PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
It’s probably too early to tell but all that piece says is that the new government is serious about reducing the deficit and inflation. Both good things but the implications for poor Argentinians have yet to be seen.
On topic, that picture in the header shows just how much America is a foreign country. The women on there look so exotically different from anything you'd see here in Europe (at least West of Belarus).
Had the misfortune of catching the politics slot on GMB today, my wife likes GMB in the morning I'd watch Youtube personally.
They had self absorbed MP Jess Phillips and former Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson wittering as inanely as the usual occupants do but there, mainly, to plug their wittily named podcast, Electoral Dysfunction (geddit !!) a podcast which will appeal to centrist dad types (hi ScottXp and Ninja, right up your street) although with News Agents, Rest is Politics and a few others it is a crowded market.
Had the misfortune of catching the politics slot on GMB today, my wife likes GMB in the morning I'd watch Youtube personally.
They had self absorbed MP Jess Phillips and former Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson wittering as inanely as the usual occupants do but there, mainly, to plug their wittily named podcast, Electoral Dysfunction (geddit !!) a podcast which will appeal to centrist dad types (hi ScottXp and Ninja, right up your street) although with News Agents, Rest is Politics and a few others it is a crowded market.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
We should have an aim of tax neutrality. By that I mean that you pay the same whether you are employed, retired, self employed or operating through a corporate. It is absurd that those who have a company can pay less tax on dividends than they do on wages. It is absurd that turning a profit into a capital gain saves so much tax.
The late great Nigel Lawson was our last tax simplifier and that was a long time ago now. So many complexities to strip away. So many unproductive man hours spent tinkering with the output for tax purposes. It would be a great boost to our productivity.
On topic, that picture in the header shows just how much America is a foreign country. The women on there look so exotically different from anything you'd see here in Europe (at least West of Belarus).
They are a self-selected subset of American women of course. Half a dozen women at the front of a Trump rally might not be entirely representative.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
It’s probably too early to tell but all that piece says is that the new government is serious about reducing the deficit and inflation. Both good things but the implications for poor Argentinians have yet to be seen.
What are the implications of not tackling it for poor Argentinians ?
We have seen what has happened in Zimbabwe when they didn't tackle runaway inflation and a spiralling deficit.
The poor Argentinians are paying the price for the ineptitude of previous administrations no longer there to account for their failings.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
NEST is allowing employers, who previously offered their own schemes, to put less into employees pension pots than previously. Last company I worked at, it was 3% employee, 6% employer min up to 6% employee, 9% employer. For all new employees now they are just dumped into NEST.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
It’s probably too early to tell but all that piece says is that the new government is serious about reducing the deficit and inflation. Both good things but the implications for poor Argentinians have yet to be seen.
What are the implications of not tackling it for poor Argentinians ?
We have seen what has happened in Zimbabwe when they didn't tackle runaway inflation and a spiralling deficit.
The poor Argentinians are paying the price for the ineptitude of previous administrations no longer there to account for their failings.
Turkey is also doing some 'interesting' non-conventional economic approaches.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
It’s probably too early to tell but all that piece says is that the new government is serious about reducing the deficit and inflation. Both good things but the implications for poor Argentinians have yet to be seen.
I think Argentina probably needed some sort of shock therapy.
The mistake all economists seem to make, of whichever political persuasion, is to think that what works for one economy at one time in history must necessarily work for all economies always.
Hence we get IEA think tankers concluding what Britain needs now is a repeat of 1980s Thatcherism, when we've already Thatcherised, or left wing economists arguing developing countries should adopt Nordic social models they can't afford. We saw the damage the post-70s obsession with inflation did during years of unnecessarily tight monetary policy in Europe, particularly from the Bundesbank, and conversely too many people hung up on the orthodoxy that inflation had disappeared and we were free to print money when Covid and the Russian war came along.
So I hope (and my Argentinian colleagues are optimistic) that Milei's reforms could disrupt the doom loop of the Argentine economy, but that needn't mean it would work for other very different econcomies.
Good morning from Wembley. I note the Trump thread and nod that the budget was such a non-event that it has no political implications the morning after.
So, stick or twist. Is the "actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever" budget enough to make Sunak sprint for May? Or do they need another autumn statement and thus slide towards ELE?
Curious all the discussions about whether someone earning £15,000 will be paying more tax given that the minimum wage is already £10.42 and rising to £11.44 next month.
Someone working full time on minimum wage will be on over £23,000 per year.
Now minimum wage is lower for younger people, but even there the increases are going to be proportionally greater.
There will also be people who only work part time at minimum wage but they will have other sources of income, likely from the government, which will also be increasing.
On topic, that picture in the header shows just how much America is a foreign country. The women on there look so exotically different from anything you'd see here in Europe (at least West of Belarus).
They are a self-selected subset of American women of course. Half a dozen women at the front of a Trump rally might not be entirely representative.
I do appreciate that. I work with many Americans who could almost pass for British. But the phenomenon of the Southern or Midwestern Republican wife dripping with pearls and bouffant hair straight out of Dallas is a very real thing and not that rare.
Good morning from Wembley. I note the Trump thread and nod that the budget was such a non-event that it has no political implications the morning after.
So, stick or twist. Is the "actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever" budget enough to make Sunak sprint for May? Or do they need another autumn statement and thus slide towards ELE?
There's generally a consistent gap between PB headers and the chat, the former spending much more time on US politics than the latter.
The ammunition is a factor, no doubt, but they had 6,000 rounds/day for over two months during the counter-offensive and achieved nothing with it so why it would it be different this time?
The ammunition is just a convenient external factor on which the Ukrainians can hang all their woes. Their bigger problem is people. They have mobilised over 1,000,000 people but only 300,000 ever made it to combat. The new CinC, Sirs'kiy, is demanding an audit to find out what the fuck the other 700,000 are doing. Meanwhile the new mobilisation legislation is stuck in the Rada with over 4,000 amendments.
This is all in the WaPo but this sort of thing is studiously avoided by the British media to avoid damaging morale or something.
Except the norm in most wars is that less than 50% of the troops will actually get into combat or even get near the front line. That has been the same throughout almost every major conflict of the 20th century.
It's the Ukrainian CinC that has the arsehole about the numbers and wants the audit. What might be happening is concern over the quality of the conscriptees that make it to the front. He's getting lots of people that are too dim or poor to bribe their way into a rear echelon position.
So just like in every conscription war of the past 70 years then.
Yep, so "McNamara's Morons" go do the fighting while "Bone Spurs" Trump and "Asthma" Biden get to stay home.
This has always been the case.
You don't get your best men going into the infantry.
