How would you cut spending?

[ninna]

In view of the huge amount of money we have to borrow every month, I would presume that most people would agree that we need to make savings? If you don't agree, it would be interesting to hear why. If you do agree, how do you think we ought to do it?

Yes I see what you mean

Does seem off when you think that a good proportion probably read posts about cutting benefits / public sector jobs etc in fear of their own livelihoods when there's mega rich people whose actions were directyly involved in all this no doubt sat at home drinking wine looking forards to jetting off to wherever for the bank hols

Why start with those abrely able to get by when those who helped cause it are laughing all the way to the bank? Partly of course because a good way to deflect from your own cuplability if you are powerful is to engender in fighting with constant talk of waste in public services (focussing very much on the middle manager not the nurse obv) or cheating benefit claimants (and tehre obviously IS and not CA....)

Sometimes I think, as a nation, We Have Been Had

Yup, we have. While the likes of Goldman Sachs are laughing all the way to their banks...

Yes I saw that Edam, bastards

I'd certainly cut this sort of stupidity out to start with;

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268565/Miliband-wastes-80-000-changing-official-font-Foreign-Offic e-logo.html

Thats without the cost of all the new stationary ! Come on Banana boy what were you thinking?

'rather than focusing on the guys who stole all our money.'

One of those was Gordon Brown, who, almost as soon as he became Chancellor starting taxing pension fund income. My retirement fund has never recovered from this: I simply can't make up the difference because I haven't been earning enough. This makes me far crosser than anything the fat cats did.

That's a shame Abride: my aprents ahve both lost teir pensions (NOT therough the4 BG thing) and its a real sahme for them, for 50 yaers work dad has a pay off of £2k to show for it

ATM though L:abour look fairly redundant: therefore its what happens when we get either T, LD or Hung Parliament isn't it?

cut public sector pensions. cut the overall number of public sector workers - government is far too big and the economy is far too reliant on public spending for GDP.

cut jobless benefits and disability so that it is in people's interests to work.

Cut taxes to encourage more private sector investment in jobs.

i reckon the public sector has stolen far more of my money than any bankers. Most predictions point to the government doubling its investment on Lloyds and RBS - not a bad bailout decision then.

How much pain has the public sector felt from the downturn anyway? Few jobs were cut.

I'm in the private sector and haven't had a pay rise for 2.5 years.

If it's harder for me to borrow money, that's a good problem because making credit too freely available was the main cause of the banking failure.

This country would be far better off to make it harder to buy houses and stop inflating the ongoing housing bubble that has created false wealth for only those who can "afford" it. (having made their money in the vast ponzi scheme that is the UK housing market)

Every job lost costs the economy money, whether that job is public or private sector. If we slash public sector jobs, we lose the taxes those employees would have paid and lose other jobs that depend on the first lot - many private sector jobs depend on the public. Show me a firm of accountants or lawyers, for instance, that never does any public sector work. Show me the sandwich bar that has NO public sector workers popping in at lunchtime. Show me the newsagents that relies entirely on private sector clients.

Don't fall for this distraction technique of venting your ire on your fellow victims instead of where it truly belongs - with the men (and it is largely men, as it happens) who caused this crisis with their stupidity and greed.

Btw, Gordon Brown and the pensions thing - I'm sure I've read somewhere else that the Tories started it and he just extended the policy to some degree. That's about the limit of my knowledge though, would be interested to learn more.

What I do know, having been there at the time, is that in the 90s many firms claimed they had too much money in their pension funds and took a 'holiday' ie the firm stopped making any contributions. Strangely never gets mentioned in any news coverage of the pensions crisis.

(I've never worked in the public sector myself, btw, so am not biased on this one.)

My aprents weren't GB- basically the companies Dad worked for (it happned twice, how bad is that?) were sold to Amwerica and in America pension funds are ytreated as assets; to be liquidised and used in an asbestos claim in one case it seems. Dad was just unlucky I guess (though hje has still been called names for claiming HB- I mean, you work all your life, you save every penny you can (it was enough to but them a bungalow and then keep them) and you lose it- wtf should you do ffs?

Agree with you about public sector Edam; no doubtt there are jobs that can be spared and they must go as a private company does, but we mustn't think that a £50k management job = a £50k saved: as well as the costs of lost taxes and very likely benefits to that person, thewre is as you say a cost to the larger economy.

(I don't work in tyhe sector btw!)

We could, however, cut fat salaries and bonuses for senior managers in the public sector - today's Observer covers some stats the Lib Dems got from FOI requests showing NHS managers earning bonuses of tens of thousands of pounds. You should do your job well to justify your salary, not get a flaming bonus on top! (Especially as in some of these cases they didn't actually do their job well anyway.)

It's not as if all PS workers get them either; the ones that could really do with the wages don't for sure!. In 1995 I temped for VAT and the princely salsaru was pushed up to £6,800 during my 18m there.

''m sure I've read somewhere else that the Tories started it and he just extended the policy to some degree. That's about the limit of my knowledge though, would be interested to learn more.'

