Also, the pensioners who have a million quid in assets are probably the ones who paid in more in tax than they received in upkeep from the state across their working lives
To get back more than you pay in you have to seriously **** up and spend most of your life in prison. 🙂
Only a tiny part of the tax you ever pay is ever going to come back in "upkeep".
This is, by the way, completely wrong. 20%-40% of households in the UK get more from the state than they pay in (depending on how you treat pensioners). But obviously in a progressive/redistributive tax and benefits system you have to have some people that "get out" more than they pay in - otherwise there would be no point in having it!
It also depends on how you calculate "benefits" of the tax system, people who profit from assets receive benefits from law and order, government infrastructure, the education and welfare of their employees beyond the "take" they receive in their personal lives. As an employee you can probably draw a more direct line between what you give and take, as a asset owner you also take a percentage of the advantage of those you stand on the shoulders of to lift your wealth higher.
people who profit from assets receive benefits from law and order, government infrastructure, the education and welfare of their [peers] beyond the "take" they receive in their personal lives
So do everyone else. 🤷
Right now Badenoch making the case for hard-right policies is simply helping Reform because she is doing their work for them.
Which is why she, and the Tories under her so-called leadership are an irrelevance unless they merge with Reform.
I don't give a toss what she thinks.
I am still interested in why a Labour government, hand-wringing over cutting benefits to save £5bn in five years time won't even acknowledge the extra £100bn per year GDP we could have pretty much overnight from (re)joining the Single Market and Customs Union, though.
I guess it must be a priorities thing.
So do everyone else
But not an equal share. Some get a far greater benefit than others
But obviously in a progressive/redistributive tax and benefits system you have to have some people that "get out" more than they pay in - otherwise there would be no point in having it!
That's why we run deficits. There has to be net government money in the economy. (which drives GDP.)
This is what the Labour lot don't understand.
The tax system is there to help with the distribution of that.
Paying for stuff is not an issue - government money is meant to prop up the stuff that doesn't work so well and be the back-stop (based on outcomes defined by policy and resources.) The private sector is designed to take over once the state has done its job.
Where it's delusionary - is expecting the private sector to fill in the gaps as the state shrinks. That just simply leaves people in a mess.
It really isn't a complex system if we can decide on good outcomes - the money is there - you just need a party to get their head around it and stop pandering to The Daily Mail way of thinking.
As always, and explained in the Spirit Level - lift the bottom up and the rest gets better.
I am still interested in why a Labour government, hand-wringing over cutting benefits to save £5bn in five years time won't even acknowledge the extra £100bn per year GDP we could have pretty much overnight from (re)joining the Single Market and Customs Union, though.
Worse than that they don't get pounds from another source. Only the UK government can create pounds.
So when you export you give away real resources for pounds - which is something the UK government can supply whenever it wants.
As said many times -most economic thinking is back to front.
Look at Trump - he's likely using up US resources now to get dollars back via exports. It makes no sense. You may as well use imports and resources from other places if you want to optimise what you have - and in his case everyone wants the dollar!
I am still interested in why a Labour government, hand-wringing over cutting benefits to save £5bn in five years time won't even acknowledge the extra £100bn per year GDP we could have pretty much overnight from (re)joining the Single Market and Customs Union, though.
Worse than that they don't get pounds from another source. Only the UK government can create pounds.
So when you export you give away real resources for pounds - which is something the UK government can supply whenever it wants.
As said many times -most economic thinking is back to front.
Look at Trump - he's likely using up US resources now to get dollars back via exports. It makes no sense. You may as well use imports and resources from other places if you want to optimise what you have - and in his case everyone wants the dollar!
It really is time to acknowledge Tax and Spend doesn't work as an accurate description of finances and just as importantly no party actually wants to tax the correct group of people anyway. There is no appetite for big taxation where it counts.
So austerity is all we are going to get because of this unless someone is prepared to run a bigger deficit - and that's taken of with Fiscal rules.
It's totally Thatcherite and self-imposed.
You didn't have to be an expert - even a couple of years ago, to realise growth wasn't going to come to allegedly pay for the state. Many of us said as much. The record was there.
SPEND FIRST - FIX STUFF - GROWTH - TAX is the correct process.
Spending plans have been increased by twice as much as planned tax increases. Most spending increases are also front loaded (spend it soon), while much of the tax increase is about future tax take (inheritance tax changes for example).
So do everyone else. 🤷
You really need to try reading and thinking a bit more.
I see some of the centrists have now started to realise what a sham this "labour" government is, just the right wingers still trying to obfuscate and justify their hard right stance.