Good morning from Wembley. I note the Trump thread and nod that the budget was such a non-event that it has no political implications the morning after.
So, stick or twist. Is the "actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever" budget enough to make Sunak sprint for May? Or do they need another autumn statement and thus slide towards ELE?
The big story from yesterday is Hunt's journey on equalising IT and NI which is something labour should be in favour off not objecting strenuously to it this morning
Nothing sides more with workers than this policy and I expect it to be in the conservative manifesto
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
On topic, that picture in the header shows just how much America is a foreign country. The women on there look so exotically different from anything you'd see here in Europe (at least West of Belarus).
They are a self-selected subset of American women of course. Half a dozen women at the front of a Trump rally might not be entirely representative.
I do appreciate that. I work with many Americans who could almost pass for British. But the phenomenon of the Southern or Midwestern Republican wife dripping with pearls and bouffant hair straight out of Dallas is a very real thing and not that rare.
Yes, fair point. I remember a documentary during the 2016 campaign where somebody (Louis Theroux maybe?) went round a Trump fundraiser in Florida talking to his supporters. The women in particular seemed utterly deranged, with a religious fervour for Trump, blind to any counter-evidence put to them.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Good morning from Wembley. I note the Trump thread and nod that the budget was such a non-event that it has no political implications the morning after.
So, stick or twist. Is the "actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever" budget enough to make Sunak sprint for May? Or do they need another autumn statement and thus slide towards ELE?
The big story from yesterday is Hunt's journey on equalising IT and NI which is something labour should be in favour off not objecting strenuously to it this morning
Nothing sides more with workers than this policy and I expect it to be in the conservative manifesto
As you know I'm not voting Labour...
The simple truth is that almost none of these budget measures will be enacted, by any party. The country is broken and something more substantial will be needed after the election, whenever it is.
"The scale of the council’s financial mismanagement is staggering. Its annual tax take of £11m is dwarfed by the £62m it spends servicing its debt. It has £1.8bn of loans for assets whose value has plunged by around £600m since they were purchased. By 2026, the council will have accumulated debts of £2.4bn, which is 100 times the size of its annual £24m budget, according to a government review in May. That works out at a notional debt of £19,000 per resident, and would make it England’s most indebted council relative to its size."
and according to the Telegraph, it looks like most of that was down to entirely avoidable vanity projects by a long series of Conservative administrations eg:
"Woking town centre is filled with reminders of the council’s grand ambitions. A trio of 30-storey towers dominate the skyline. On a clear day, the council wanted these buildings – part of the Victoria Square redevelopment – to be visible from the Shard in London. The project has been dogged with problems. Originally estimated to cost £150m, the figure ballooned to £700m due to delays, construction setbacks and the pandemic. Woking council borrowed the money from the Public Works Loan Board, a government body which has since been abolished and its functions taken over by the Treasury."
The ammunition is a factor, no doubt, but they had 6,000 rounds/day for over two months during the counter-offensive and achieved nothing with it so why it would it be different this time?
The ammunition is just a convenient external factor on which the Ukrainians can hang all their woes. Their bigger problem is people. They have mobilised over 1,000,000 people but only 300,000 ever made it to combat. The new CinC, Sirs'kiy, is demanding an audit to find out what the fuck the other 700,000 are doing. Meanwhile the new mobilisation legislation is stuck in the Rada with over 4,000 amendments.
This is all in the WaPo but this sort of thing is studiously avoided by the British media to avoid damaging morale or something.
Except the norm in most wars is that less than 50% of the troops will actually get into combat or even get near the front line. That has been the same throughout almost every major conflict of the 20th century.
It's the Ukrainian CinC that has the arsehole about the numbers and wants the audit. What might be happening is concern over the quality of the conscriptees that make it to the front. He's getting lots of people that are too dim or poor to bribe their way into a rear echelon position.
So just like in every conscription war of the past 70 years then.
Yep, so "McNamara's Morons" go do the fighting while "Bone Spurs" Trump and "Asthma" Biden get to stay home.
This has always been the case.
You don't get your best men going into the infantry.
OI!!
"Ours is composed of the scum of the earth—the mere scum of the earth."
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
The ammunition is a factor, no doubt, but they had 6,000 rounds/day for over two months during the counter-offensive and achieved nothing with it so why it would it be different this time?
The ammunition is just a convenient external factor on which the Ukrainians can hang all their woes. Their bigger problem is people. They have mobilised over 1,000,000 people but only 300,000 ever made it to combat. The new CinC, Sirs'kiy, is demanding an audit to find out what the fuck the other 700,000 are doing. Meanwhile the new mobilisation legislation is stuck in the Rada with over 4,000 amendments.
This is all in the WaPo but this sort of thing is studiously avoided by the British media to avoid damaging morale or something.
Except the norm in most wars is that less than 50% of the troops will actually get into combat or even get near the front line. That has been the same throughout almost every major conflict of the 20th century.
It's the Ukrainian CinC that has the arsehole about the numbers and wants the audit. What might be happening is concern over the quality of the conscriptees that make it to the front. He's getting lots of people that are too dim or poor to bribe their way into a rear echelon position.
So just like in every conscription war of the past 70 years then.
Yep, so "McNamara's Morons" go do the fighting while "Bone Spurs" Trump and "Asthma" Biden get to stay home.
This has always been the case.
You don't get your best men going into the infantry.
OI!!
Some of the finest people I met in the military were infantry. I remember one individual from 2 RIFLES in Iraq who could fit four grapes under his foreskin and did so at every possible opportunity. It takes centuries of courage and sacrifice to build that sort of martial tradition.
The ammunition is a factor, no doubt, but they had 6,000 rounds/day for over two months during the counter-offensive and achieved nothing with it so why it would it be different this time?
The ammunition is just a convenient external factor on which the Ukrainians can hang all their woes. Their bigger problem is people. They have mobilised over 1,000,000 people but only 300,000 ever made it to combat. The new CinC, Sirs'kiy, is demanding an audit to find out what the fuck the other 700,000 are doing. Meanwhile the new mobilisation legislation is stuck in the Rada with over 4,000 amendments.
This is all in the WaPo but this sort of thing is studiously avoided by the British media to avoid damaging morale or something.
Except the norm in most wars is that less than 50% of the troops will actually get into combat or even get near the front line. That has been the same throughout almost every major conflict of the 20th century.
It's the Ukrainian CinC that has the arsehole about the numbers and wants the audit. What might be happening is concern over the quality of the conscriptees that make it to the front. He's getting lots of people that are too dim or poor to bribe their way into a rear echelon position.
So just like in every conscription war of the past 70 years then.