What Gordon Brown did

Though I should add that I agree that fat salaries and bonuses in the City make me .

Right, so what I get from that link is that he taxed dividends paid into pension funds... what does that mean, exactly? Presumably these are dividends from shares held by pension funds? Which were previously paid tax free?

Article I read before (and only vaguely recall) said this built on something the Tories did - any idea what?

I find the public service pay freezes quite odd. Not the general principle, but that it is a blanket freeze with no regard for the skills shortage that it coul;d produce.

In the 70s (if your memories go back then) public services pay was frozen. I was just a little kid then, but my Dad was affected and as a university scientist he almost signed us up to move to Australia. It was family that kept us in this country, but as a skilled man my Dad was able to get more pay and better facilities abroad. It was known as the brain-drain and lots of skilled people took part in it during the 70s. The major political parties seem to have ignored this.

A surgeon will have skills that will be in demand in another country or in the private sector in this country. In fact I think that Cameron is relying on the latter. Since the "Big Society" is about privatising NHS services Cameron needs there to be a lot more skilled people in the private sector. The way to ddo that is to make it intolerable for people to stay in the NHS. Imagine this. You are a NHS consultant and you are told that your pay will be frozen. Then the local private hospital says that it intends to apply for an invitation to take over the service that you supply in the NHS hospital, and the private hospital does not have a limit on pay. What would you do? Stay and suffer a pay freeze, or even lose your job? Or jump ship? The pay freeze will lead to skills shortages in the NHS and so as a consequence services will be handed to private companies.

Cameron is cunning, isn't he? Actually, a much fairer way to do the same thing is to raise the higher rate of tax, then skilled people in the NHS and private healthcare will see the same effect on their pay, and the country will benefit.

@abride I am afraid you are focussing on the wrong person.

My neighbour is 86. Her husband worked for Jaguar for all his working life. He did the right thing and paid his pension contribution every week. Then when Jaguar was sold off and passed from pillar to post as it changed hands several times somewhere along the way the pension fund disappeared.

You see the reforms in the 80s made pension funds "assets" and foreign companies found that it was worth their while to buy up a UK company, remove the pension fund and then close the company. My neighbour gets a couple of quid a week from her late husband's Jaguar pension, it is nowhere near what he should have been entitled to, but that is all that is left in the fund. It is a scandal that such a thing could happen.

As DH was self employed and I worked mainly in the voluntary sector we had no works pensions to look forward to and so we both took out small private pensions. The pension 'pot' grew well in the early years but after Gordon's raid on the pension funds hardly grew at all. Then share prices fell drastically and when it was time to cash in our pensions and buy annuities we only got about a third of what we had expected. My state (old age) pension is roughly double my private pension and of course the private pension will never rise.

To add insult to injury, Gordon then removed the 10% tax band, which we were within, and thereby doubled our tax bills at a stroke.

You are talking about company pensions, richardblogger.

Those (very many) of us who are self-employed or worked in the voluntary sector have always had to have fund our own private pensions,as Granny23 describes. Edam, what it meant was that every time a dividend was paid into my pension pot it was taxed. I was doing my bit to ensure financial independence in retirement (and it really was a struggle to pay in the monthly premiums) but I felt that my self-reliance was punished. This was new--it hadn't been done before.

Surely the tax system should reward people saving?

the PPF is in place now to guard against pension asset stripping by foreign buyers. There has been a similar agency in the US since 1974 that makes it very unlikely to lose your entire pension, though some of it can be lost.

re: rewarding saving - Labour is phasing out tax relief on pension savings for higher earners. Why?

why cut spending? Why not increase taxes and then invest in longer term solutions. If you build a new materity ward, don't close the hospital down the follow year ffs. - and similar stories.

Engage with community lay experts. If you have a child with a disability, get in the parents to deliver training. Get in recovered alcoholics/drug addicts etc to provide services to those that need it, as they will have a natural motivation to support.

Invest in prevention rather than firefighting with disabilities, crime, drug abuse etc etc.

Rehaul the whole public sector employment law to make it possible for agencies to get rid of inefficiencies and dead wood. Give Local Authorities output targets rather than input and rate them on their productivity rather than no. of meetings.

"Get in recovered alcoholics/drug addicts etc to provide services to those that need it, as they will have a natural motivation to support."

Sounds fine, but a moment's consideration leads to the realisation that for most recovering addicts constant contact with alcoholics/drug users, combined with on-going involvement in and thinking about the issue is counter productive to their own recovery.

Based on long experience in the Voluntary sector, I would agree that carers and people with disabilities have a valuable, indeed essential, contribution to make to groups/services for those with a similar disability. However, I have seen at first hand, the dangers of a self-help group for those with Mental Health issues, particularly depression, no matter how well intentioned. Such groups NEED well qualified professionals who are not depressed to keep the group upbeat, rather than wallowing endlessly in their collective misery.

Some 'obvious' solutions do not bear closer scrutiny.