiscal drag and cancel triple lock. Plus more stringent requirements for benefits.

The triple lock is completely unsustainable, that has to be number 1 priority to go. If the elderly value free healthcare they should welcome that.

End triple lock.I am on board with this.

I would pay a little more tax but I object when there is so much profligacy and waste.

Paying councillors pensions: absolutely NOT!!! In fact get councils back to the basics of drains and street lamps. New central dept. to deal with adult social care, SEN etc.
NHS - absolute fundamental reform. Strip out all the HR stuff save for recruitment and traditional “personnel” functions. Birmingham Health Trust recently advertised for Diversity Officer on £86k. How dare you f**ing spend my money on this!
I could go on but I’d fill up the entire internet…

Nye Bevin garnered suppprt for the NHS by promising it would support people from the cradle to the grave. That promise has yet to be reversed.

If I were to be diagnosed with stage 3/4 cancer aged 85, would I elect for radical treatment if my quality of life was already declining? Probably not. At 75 I'd be more likely to.

My mother is 89 and still paying tax. A couple of years ago she had a TAVI to treat severe aortic stenosis (replacement of a heart valve by catheter). She had no co-morbidities, has a younger husband and an active social life. Are you suggesting that if her heart fails or she develops a serious life limiting cancer, that she shpukd be denied palliative care, given with kindness to alleviate pain and provide comfort. Would you like to see the nation's elderly dying in agony in the back bedroom with a daughter giving up work to clean them, feed them, change the soiled bedding daily? Or perhaps they could go to the workgouse to die as they did up to the 1920s?

FYI in the late 90s, when my DC were toddlers and suffered multiple ear infections, the NHS declined grommets because theor speech was developed. In 2000 when my father was diagnosed with AML at 71, the most optimal treatment and one that gave him an additional six months of quality of life was not available on the NHS. In both cases we paid.

Thank you for sharing your view that older people who have paid tax all their lives, including after the age of 65, shoukd be consigned to the scrapheap because you think only young people should be prioritised.

Clearly you have never been bereaved or have loved. God help your parents.

Wow. I go offline for a few hours and mumsnet has turned into a weird version of the hunger games. I see the op hasn't returned, just plopped and run 😂

I would not hold either of those countries up as a model of what we want to achieve. There is a a reason that many Luxembourg employees live across the border. As for Dubai...

I said we need to bring rents under control, which we do, not bring in a Scottish rent control system. We need more development on suitable brownfield sites not greenfield or grey (greenfield through the back door) sites. We should actively be trying take back control of our natural resources and natural monopolies as well. Private companies, especially investor / investment backed ones are generally about pure profit that often doesn't play well with social enterprise. Look at the way developers are planning to implement the governments building plan, thousands of homes on reclassified sites, little to no infrastructure, all crammed in like matchboxes. As for the affordable homes - look at what price they are considering as affordable and then look at how many actually get built. Surprise, surprise the number sometimes goes down once the plan has been passed. Don't get me started on HMOs.

Taxing welfare seems to be a particularly odd suggestion. It costs money to assess the amount of benefits someone is entitled to. It costs money to assess the amount of tax someone ought to pay. So your idea of a cost-saving exercise is to add an extra layer of bureaucracy and cost to the process?

Councils deal with a lot more than street lamps! But not necessarily drains. Education (not just SEN), Planning, Licensing, Environmental Health, maintaining roads, parks and other open spaces, refuse collection and disposal, Culture and Heritage e.g. museums, Social housing...

I completely agree that Social Care should be centrally funded though. Trying to fund it locally via Council Tax and Business Rates etc. simply hasn't worked.