Yep, so "McNamara's Morons" go do the fighting while "Bone Spurs" Trump and "Asthma" Biden get to stay home.
This has always been the case.
You don't get your best men going into the infantry.
OI!!
Was a bit surprised by that by CR, the guys who rise to the top seem to be either Guards Infantry or Green Jackets as were, earning the old Black Button Mafia name, and will undoubtedly be from the Rifles in future.
The last and first few Chiefs of the defence staff seem follow this pattern. Now whether they are the “best men” is a different question.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The ammunition is a factor, no doubt, but they had 6,000 rounds/day for over two months during the counter-offensive and achieved nothing with it so why it would it be different this time?
The ammunition is just a convenient external factor on which the Ukrainians can hang all their woes. Their bigger problem is people. They have mobilised over 1,000,000 people but only 300,000 ever made it to combat. The new CinC, Sirs'kiy, is demanding an audit to find out what the fuck the other 700,000 are doing. Meanwhile the new mobilisation legislation is stuck in the Rada with over 4,000 amendments.
This is all in the WaPo but this sort of thing is studiously avoided by the British media to avoid damaging morale or something.
Except the norm in most wars is that less than 50% of the troops will actually get into combat or even get near the front line. That has been the same throughout almost every major conflict of the 20th century.
It's the Ukrainian CinC that has the arsehole about the numbers and wants the audit. What might be happening is concern over the quality of the conscriptees that make it to the front. He's getting lots of people that are too dim or poor to bribe their way into a rear echelon position.
So just like in every conscription war of the past 70 years then.
Yep, so "McNamara's Morons" go do the fighting while "Bone Spurs" Trump and "Asthma" Biden get to stay home.
This has always been the case.
You don't get your best men going into the infantry.
OI!!
Some of the finest people I met in the military were infantry. I remember one individual from 2 RIFLES in Iraq who could fit four grapes under his foreskin and did so at every possible opportunity. It takes centuries of courage and sacrifice to build that sort of martial tradition.
That's certainly one military feat that'll never be bettered by the IDF.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
Sometimes more than one thing at a time can be true. Large numbers of pensioners are pretty poor; the state pension is very low as a base for a household income, and high (especially for couples) if you can use it mostly on champagne and buying ponies for the grandchildren; the tax treatment of pensioners ought to be equalised with workers; the poorest pensioners should not be paying tax at all.
IFS Footnote: The full state pension, before tax, will purchase a £30 bottle of champagne every day, while leaving £1.51 per day for other items.
Good morning from Wembley. I note the Trump thread and nod that the budget was such a non-event that it has no political implications the morning after.
So, stick or twist. Is the "actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever" budget enough to make Sunak sprint for May? Or do they need another autumn statement and thus slide towards ELE?
The big story from yesterday is Hunt's journey on equalising IT and NI which is something labour should be in favour off not objecting strenuously to it this morning
Nothing sides more with workers than this policy and I expect it to be in the conservative manifesto
As you know I'm not voting Labour...
The simple truth is that almost none of these budget measures will be enacted, by any party. The country is broken and something more substantial will be needed after the election, whenever it is.
The NI and child benefit changes together with 8.5% pension increases will be in April's pay packets
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
So we've reached the point where people are simultaneously complaining they're paying too much tax while also proclaiming they're happy to pay more tax.
Anyway aren't the majority of voters over 55 ?
A group more interested in the availability of cruises than the cost of mortgages.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular..
It's fairly clear how it's paid for; the balance of taxation has been shifted a bit from workers onto pensioners (and other non employment income). Average of around £1000 tax increase in pensioner taxpayers, I think.
A sensible policy which the core vote might dislike when they wake up to it.
A very sensible and long overdue policy.
And poor pensioners won't be paying a penny in ICT. Well off ones should indeed pay their fair share of the bills same as anyone else.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
It’s probably too early to tell but all that piece says is that the new government is serious about reducing the deficit and inflation. Both good things but the implications for poor Argentinians have yet to be seen.
I think Argentina probably needed some sort of shock therapy.
The mistake all economists seem to make, of whichever political persuasion, is to think that what works for one economy at one time in history must necessarily work for all economies always.
Hence we get IEA think tankers concluding what Britain needs now is a repeat of 1980s Thatcherism, when we've already Thatcherised, or left wing economists arguing developing countries should adopt Nordic social models they can't afford. We saw the damage the post-70s obsession with inflation did during years of unnecessarily tight monetary policy in Europe, particularly from the Bundesbank, and conversely too many people hung up on the orthodoxy that inflation had disappeared and we were free to print money when Covid and the Russian war came along.
So I hope (and my Argentinian colleagues are optimistic) that Milei's reforms could disrupt the doom loop of the Argentine economy, but that needn't mean it would work for other very different econcomies.
That's a very good post.
Though it could in theory work in the UK. One thing such policies have in common is the sacrifice of the old and unproductive.
A very different economy to Argentina - S Korea - owes some of its economic success to the same thing. Their rate of pensioner poverty is well over double that of the UK (which is anyway quite high) : https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20231219000599
You can free up a lot of capital for productive investment... if you're sufficiently ruthless.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
From Ukraine, there are lots of stories of Ukrainian POWs being murdered by Russian soldiers, and being observed doing so by drones. I hope the evidence will wind its way to the war crimes courts.
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
In polls though they are saying they would prefer higher taxes and better public services. I think the point about the tax burden having gone up is used more as a way of neutralising (in people's minds and in debate) any Tory claim to be a tax cutting party.
Reeves was pretty uninspiring on Today this morning. It depressed me a little. On a topic like tax and spend I really want someone who can engage with the issues and try to explain their position, rather than - as she did - mouthing pre-prepared lines like "I want to reduce taxes for working people".
Politicians who try to explain things properly and earnestly are so much more appealing, to me at least. History does suggest they don't do very well politically though. Consider a shortlist of recent examples: Rory Stewart, John McDonnell, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, David Gauke, Nick Boles, Angela Eagle, Barry Gardner. All explainers, and all either out of politics or sidelined now. The only explainers I can think of who are still in the mix are Cameron mark II, and Layla Moran.
At least one country has no problem with building new houses.
Sheep as a lamb is probably the thinking.
Stealing someone's back yard certainly solves the NIMBY thing.
It's not stealing, it was owned by Jordan and Jordan relinquished it.
Arafat had an opportunity to create a Palestinian state in that land but rejected it. He chose instead to keep the border issue undecided in favour of future negotiations.
C'est la vie.
Israel can and absolutely should do whatever suits their own interests and strengthens their hand in future negotiations. Pandering has failed.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
Well instead of reducing the tax on work earnings you could extend it to non-work earnings if people preferred.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
But they've paid for it, in the very real perception of many, many people. You see?