Even the new right wing German government have realised they need a big spend into the economy, 500 billion more for infrastructure and defence, including an additional 100 billion for renewable energy, while the austerity dogma obsessed UK government are raiding disability benefits and downgraded their renewable energy commitment from 28 billion to what do we have now 5 or 3 billion, and that will probably evaporate soon as the tempretures rise.
Right now Badenoch making the case for hard-right policies is simply helping Reform because she is doing their work for them.
Which is why she, and the Tories under her so-called leadership are an irrelevance unless they merge with Reform.
I don't give a toss what she thinks.
It would be remarkably stupid if Reform were to accept a merger with the Tories. Currently Reform's main selling point is that they are not one of the three established parties, they particularly attract disaffected Tory voters. A merger with the Tories would instantly undermine that main selling point.
Reform would be very daft to accept a merger which they don't need and would likely damage them especially as they currently have a reasonable chance of emerging as the largest party after the next general election.
Well that means Badenoch is even more of an irrelevance, then.
🙂
The whole Tory Party is currently irrelevant, not just Badenoch. Starmer has taken over the part of the political spectrum which the Tories have traditionally occupied and the Tories moving further right, as they are attempting to do, won't help them because that position is now occupied very effectively by Reform.
Which is why I suggested that their only realistic option to deal with the existential threat they are facing is to move very slightly to the left of the Labour Party, that part of the UK political spectrum is currently underoccupied, unlike the overcrowded right of the spectrum.
And moving very slightly to the left of Starmer's Labour wouldn't be such a big deal for the Tories imo, it would still put them mostly to the right of Thatcher.
And moving very slightly to the left of Starmer's Labour wouldn't be such a big deal for the Tories imo, it would still put them mostly to the right of Thatcher
In terms of direct financial support Tories have offered more up than Starmer - in previous months.
(That said Tories put way too much emphasis on tax cuts being the golden nugget.)
Fiscally left would be the king-maker. Just don't call it left-wing or centrist's would shit themselves more about the the government doing its job properly.
What a bizarre world.
Of course, if you want to pursue the line that benefits claimants shouldn't live in expensive towns and balanced communities don't matter, then presumably you'd also be in favour of stopping Housing Benefit in those same markets?
You can do beter than provocative putting-words-in-people's-mouths whatabouterry, politecameraaction. 🙂
No I wouldn't stop benefits in those areas. Many people on benefits work and contribute to those areas and wouldn't be able to without benefits. In fact didn't mention housing benefits at all but as you have... I was talking about tax.
You used the word "upkeep" which I put in quotes because it has a specific meaning - cost of maintaining, in this case what it costs to keep pensioners alive - their pensions and benefits.
Your net-takers link completely ignores the value added to society by the poorest 20% through their work which appears in products and services they make/provide and the profits of the companies that employ them. Goods, services and profits that will be taxed - this contribution to tax isn't included in the ONS analysis.
On a personal level what is the tax value to my country of being one of the people that enabled a company to prosper in an market against strong international competition rather than get shut down? More than the people involved will ever receive in benefits even if they live to be a thousand - even the poorest of those involved.
A junkie single-parent-mother's son who was raised in care went on to become a unicorn billionaire contributing significantly to the county's wealth- I think regarding that mother as a taker would be a tad unfair.
We're all in this together with the vast majority contributing positively one way or another
Binners........ where are you?!?!?
It's been two days since you said :
"I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen what it is they’re actually proposing"
You had so much to say on Monday but since then absolutely nothing! The suspense is killing me, so come on, what's your judgement?
Or are you still busy trying to work out how to blame Jeremy Corbyn?
Probably trying to find an image of Corbyn on a donkey holding a Life of Brian poster.
Of course, if you want to pursue the line that benefits claimants shouldn't live in expensive towns and balanced communities don't matter, then presumably you'd also be in favour of stopping Housing Benefit in those same markets?
Your net-takers link completely ignores the value added to society by the poorest 20% through their work which appears in products and services they make/provide and the profits of the companies that employ them.
yes, it does, because it's looking at whether households are net beneficiaries of the state or net contributors to the state. Also, the weather forecast doesn't tell you the football scores.
You're off on some moral intangible value point because you're obfuscating that some households get out more in benefits than they do in tax. Of course they do. That's the whole point of a welfare state. If everybody contributed more than they received, benefits would be redundant.
Or are you still busy trying to work out how to blame Jeremy Corbyn?
Toynbee is reduced to exhortations about keeping the faith, so maybe Binners is trying to find someone new to do his thinking.
yes, it does, because it's looking at whether households are net beneficiaries of the state or net contributors to the state. Also, the weather forecast doesn't tell you the football scores.
