Liz! Truss!

And don’t forget that she’s about to cut corporation tax for them too

Ker-****ing-ching!

Is she?

Tories were originally cutting corp tax a few years ago then abandonded it. Isn’t she just not doing the April rise?

I hope not for small companies.

I pay 19% Corp tax, 8% Dividend tax and a bit of PAYE, NI etc.

It’s also going to be a tool for Truss to start enacting their small government policies. Opps canny pay for that, canny pay for that, remember we paid for your energy bills…

Yeah Liz, we mind very well.

My word, that look into the camera at the end of her announcement about the Queen a few minutes ago… that will haunt me.

Reminded me of The Evil Dead.

“I’ll eat you soul, I’ll eat you soul.”

Sorry, low brow I know but it genuinely came straight to mind as I watched.

Awful speech

Well after today’s historic announcement I am fairly certain that the next opinion poll will show a huge surge in support for the government. Price cap policies won’t figure.

Best start to her PMship she could have imagined. Political embargo for 10 days.

the next opinion poll will show a huge surge in support for the government

You’d think so. Will be Starmer’s fault though. [ joke ]

The truth is, I’m not sure. Johnson could have got a three month bounce out of this situation early in his premiership, before more people had seen through him. I don’t think Truss can do the same at this point, I just don’t see the public warming to her in the same way, even if there is a non-political nation wide event for her to try and ride. She doesn’t have the certain “it” to make the connection with enough people.

Best start to her PMship she could have imagined. Political embargo for 10 days.

She is probably regretting ruling out a snap election.

As ever. Furlogh money went disproportionately into the pockets of the well off

I’m not letting that pass, what utter horseshit. The well off if they did benefit from furlough had it capped, the less well off got 80% of their normal income, higher earners got a lot less than their normal take home. The least well off didnt see any difference as they are by definition not working and fully dependant on benefits (which actually went up slightly).

The welfare state is supposed to be there for everyone, except in reality if you are a higher earner in which case if you lose your income you’re on your own and no one cares, the fact you’ve paid in significant more in tax over the years is irrelevant.

Liz Truss reveals campaign donation of £100,000 from wife of ex-BP executive
Contributions were disclosed minutes before the new PM announced details of her plan to tackle rising energy bills

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/08/liz-truss-reveals-campaign-donations-including-100k-from-wife-of-ex-bp-exec

the less well off got 80% of their normal income…

… The least well off didnt see any difference as they are by definition not working

Are you not familiar with the term “working poor”?

Have you ever considered why we need Working Tax Credits?

For a lot of people that 20% was a significant amount.

The welfare state is supposed to be there for everyone, except in reality if you are a higher earner in which case if you lose your income you’re on your own and no one cares, the fact you’ve paid in significant more in tax over the years is irrelevant.

If you lose your income even if you are low earner there’s no safety net and no-one cares. no-one is living a comfortable life on broo money with some jobsworth up their arse every couple of weeks.

rone – re corp tax; my understanding is same as yours – there is no cut, just a decision to withdraw a proposed increase.

..

Oil extraction companies pay a higher ring fence rate of corporation tax so the government should see a good chunk of the loaned funds back.

I’m not letting that pass, what utter horseshit.

£2500 a month after tax is well into the richest few % of the country. Lose your zero hours job. Universal credit plus £ 20

Once again its the usual Stw total lack of understanding of how money gets funnelled tp the richest and how little money most people in the country have

Furlough mone was vastly skewed towards the well off. Its undeniable

Oil extraction companies pay a higher ring fence rate of corporation tax so the government should see a good chunk of the loaned funds back.

No chance. The profits will be declared in the tax haven of their choice. It won’t be declared in the U.K. so it’s liable for tax

The energy companies (BP / Shell) already pay c40% corporation tax on UK profits – so for the ones listed in London the country does very well out of that.

That’s on top of the license fees they pay to secure rights for reserves in UK waters and the per barrel tax they pay on everything they extract.

To listen to Sir Keir you’d be mistaken for thinking the oil / gas companies are making £170b excess profit on the back of Uk consumers – when he knows perfectly well it’s the estimate of profit from global operations. UK ops will generate c£20b a year excess profit of which we’ll get £8b a year anyway.

One other point that escaped Sir Keir in his criticism of government borrowing vs. a windfall tax is that the issue right now is liquidity for retail energy companies.

A windfall tax wouldn’t generate any returns until some time after the financial year ends with the result that the government would need to borrow even if it did a windfall tax – in order to offset the gap between market prices and the level paid by consumers and provide the liquidity that’s immediately required.