And if you introduce means testing, many, many people will feel cheated. Partly because they planned their finances to include the SP. So HMG will have mis-sold the SP for decades if it suddenly pulls part of it. Except that it was a forced sale. The equivalent of a fraudster or a pension fund raider in the private pension market.
Also -
(a) bureaucracy (b) means testing bears heavily on the poor, disorganised, chronically ill (mentally and physically) and now also computer illiterate
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
Keeping income tax and the thresholds unmoved whilst reducing NI is a gradual way to shift the tax burden to your parents and away from workers. If the state pension was binned overnight it'd be Xers and younger that would be hit the hardest as they're (We're) yet to receive any of it yet whereas most boomers have all had the benefits for years.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the risk with means testing the pension (aside from the social cohesion issue - those who don't get it not wanting to fund other "scroungers") is the behavioural effect. Unless you set the taper very carefully you get a bunch of people stopping saving for retirement because it's better to have a smaller private pension and still get your state one. Same issue as the behavioural effects of the lifetime allowance or the child benefit taper.
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
In polls though they are saying they would prefer higher taxes and better public services. I think the point about the tax burden having gone up is used more as a way of neutralising (in people's minds and in debate) any Tory claim to be a tax cutting party.
Reeves was pretty uninspiring on Today this morning. It depressed me a little. ON a topic like tax and spend I really want someone who can engage with the issues and try to explain their position, rather than - as she did - mouthing pre-prepared lines like "I want to reduce taxes for working people".
Politicians who try to explain things properly and earnestly are so much more appealing, to me at least. History does suggest they don't do very well politically though. Consider a shortlist of recent examples: Rory Stewart, John McDonnell, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, David Gauke, Nick Boles, Angela Eagle, Barry Gardner. All explainers, and all either out of politics or sidelined now. The only explainers I can think of who are still in the mix are Cameron mark II, and Layla Moran.
Clegg is more of a propagandist than explainer, these days.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
The 2% NIC cut is reducing the amount of funds going to the National Insurance Fund as the NHS allocation is remaining the same.
As a result of the NIC reduction (the Act) and the increase in pensions (the draft order) there is forecast to be a deficit in the National Insurance fund for 2024/25. Following the Budget yesterday, this will be approximately £10billion worse.
Chart 1.3 looks at the Fund balance
This is going down by £10 billion a year, resulting in Treasury Grants (ie funding from general taxation) requirements in a couple of years time.
The National Insurance Fund pays for state pensions (96% of payments) and contributory employment and support allowances (4% of payments).
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Like spending HS2 moneys on the potholes of the South. All of a piece.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
Though means testing just creates cliff edges and distortions.
Instead they should be paying a full and proper rate of tax on the £120k per year (which would net out like phasing out the pension) rather than paying a lower rare as NI etc doesn't apply.
The Government is to be fair doing the right thing here. Hope Labour keeps it up.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Yes indeed, we subsidise non motorists and tax motorists. That is part of the war.
Abolish subsidies and equalise taxes instead. Going to work on a train should net after related expenditure be as heavily taxed (not subsidised) as going to work in a car.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the risk with means testing the pension (aside from the social cohesion issue - those who don't get it not wanting to fund other "scroungers") is the behavioural effect. Unless you set the taper very carefully you get a bunch of people stopping saving for retirement because it's better to have a smaller private pension and still get your state one. Same issue as the behavioural effects of the lifetime allowance or the child benefit taper.
The income tax system can take care of the "Rich Pensioner Problem".
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
Yes. The negative externalities resulting from motoring are indeed heavily subsidised.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
I know people have posted about this on PB.com, but the details have passed me by. What's the gist of what's been done, and in what ways is it relevant to Britain?
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
The 2% NIC cut is reducing the amount of funds going to the National Insurance Fund as the NHS allocation is remaining the same.
As a result of the NIC reduction (the Act) and the increase in pensions (the draft order) there is forecast to be a deficit in the National Insurance fund for 2024/25. Following the Budget yesterday, this will be approximately £10billion worse.
Chart 1.3 looks at the Fund balance
This is going down by £10 billion a year, resulting in Treasury Grants (ie funding from general taxation) requirements in a couple of years time.
The National Insurance Fund pays for state pensions (96% of payments) and contributory employment and support allowances (4% of payments).
Yes the National Insurance Fund should be abolished completely and it should 100% be paid by everyone from general taxation.
Including eg those who have £120k in non-wage earnings per annum in retirement.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the risk with means testing the pension (aside from the social cohesion issue - those who don't get it not wanting to fund other "scroungers") is the behavioural effect. Unless you set the taper very carefully you get a bunch of people stopping saving for retirement because it's better to have a smaller private pension and still get your state one. Same issue as the behavioural effects of the lifetime allowance or the child benefit taper.
The child benefit example is a good one - I am sure that rather than saving money it is a drag on both tax revenue and the economy as it encourages all kinds of perverse incentives. Universal benefits are far more sensible: easier and cheaper to administer and without the cliff edges and perverse incentives associated with means testing. Also avoids dividing the population into different competing groups, encouraging a less zero sum approach to politics.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
Yes. The negative externalities resulting from motoring are indeed heavily subsidised.
There are next to no negative externalities from motoring. Especially as we transition to clean vehicles.
Congestion is a far worse problem on rail than roads, hence all the bitching and moaning about how shite the rails are despite them carrying a miniscule amount of traffic versus our roads.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
I know people have posted about this on PB.com, but the details have passed me by. What's the gist of what's been done, and in what ways is it relevant to Britain?
Milei is trying to stop the spending of money that the government doesn't have - which has led to chronic hyperinflation and serial defaults over the past few years.
Among other things, he has drastically cut the official (fixed) exchange rate.
Basically, the entire house is on fire. Economic opinion is divided whether what he is doing, is turning off the gas supply to the fire, or throwing petrol on it.
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
So we've reached the point where people are simultaneously complaining they're paying too much tax while also proclaiming they're happy to pay more tax.
Anyway aren't the majority of voters over 55 ?
A group more interested in the availability of cruises than the cost of mortgages.
I quite like that last sentence, but just to make clear we are not all like that. I am 69 and am avoiding cruises like the plague. I would eat and drink so much you would have to roll me down the gang plank. That is assuming I haven't caught Norovirus.
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
In polls though they are saying they would prefer higher taxes and better public services. I think the point about the tax burden having gone up is used more as a way of neutralising (in people's minds and in debate) any Tory claim to be a tax cutting party.