Running deficits for more or less 50 years tells you everyone is a net beneficiary of the state. Unless you want to opt out of using schools, roads, amenities, health, policing and infrastructure etc or perhaps live in Dubai?
yes, it does, because it's looking at whether households are net beneficiaries of the state or net contributors to the state. Also, the weather forecast doesn't tell you the football scores.
Running deficits for more or less 50 years tells you everyone is a net beneficiary of the state. Unless you want to opt out of using schools, roads, amenities, health, policing and infrastructure etc or perhaps live in Dubai?
Labour have lost Supertanskiii - just James O'Brien, Ian Dunt, Otto English and there will be no client 'journalists' left for them. (Maybe our Polly will still be sipping from Starmer's glass.)
Best do whatever every other Centrist does in times like this just talk about how awful everything is in America currently.
Labour have lost Supertanskiii - just James O'Brien, Ian Dunt, Otto English and there will be no client 'journalists' left for them. (Maybe our Polly will still be sipping from Starmer's glass.)
Best do whatever every other Centrist does in times like this just talk about how awful everything is in America currently.
last time I noticed Dunt seemed pretty down in the dunts about everything starmer is doing.
James O'Brien
I used to like to listen to JoB but recenty he's taken to dissing Sangita Myska, talking of antisemitic conspiracy theories, so I don't bother to click on him any more.
James O'Brien
I used to like to listen to JoB but recenty he's taken to dissing Sangita Myska, talking of antisemitic conspiracy theories, so I don't bother to click on him any more.
He started again with that crap last week, saying the commotion/talk regarding her very sudden dismissal after her combative interview with Avi Hyman, Israeli spokesperson was leading to antisemitic slurs and it was all her fault for not publicly stating why she left LBC. He also made a sly/weasly comment regarding viewing figures and hinted this was why, but this is utter bollocks as the listening/viewing figures for her show were on a continuing rise since her first sat LBC show.
The fact she has an NDA/SLAPP against her on talking about her dismissal seems to have flew right over his rapidly balding head, I pointed exactly this out to him on twitter and I think he/lbc banned me
One MP said: “Increasingly I’m trying to figure out what we’re doing that the Tories wouldn’t be if they were in power.”
Since the usual suspects on here seem to have gone very quiet I'm going to take a punt and say that the answer to that question is Starmer's government are delivering Tory policies but with much greater competence.
The grownups are back in charge and showing how it should be done.
Eventually this will catch up with them - it's preposterous thinking on every level. The idea of sensibles and grown-ups has always delivered egg on the face.
Torsten Bell has ended up in a whole load embarrassing hypocrisy too. Imagine a progressive 'economist' trying hard to back peddle now he's an MP.
https://twitter.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1902392789003911220?t=KVXdqlwcdPPWDECXuAYDig&s=19
I'm guess with the spring statement that Labour are looking to try and come in under the Libs when polling. 😉
No it won't catch up with them. All the main players in this saga will have lucrative post politics careers after their political careers inevitably end in failure.
Look at what happened to Nick Clegg after he enthusiastically embraced austerity whilst he was Deputy Prime Minister, the consequences of which the country is still paying.
Edit : I guess it would be fair to say that the LibDems are still paying the price for Clegg's decision to embrace Tory policies, so it would be reasonable to assume that the Labour Party will also for a long time likely pay the price for Starmer's decision to embrace Tory policies.
The big difference between Clegg and Starmer is that Clegg was a junior partner in a coalition which he chose to join ( those ministerial limousines are hard to resist) in contrast Starmer is a prime minister with a huge thumping great majority and so has even less excuse.
James O'Brien
He's clearly a decent broadcaster with LBC's biggest audience. But he's everything wrong with the way Centrists offer up solutions. He's operating in such a narrow band of progressivism that neatly tucks within the bounds of an 'acceptable' version of Conservatism that there can never really be actual solutions.
Get to close with ideas and solutions and you're shut down. O'Brien literally is - "if Starmer does it then it's a clever plan." no matter the plan. As NoJusticeMTG says "Red team good - blue team bad."
He is the worst client journalist I can think of.
Although, Alex Andreou takes the award for absolute mard arse of a faux-left commentator. Not once as he criticised Starmer. Totally confused about how the government spends money and slaps a ban on you the minute you challenge him.
Such a big baby.
I've no idea what these people stand for and like Dunty - nine times out of ten they're terrible judges of character.
No it won't catch up with them. All the main players in this saga will have lucrative post politics careers after their political careers inevitably end in failure.
Look at what happened to Nick Clegg after he enthusiastically embraced austerity whilst he was Deputy Prime Minister, the consequences of which the country is still paying
In the polls?