The windfall tax wouldn’t be used to buy the energy, it would be used to get excess money back afterwards rather than it disappearing into the profits of the energy producers (who the PM and her cabinet just happen to have strong connections with) as part of some huge perverse payout due to a war in Europe and a pandemic.

Expect liz and her bunch of lackies to push out a load of shit news now while nobody is looking

Jeremy, continually repeating your mantra that ‘…furlough was vastly skewed towards the well-off’ doesn’t make it correct – which it isn’t.
Where is your hard, fact based, incontravertable evidence?
You know – proper research undertaken by an established, proven and authoritative individual/organisation.
Not random quotes from the guardian or similar.

kelvin – substantiate your statement that truss and her cabinet have strong connections to energy producers.
Articles from the guardian etc don’t substantiate anything.
Evidence from independent, proven and authoritative sources – individuals or organisations – have some relevance.
Anything else is just noise.

Expect liz and her bunch of lackies to push out a load of shit news now while nobody is looking

parliament is suspended for 10 days (bloody stupid) so they can’t. 10 days of moaning I think

£2500 a month after tax is well into the richest few %

More utter horse poop, this equates to £40k which is 59th percentile for individual salaries, along way from the top few percent. As a household income it represents the 46th percentile, so less than average.

Are you not familiar with the term “working poor”?

Who were still eligible for furlough, the least well off TJ refered to usually don’t work at all and therefore did not lose money by being furloughed. Most people’s outgoing also dropped as they weren’t travelling to work, a bigger percentage of a low income families out goings.

Furlough money was vastly skewed towards the well off.

Rubbish, the well off got no more in real terms than the less well off and received significantly less as a percentage if their normal income. Even if your income is higher it doesnt mean you can reduce your out goings quickly.

“Rubbish, the well off got no more in real terms than the less well off”

I remember starting a thread called corporate socialism at the begining of furlough, when the govt chucked millions in the direction of Easyjet, whilst they were paying out substantial millions in dividends and bonuses.

Ditto with the railways, where the Govt subsidised the industry to the tune of 2.5 billion 500 million of which is now sitting in offshore tax havens as company profits, when there were no actual ‘profits’.

So whilst there might be an argument that the well off did not do proportionately better than the poor, the stinking rich did exceptionally well out of furlough.

It’s one thing protecting jobs in large corporations during the pandemic but dividends and bonuses paid out of the public purse for businesses that aren’t at that time profitable is grotesque.

stumpyjon
Full Member

Rubbish, the well off got no more in real terms than the less well off and received significantly less as a percentage if their normal income.

This is… complicated. For one, you need to consider who was actually furloughed and for how long (ie, were the well off more or less likely to benefit from furlough) and how they benefitted.

For instance, less qualified and lower paid people are much more likely to have been made redundant at the end of a furlough period. Clearly that means they’ve benefitted less than someone whose job was saved, even if they received the exact same amount of money. Furlough wasn’t just to pay the wages, it was to preserve the jobs.

Self employment makes it bloody complicated too.

And “the well off got no more in real terms than the less well off and received significantly less as a percentage if their normal income” depends entirely on where you think the “well off” line is. The break point for the 80% support was, I think, £37500 (£2500 per month max, 80% of earnings) which is a decent chunk above the median income… So I think you can only really say that “the well off received less as a percentage” if you think someone earning £37500 falls into the “less well off” category. A matter of definition, really but I think most people wouldn’t put “earns 20% more than the median fulltime salary” in the “less well off” group.

You can also make a good argument that while the less well off benefited only via their wages, the better off could benefit multiple times, as a personal recipient and also as an employer or an investor. You don’t have to have been furloughed to have benefited from furlough.

Full time workers were more likely to be furloughed than part time in equivalent roles, and part time and especially zero hours workers were more likely to lose hours instead.

And by far the biggest individual beneficiaries will be investors and senior staff. They’re less likely to have got money directly of course. This mostly comes down to the lack of obligations for employees benefitting from the furlough scheme, which imo is the one really big failing of it. You could take the taxpayer cash, and still pay out dividends, bonuses etc.

TLDR- I definitely can’t say with confidence whether furlough money was skewed towards the better or worse off, there are too many variables and not enough good data. It is bloody complicated. But I can definitely say that furlough benefits were skewed towards the better off.