Reeves was pretty uninspiring on Today this morning. It depressed me a little. On a topic like tax and spend I really want someone who can engage with the issues and try to explain their position, rather than - as she did - mouthing pre-prepared lines like "I want to reduce taxes for working people".
Politicians who try to explain things properly and earnestly are so much more appealing, to me at least. History does suggest they don't do very well politically though. Consider a shortlist of recent examples: Rory Stewart, John McDonnell, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, David Gauke, Nick Boles, Angela Eagle, Barry Gardner. All explainers, and all either out of politics or sidelined now. The only explainers I can think of who are still in the mix are Cameron mark II, and Layla Moran.
Reeves will have achieved exactly what she set out to do. If Labour want to lose the election all they have to do is to go around being inspiring. If you tot up the bills of every single issue pressure group that wants Labour to be inspiring in its policies and cash distribution you are soon into the hundreds of billions. Just see what it looks like a week after the GE if Labour win.
BTW the bloke from the OBR this morning was good. He answered every question with precision. Instead of wasting our time with politicians the BBC etc should use IFS/OBR and even more slanted groups like IEA and their more leftward counterparts much more.
If the BBC had an editorial policy of never asking back people who don't answer questions their act would be sharpened up quite a bit. And they can still cover what they say fairly by reporting parliament properly.
Except that it should be attorneys general, I think?
One point I would make though is that he will find refinancing easier if he is running for president (and indeed, *is* president) than if he's an ordinary citizen, simply because he can leverage the power, patronage and regulatory functions of the US state to favour those who'd lend him money and disfavour those who didn't.
Sure, that's illegal but since when has that bothered Trump, particularly when faced with an existential crisis? He'd have a patsy at Treasury, specifically (in part anyway), to protect Trump's financial interests, and a pliant Republican caucus in Congress to protect against impeachment.
Basically, the entire house is on fire. Economic opinion is divided whether what he is doing, is turning off the gas supply to the fire, or throwing petrol on it.
Without wishing to stretch your analogy much further than intended, some fires can be extinguished through addition of explosives...
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
So we've reached the point where people are simultaneously complaining they're paying too much tax while also proclaiming they're happy to pay more tax.
Anyway aren't the majority of voters over 55 ?
A group more interested in the availability of cruises than the cost of mortgages.
I quite like that last sentence, but just to make clear we are not all like that. I am 69 and am avoiding cruises like the plague. I would eat and drink so much you would have to roll me down the gang plank. That is assuming I haven't caught Norovirus.
The state pension will pay for cruises or a daily bottle of champagne but not both. This, of course, like cheese, is a disgrace.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
Though means testing just creates cliff edges and distortions.
Instead they should be paying a full and proper rate of tax on the £120k per year (which would net out like phasing out the pension) rather than paying a lower rare as NI etc doesn't apply.
The Government is to be fair doing the right thing here. Hope Labour keeps it up.
There is no sign Labour have any interest in it, indeed Reeves was attacking it today on the media
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
Except those who are screaming under the burden are getting a long overdue tax cut.
Those who are paying well under the same share others would on the same income, are paying marginally more.
Spin that however you want, it's the right thing to do.
The commitments mean that the shells could be delivered to Ukraine in a matter of weeks, according to separate people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The precise timing would depend on contractual and delivery schedules, and could slip, the people cautioned...
At least one country has no problem with building new houses.
Sheep as a lamb is probably the thinking.
Stealing someone's back yard certainly solves the NIMBY thing.
I'm sure the apologists for Israel will be along to say how the Palestinian Authority has brought this all on itself etc etc
That's true though, they have.
And Israel brought the resistance to its occupation all on itself, etc.?
No. The Israelis are the victims here, they're the ones who were attacked first and despite that they've repeatedly tried for peace only to have it rejected, stop victim blaming.
Had the misfortune of catching the politics slot on GMB today, my wife likes GMB in the morning I'd watch Youtube personally.
They had self absorbed MP Jess Phillips and former Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson wittering as inanely as the usual occupants do but there, mainly, to plug their wittily named podcast, Electoral Dysfunction (geddit !!) a podcast which will appeal to centrist dad types (hi ScottXp and Ninja, right up your street) although with News Agents, Rest is Politics and a few others it is a crowded market.
I am very much enjoying Political Currency. A bit more politics than The Rest is Politics, which I have not listened to for a while since it got a bit boring with more whining than political analysis. I suspect that if we get a Labour Government it should get a bit more interesting.
Gary Lineker has a lot to answer for. Podcasts have been around for ages but The Rest Is... has grown into a whole family and inspired many, generally good, imitators.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
Yes. The negative externalities resulting from motoring are indeed heavily subsidised.
There are next to no negative externalities from motoring. Especially as we transition to clean vehicles.
Congestion is a far worse problem on rail than roads, hence all the bitching and moaning about how shite the rails are despite them carrying a miniscule amount of traffic versus our roads.
The Tories may have to spend half the GE campaign trying to explain why scrapping NI wont destroy public services and take away the state pension from those who have worked hard all their lives and paid in.
I see Reeves has already started this morning.
It's amazing how a long overdue tax cut for workers is immediately and ludicrously rebadged as an attack on state pensions, which are fully protected and triple locked.
Exactly and to be honest it will be a process over several years as income tax becomes payable at the same rate for workers and pensioners and fairness established in the tax system
I think you are both missing the simple fact that after 50+ years of being told that you need NI to have a state pension, many people will be thinking that phasing out NI means phasing out the state pension, only the Tories aren't admitting it.
In a lot of ways NI doesn't make sense - but its continued existence does act as a political check on any efforts to means test or otherwise limit the state pension, simply because so many people view it as a contributory system. You get rid of NI, you make it much easier to start chipping away at the pension too. You can understand people's worries. Child benefit was meant to be universal too, and look at what happened with that.
The state pension should be means tested. There's no reason for people like my mum and dad to receive it, they have income in retirement in excess of £120k per year from equity investments and private pensions.
The issue is not economics but politics. If the concept of state pension is a mixture of UBI and contribution (the clue being in the name 'NI', then everyone should get it and the tax system deal with consequences.
If its like UC etc and means tested then the rich stop having any interest in it and its core principle is undermined. Any person may, by their own efforts, ensure that by being prudent enough they lose out of £11,000 a year. Not good politics. And they all vote.
Is the assessment that the budget was reasonable from a political perspective?
1) Shot the Labour non dom fox. This is why opposition parties don't announce too many policies before an election campaign or all the good ones get nicked.
2) Creates a narrative around the NI cuts as the first steps of a journey to abolish employee NI under a hypothetical Tory government. Works better politically than the one-off change from the Autumn budget.