No it won't catch up with them. All the main players in this saga will have lucrative post politics careers after their political careers inevitably end in failure.
Look at what happened to Nick Clegg after he enthusiastically embraced austerity whilst he was Deputy Prime Minister, the consequences of which the country is still paying
In the polls? / at the elections?
Oh yeah Cleggy and is lovely well positioned Meta job he had.
Yes in the polls, see my edit. It will likely catch up with the Labour Party, but not those responsible.
The grownups are back in charge and showing how it should be done.
Serious govt for serious people. Anyone who wants anything different is an immature sixth-former. I'm sure binners is looking forward to canvassing at the local elections so he can explain to the proles of Bury and Ramsbottom how they should get on board and be serious too instead of making childish demands for accessible GP appointments, functioning A&E deptartments and a welfare system which doesn't dump hundreds of thousands of disabled people into poverty.
If I were an ex-tory MP I'd be very jealous right now, Starmer and Reeves are doing all the stuff they dreamt about without having to worry about the opposition or losing their jobs.
With all shenanigans caused by Trump Starmer had started to close the gap with Reform but now the latest poll, in which the fieldwork was done yesterday when everyone was talking about the Starmer-Reeves attack on the disabled, has Reform a clear 5 point lead over Labour.
Not that Reform are the answer obviously but clearly the Labour Party isn't either. Reform's position has remained static whist support for the LibDems and the Greens has increased
And Reform are currently gaining significant support in Scotland despite TJ's insistence (based on the hard-to-believe claim that there aren't many racists in Scotland) that Scotland is Reform free.
I assume that Reform is getting the same kind of social media algorithm support as the RN in France and AfD in Germany. I can't use Whatsapp, Facebook, Google or any other feed as despite my left-wing browsing and reading habits I get to scroll though reams of fake news, conspiracy nonsense, right-wing shite, hateful shite etc. All the virtual places young people hang out are controlled by and fed with with stuff that makes the Conservatives look pinko and woke.
Marion Maréchal currently heads my Whatsapp suggestions. I can live without facebook and Google but Whatsapp is the only phone and message system I use that isn't spammed into uselessness by fraudsters, rip off merchants, fachos... so I use it.
I have said a few times in the past months in the Trump thread, that it is essential that western governments pass legislation to prevent the big money interests that are operating to finance politics, lobbying and the propaganda platforms to just totally control everything from repeating the American takeover across Europe as well.
The far right populists have absolutely no problem suppressing free speech as we can also now see quite drastically in the US, so our governments should not be afraid of their fake arguments about protecting their propaganda.
IMO the continued failure to do so is an indication that they are already in the pockets of the oligarchs.
I can't see any significant difference between the current situation and how things have always been. The Labour Party always swings to the right when it moves from opposition to government.
If there is a difference it is that the starting point this time was more right-wing than previously, so we have ended with the most right-wing "Labour" government in UK history.
And the reason for such a right-wing starting point imo is twofold. Firstly the Tories have moved the centre substantially to the right over many years. And secondly the Labour Party is now firmly in the hands of people without any sort of ideological commitment to anything. The Labour Party now exists basically to fulfill the career needs of self-serving professionals.
It won't be the first time that a movement founded by the working-classes to serve their needs was hijacked and its aims abandoned. Just look at the last 100 years of history.
Since the usual suspects on here seem to have gone very quiet
Driven away by the hectoring style. Still dropping in to read occasionally, but can no longer be bothered to try and engage.
I’ve made comments. But they were lost like rain drops in a sea of repeat posts. What’s the point? Why interrupt the repetitive ranting?
Still dropping in to read occasionally, but can no longer be bothered to try and engage.
I was thinking about you a couple of days ago Jon when there was all that talk about Labour cuts in disability benefits and increasing criticism from the Labour benches concerning the Starmer-Reeves austerity drive.
Whatever happened to all those exciting developments which you claimed on this thread were in the pipeline and you had inside knowledge about but unfortunately you couldn't divulge?
You suggested that we should trust you, be patient, and soon enough we hear about these important projects.
How much longer do we have to wait? The longer we wait the more austerity we seem to get. Can you at least gives us a clue?
I’ve made comments. But they were lost like rain drops in a sea of repeat posts. What’s the point? Why interrupt the repetitive ranting
Doesn't mean to say your comments aren't being read.
As for ranting - just a product of terrible choices / lack of hope from HMG.
What’s the point? Why interrupt the repetitive ranting?
Yes but enough about binners.
Its odd how after years of repetitive ranting from the self declared grown ups on the Corbyn, trump and tory threads there is suddenly a dislike of ranting