But to go right back to the original question, is it something the government did well? They kinda just copied what other countries were doing, arguably a bit slow, just like with lockdowns. And it was pretty much essential and commonsense. There was definitely a possibility that “small government” supply side maniacs could have derailed it, or that a bank manager like Hammond might have lacked the vision and competence to deliver enough. SO I’ll give them credit for doing what they had to but I’d call it adequacy not a shining achievement.

Rubbish, the well off got no more in real terms than the less well off and

Obvious nonsense

The well of got 2500 a month. The vast majority of the country do not earn that much. No one earning 1000 a month got given 2500 a month. So clearly the well off got more

Also your sums are wrong 2500 per month as 80% of your take home pay puts you firmly into the well off category

The break point for the 80% support was, I think, £37500 (£2500 per month max, 80% of

Take home not top line

earning net 2.5k a month is not well off these days. using PAYE INCOME as a proxy for being rich is dumb.

plenty of people who are well off earn less than that or even nothing at all.

income v cost of living v personal/family wealth are part of the equation

and whilst I saw furlough as super important, and largely successful it was clear some big business and their leaders took advantage

And once again we have tbe nonsense that earning more than tbe vast majority of the country does not make you well off0

2500 as 80% of your take home wage puts you in the top earners. That well over 50 000 pa pre tax earnings is it not?

TJ you’ve argued this point so many times. Your viewpoint is too simplistic to the point of being idiotic.

you won’t change or shut up about it so that’s the last I’ll say on the matter

Because on here there is a constant ridiculous assertion that being in the best paid 10% of the country dies not make you well off.

Some folk on here are so detached from reality

Some folk on here are so detached from reality

That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said in a long time.

earning net 2.5k a month is not well off these days

Bloody hell, this place sometimes. I earn less than that (not by very much though tbf) and I livw in the expensive Thames Valley. I wasn’t worried about the up coming energy rises for myself, we could have dealt with it. It would be noticeable for sure but we’d have coped.

So the game plan for Truss will be to spend big now. She has to, for even a hope of getting the economy away from recession. The real economy is drained of money.

I’ve been saying for months the only way out of this is to spend big – and society’s main deficit is energy. Same as Covid in terms of immediate attention. Years of bad taxation structure, and starving the bottom end of wages has robbed consumers of money.

Forget the taxation part for now – that comes later when the economy is doing something. Those up in arms about taxation for energy companies misunderstand how the system works.

All government spending reaches the private sector eventually. It’s all a handout. That’s how money works. I mean clearly there’s been a disparity for several decades of how that money gets distributed and to whom.

By identifying the biggest problem and plugging the hole now is a good thing to do. You can save your screams for what comes next I think.

The ideology will kick in once the economy starts to move (if at all.)

Then you need to be on the lookout.

The next thing to look at will be the funding of all of this. I’m taking a guess this will be done by Q/E. It satisfies all camps currently. That will define how smart she is or isn’t.

To out manoeuvre Truss, Starmer has to go big and start putting a long term plan out with massive investment – including nationalisation, and other restructuring. He will need to go where Corbyn (on an economic footing) went for the left to have a chance.

Oh and next GDP reporting will likely give Truss problems.

Also those on the left when you criticise ‘money printing’ you are effectively denying the left of its future ability to intervene with the state. That doesn’t put you on the left at all. You have to accept it’s tool of the state or the left with never have the capacity to fix things.

Some of the people on this site remind me of that thick bloke on QT who appeared to genuinely believe his 80k salary was below average. Just utterly divorced from reality.

More utter horse poop, this equates to £40k

If you’re going to quote numbers, best they’re accurate. You’re approximately 10 to 11% out on the gross pay figure. Which then skews all your other figures and makes the percentiles look like they are out too.

*sigh*

earnings do not equal “well off”

disposable income equals “well off”

scenario A

semi retired couple late 50s joint income £30k 2 bed bungalow up north no mortgage. dependents grown up left home. bunch of inheritance in the bank due to parents dying and selling family home

scenario B

young professional couple joint income £80k. £250k mortgage on 2 bed terrace in the SE one child in nursery one on the way. trying to save to move home for expanding family

who has more disposable income? who is “well off” in this scenario?

if your definition of well off is solely based on paye income then I’m afraid its like talking to a colour blind person and trying to explain colours

And again it was a rush job. If they’d sat down n messed about with it the damage would be greater than it was.

It was flawed but it was 1st Aid treatment

TJ is right.

As for Truss and her cabinet’s links to fossil fuel companies. It’s going to be a long list… not got the time now, but start with her launching the parliamentary group of the IEA, and the fact she worked for Shell.