Fiscally there are a whole load of made up numbers that have been fudged (tax rises that will never happen, spending cuts they will never make) but the electorate doesn't pay attention to that level of detail.
I predict a small polling bounce unless new gremlins come out. In which case Sunak would be wise to have an election now before it's all forgotten and the narrative shifts to one of many government failures.
In other words, an election on 2 May? 👍
George Osborne on Political Currency drew attention to the budget speech's valedictory feel. If Hunt thinks he might not be around for the Autumn Statement, it might be he has heard certain rumours, or he could be guessing like the rest of us.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
It’s probably too early to tell but all that piece says is that the new government is serious about reducing the deficit and inflation. Both good things but the implications for poor Argentinians have yet to be seen.
What are the implications of not tackling it for poor Argentinians ?
We have seen what has happened in Zimbabwe when they didn't tackle runaway inflation and a spiralling deficit.
The poor Argentinians are paying the price for the ineptitude of previous administrations no longer there to account for their failings.
Turkey is also doing some 'interesting' non-conventional economic approaches.
It is as if you lot do not read Leon's posts. Surely the economy with the greatest upside is El Salvador since it has abolished crime.
The ammunition is a factor, no doubt, but they had 6,000 rounds/day for over two months during the counter-offensive and achieved nothing with it so why it would it be different this time?
The ammunition is just a convenient external factor on which the Ukrainians can hang all their woes. Their bigger problem is people. They have mobilised over 1,000,000 people but only 300,000 ever made it to combat. The new CinC, Sirs'kiy, is demanding an audit to find out what the fuck the other 700,000 are doing. Meanwhile the new mobilisation legislation is stuck in the Rada with over 4,000 amendments.
This is all in the WaPo but this sort of thing is studiously avoided by the British media to avoid damaging morale or something.
Except the norm in most wars is that less than 50% of the troops will actually get into combat or even get near the front line. That has been the same throughout almost every major conflict of the 20th century.
It's the Ukrainian CinC that has the arsehole about the numbers and wants the audit. What might be happening is concern over the quality of the conscriptees that make it to the front. He's getting lots of people that are too dim or poor to bribe their way into a rear echelon position.
So just like in every conscription war of the past 70 years then.
Yep, so "McNamara's Morons" go do the fighting while "Bone Spurs" Trump and "Asthma" Biden get to stay home.
This has always been the case.
You don't get your best men going into the infantry.
OI!!
Was a bit surprised by that by CR, the guys who rise to the top seem to be either Guards Infantry or Green Jackets as were, earning the old Black Button Mafia name, and will undoubtedly be from the Rifles in future.
The last and first few Chiefs of the defence staff seem follow this pattern. Now whether they are the “best men” is a different question.
There is a difference between conscription in war time and military careerism.
The difference between Forrest Gump and Captain Dan if you like.
PBers will have known about this for a few weeks already though. I think if we do get a major success story out of Argentina over the next two years we're going to see a lot of push back from "Nobel prize winners" and other assorted "experts" telling us not to believe what we can see or that the real world experience there doesn't apply elsewhere for "reasons".
It’s probably too early to tell but all that piece says is that the new government is serious about reducing the deficit and inflation. Both good things but the implications for poor Argentinians have yet to be seen.
I think Argentina probably needed some sort of shock therapy.
The mistake all economists seem to make, of whichever political persuasion, is to think that what works for one economy at one time in history must necessarily work for all economies always.
Hence we get IEA think tankers concluding what Britain needs now is a repeat of 1980s Thatcherism, when we've already Thatcherised, or left wing economists arguing developing countries should adopt Nordic social models they can't afford. We saw the damage the post-70s obsession with inflation did during years of unnecessarily tight monetary policy in Europe, particularly from the Bundesbank, and conversely too many people hung up on the orthodoxy that inflation had disappeared and we were free to print money when Covid and the Russian war came along.
So I hope (and my Argentinian colleagues are optimistic) that Milei's reforms could disrupt the doom loop of the Argentine economy, but that needn't mean it would work for other very different econcomies.
That's a very good post.
Though it could in theory work in the UK. One thing such policies have in common is the sacrifice of the old and unproductive.
A very different economy to Argentina - S Korea - owes some of its economic success to the same thing. Their rate of pensioner poverty is well over double that of the UK (which is anyway quite high) : https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20231219000599
You can free up a lot of capital for productive investment... if you're sufficiently ruthless.
Though responsibility of families to look after their elderly is part of the reason that Korean women don't have children.
There are different ways to slice the sausage, but it doesn't make it bigger.
"actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever"
This keeps being said, but I'm not sure it's true for me personally. Maybe I'm just an anomoly but on my end of year bonus payment I paid 22.4% total tax and NI because whilst still being in the basic rate for tax on the annual basis I benefitted from the payment in the month exceeding the monthly NI threshold. Anyway income over the basic threshold will now be taxed at 26% rather than the eye watering 32% it was previously. Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
It won't be true for every individual. But the majority of voters are screaming under the burden. They know, and being told "we have just cut your taxes again" won't help the Tories as people see their taxes going up, not down.
So we've reached the point where people are simultaneously complaining they're paying too much tax while also proclaiming they're happy to pay more tax.
Anyway aren't the majority of voters over 55 ?
A group more interested in the availability of cruises than the cost of mortgages.
Segmentation of voters by age is not like other segmentation though (like by social class or geography).
It's quite possible for middle class voters never to interact with - and therefore not care about - working class voters - and vice versa. Or for voters from London not to interact with voters from the urban north, or the countryside.
But every young voter expects to be an old voter at some stage. Pretty much every young voter is related to an old voter, and vice versa. The old and the young are far more concerned about each other than the north and the south, or the rich and the poor. My parents are very keen on their three foreign holidays a year, but are also very keen that their granddaughters have a future. And conversely, my daughters are keen that their grandparents have adequate healthcare in their dotage.
All that said, I take the Bartholomew Roberts line that the tax/benefits system is far too skewed to the pensioners. But the nature of this argument is different to any tussle for resources between classes or geographies or between public and private sector.
Totally unrelated to anything, I've only just realised that the prologue of A-Ha's "The sun always shines on TV" is an epilogue to their famous video of "Take on me"
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
Yes. The negative externalities resulting from motoring are indeed heavily subsidised.
There are next to no negative externalities from motoring. Especially as we transition to clean vehicles.
Congestion is a far worse problem on rail than roads, hence all the bitching and moaning about how shite the rails are despite them carrying a miniscule amount of traffic versus our roads.
"There are next to no negative externalities from motoring." Despite strong competition, that has got to be the craziest stupidest most disgusting thing I have ever read on pb.com
Is the assessment that the budget was reasonable from a political perspective?
1) Shot the Labour non dom fox. This is why opposition parties don't announce too many policies before an election campaign or all the good ones get nicked.
2) Creates a narrative around the NI cuts as the first steps of a journey to abolish employee NI under a hypothetical Tory government. Works better politically than the one-off change from the Autumn budget.
Fiscally there are a whole load of made up numbers that have been fudged (tax rises that will never happen, spending cuts they will never make) but the electorate doesn't pay attention to that level of detail.
I predict a small polling bounce unless new gremlins come out. In which case Sunak would be wise to have an election now before it's all forgotten and the narrative shifts to one of many government failures.
In other words, an election on 2 May? 👍
George Osborne on Political Currency drew attention to the budget speech's valedictory feel. If Hunt thinks he might not be around for the Autumn Statement, it might be he has heard certain rumours, or he could be guessing like the rest of us.
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
Yes. The negative externalities resulting from motoring are indeed heavily subsidised.
There are next to no negative externalities from motoring. Especially as we transition to clean vehicles.
Congestion is a far worse problem on rail than roads, hence all the bitching and moaning about how shite the rails are despite them carrying a miniscule amount of traffic versus our roads.
"There are next to no negative externalities from motoring." Despite strong competition, that has got to be the craziest stupidest most disgusting thing I have ever read on pb.com
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
Yes. The negative externalities resulting from motoring are indeed heavily subsidised.
There are next to no negative externalities from motoring. Especially as we transition to clean vehicles.
Congestion is a far worse problem on rail than roads, hence all the bitching and moaning about how shite the rails are despite them carrying a miniscule amount of traffic versus our roads.
You live in a world of fantasy, comrade.
Putting aside all the other, well trodden arguments - the £100 billion cumulative cut to fuel duty has been regressive, with car ownership and car mileage highly correlated with household incomes.
That's not a blanket rule, of course - many people in the highlands of Scotland are poor and entirely reliant on their cars. But still - most poor people are relatively much more likely walk or take a bus (where it exists).
The fact Trump has any chance is deeply disturbing
On the budget, after Hunt concluded Starmer was ready for an immediate response, but when Eleanor Laing asked for approval on what is normally given , the SNP loudly said no and even though Laing asked again they repeated the 'no' resulting in a needless division and Starmer having to wait 20 minutes, interrupting the media coverage of Starmer's reply and frankly diluting the moment
Looks like the SNP are going to disrupt proceedings as much as possible as a protest over Speaker Hoyle's error over the Gaza debate
No grown up politics there then
On the budget it was sensible and political and the big story is undoubtedly the ending of NI in time. It is something @BartholomewRoberts has been campaigning for and others and seems to have Labour demanding to know how it is paid for, which indicates they had not given it thought and are worried it would be popular
It is grossly unfair on workers and equalising IT and NI into one tax is the right thing to do and would make work pay
I also note labour are going to approve all the budget measures which does ask the question what are they going to do differently
And finally the next election will follow Hunt's autumn statement and I would think 14th November may well be favourite
If the Tories had had half a brain, they would have abolished NI now, and put up income tax to compensate, with a stated aim of eventually getting income tax down some more. That way they could actually claim some tax simplification.
It would also help solve the use of personal service companies to doge NI, so they could then abolish IR35 which is a significant barrier to growth.
The issue with IR35 is around Employer NI, rather than employee NI.
Employer NI is a nightmare to abolish, because most people don’t experience it directly yet it raises £100bn.
If Employers paid the 13.8% of NI they pay into government into employees pensions instead then everyone would have amazing private pension pots.
That's not a bad idea tbh. I think it's right the Gov't reduces employee NI first though, the problem with reducing something like VAT or the 5p fuel cut is it gets snaffled by retailers/forecourt as additional profit whereas people can see tax reductions directly on their payslip.
Thanks. I think VAT or fuel duty cuts do work their way through on the reduction side, but they are much more 'sticky' in feeding through.
Fuel duty cuts for the motorist. Train fare increases for the non-motorist.
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Can you remind me which one is heavily subsidised and which one is taxed through the wazoo ?
Yes. The negative externalities resulting from motoring are indeed heavily subsidised.
There are next to no negative externalities from motoring. Especially as we transition to clean vehicles.
Congestion is a far worse problem on rail than roads, hence all the bitching and moaning about how shite the rails are despite them carrying a miniscule amount of traffic versus our roads.
You live in a world of fantasy, comrade.
Putting aside all the other, well trodden arguments - the £100 billion cumulative cut to fuel duty has been regressive, with car ownership and car mileage highly correlated with household incomes.
That's not a blanket rule, of course - many people in the highlands of Scotland are poor and entirely reliant on their cars. But still - most poor people are relatively much more likely walk or take a bus (where it exists).
Has it been cut? I thought it simply wasn’t increased.
Comments
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/03/01/sir-keir-starmer-suffers-from-electoral-dysfunction-again/
The late great Nigel Lawson was our last tax simplifier and that was a long time ago now. So many complexities to strip away. So many unproductive man hours spent tinkering with the output for tax purposes. It would be a great boost to our productivity.
We have seen what has happened in Zimbabwe when they didn't tackle runaway inflation and a spiralling deficit.
The poor Argentinians are paying the price for the ineptitude of previous administrations no longer there to account for their failings.
The mistake all economists seem to make, of whichever political persuasion, is to think that what works for one economy at one time in history must necessarily work for all economies always.
Hence we get IEA think tankers concluding what Britain needs now is a repeat of 1980s Thatcherism, when we've already Thatcherised, or left wing economists arguing developing countries should adopt Nordic social models they can't afford. We saw the damage the post-70s obsession with inflation did during years of unnecessarily tight monetary policy in Europe, particularly from the Bundesbank, and conversely too many people hung up on the orthodoxy that inflation had disappeared and we were free to print money when Covid and the Russian war came along.
So I hope (and my Argentinian colleagues are optimistic) that Milei's reforms could disrupt the doom loop of the Argentine economy, but that needn't mean it would work for other very different econcomies.
So, stick or twist. Is the "actually you're still paying the most amount of tax ever" budget enough to make Sunak sprint for May? Or do they need another autumn statement and thus slide towards ELE?
Someone working full time on minimum wage will be on over £23,000 per year.
Now minimum wage is lower for younger people, but even there the increases are going to be proportionally greater.
There will also be people who only work part time at minimum wage but they will have other sources of income, likely from the government, which will also be increasing.
Nothing sides more with workers than this policy and I expect it to be in the conservative manifesto
Would have been nice financially if my daughter was 23 days older as we'd have got this term funded rather than waiting for September's 15 hours (A wrinkle the hours moving down to 9 months will obliterate for future cohorts and then some) but you can't have everything
That's not really true any more though, is it ? Not with 25% CT on top of the increased dividend IT rates.
Fiscal drag means that the lowest paid f/t workers benefit least and lose out from the budget.
There is a deep silence on future spending plans for unprotected sectors.
We are reducing debt by the interesting and novel approach of borrowing £114 billion this year.
The IFS in a single line suggests that there is no point in believing a word the chancellor says about anything:
"Borrowing this year, at £114 billion, is still expected to be more than twice the £50 billion forecast in the March 2022 Budget".
The simple truth is that almost none of these budget measures will be enacted, by any party. The country is broken and something more substantial will be needed after the election, whenever it is.
This from behind the Telegraph paywall:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/bankrupt-council-woking-council-debt-investments/
"The scale of the council’s financial mismanagement is staggering. Its annual tax take of £11m is dwarfed by the £62m it spends servicing its debt. It has £1.8bn of loans for assets whose value has plunged by around £600m since they were purchased. By 2026, the council will have accumulated debts of £2.4bn, which is 100 times the size of its annual £24m budget, according to a government review in May. That works out at a notional debt of £19,000 per resident, and would make it England’s most indebted council relative to its size."
and according to the Telegraph, it looks like most of that was down to entirely avoidable vanity projects by a long series of Conservative administrations eg:
"Woking town centre is filled with reminders of the council’s grand ambitions. A trio of 30-storey towers dominate the skyline. On a clear day, the council wanted these buildings – part of the Victoria Square redevelopment – to be visible from the Shard in London. The project has been dogged with problems. Originally estimated to cost £150m, the figure ballooned to £700m due to delays, construction setbacks and the pandemic. Woking council borrowed the money from the Public Works Loan Board, a government body which has since been abolished and its functions taken over by the Treasury."
The last and first few Chiefs of the defence staff seem follow this pattern. Now whether they are the “best men” is a different question.
IFS Footnote: The full state pension, before tax, will purchase a £30 bottle of champagne every day, while leaving £1.51 per day for other items.
Anyway aren't the majority of voters over 55 ?
A group more interested in the availability of cruises than the cost of mortgages.
And poor pensioners won't be paying a penny in ICT. Well off ones should indeed pay their fair share of the bills same as anyone else.
Though it could in theory work in the UK. One thing such policies have in common is the sacrifice of the old and unproductive.
A very different economy to Argentina - S Korea - owes some of its economic success to the same thing. Their rate of pensioner poverty is well over double that of the UK (which is anyway quite high) :
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20231219000599
You can free up a lot of capital for productive investment... if you're sufficiently ruthless.
Reeves was pretty uninspiring on Today this morning. It depressed me a little. On a topic like tax and spend I really want someone who can engage with the issues and try to explain their position, rather than - as she did - mouthing pre-prepared lines like "I want to reduce taxes for working people".
Politicians who try to explain things properly and earnestly are so much more appealing, to me at least. History does suggest they don't do very well politically though. Consider a shortlist of recent examples: Rory Stewart, John McDonnell, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, David Gauke, Nick Boles, Angela Eagle, Barry Gardner. All explainers, and all either out of politics or sidelined now. The only explainers I can think of who are still in the mix are Cameron mark II, and Layla Moran.
Arafat had an opportunity to create a Palestinian state in that land but rejected it. He chose instead to keep the border issue undecided in favour of future negotiations.
C'est la vie.
Israel can and absolutely should do whatever suits their own interests and strengthens their hand in future negotiations. Pandering has failed.
And if you introduce means testing, many, many people will feel cheated. Partly because they planned their finances to include the SP. So HMG will have mis-sold the SP for decades if it suddenly pulls part of it. Except that it was a forced sale. The equivalent of a fraudster or a pension fund raider in the private pension market.
Also -
(a) bureaucracy
(b) means testing bears heavily on the poor, disorganised, chronically ill (mentally and physically) and now also computer illiterate
He's had rather a better day than Bairstow.
FDR was also an explainer. He did OK.
218 is an excellent result if you're sent in by the other side. A shocker if you're choosing to bat.
The impact of January's cut was set out in January 2024's report by the government actuary https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65a63be564060200143cb6ed/E03014858_Un_Act_GAD_NIF_Uprating_Report_Jan24_Web_Accessible.pdf
This is shown in chart 1.2
As a result of the NIC reduction (the Act) and the increase in pensions (the draft order) there is forecast to be a deficit in the National Insurance fund for 2024/25. Following the Budget yesterday, this will be approximately £10billion worse.
Chart 1.3 looks at the Fund balance
This is going down by £10 billion a year, resulting in Treasury Grants (ie funding from general taxation) requirements in a couple of years time.
The National Insurance Fund pays for state pensions (96% of payments) and contributory employment and support allowances (4% of payments).
Clearly all part of the "war on the motorist".
Instead they should be paying a full and proper rate of tax on the £120k per year (which would net out like phasing out the pension) rather than paying a lower rare as NI etc doesn't apply.
The Government is to be fair doing the right thing here. Hope Labour keeps it up.
Abolish subsidies and equalise taxes instead. Going to work on a train should net after related expenditure be as heavily taxed (not subsidised) as going to work in a car.
Then we can have equality.
It already does, to an extent.
Including eg those who have £120k in non-wage earnings per annum in retirement.
Congestion is a far worse problem on rail than roads, hence all the bitching and moaning about how shite the rails are despite them carrying a miniscule amount of traffic versus our roads.
Among other things, he has drastically cut the official (fixed) exchange rate.
Basically, the entire house is on fire. Economic opinion is divided whether what he is doing, is turning off the gas supply to the fire, or throwing petrol on it.
BTW the bloke from the OBR this morning was good. He answered every question with precision. Instead of wasting our time with politicians the BBC etc should use IFS/OBR and even more slanted groups like IEA and their more leftward counterparts much more.
If the BBC had an editorial policy of never asking back people who don't answer questions their act would be sharpened up quite a bit. And they can still cover what they say fairly by reporting parliament properly.
Except that it should be attorneys general, I think?
One point I would make though is that he will find refinancing easier if he is running for president (and indeed, *is* president) than if he's an ordinary citizen, simply because he can leverage the power, patronage and regulatory functions of the US state to favour those who'd lend him money and disfavour those who didn't.
Sure, that's illegal but since when has that bothered Trump, particularly when faced with an existential crisis? He'd have a patsy at Treasury, specifically (in part anyway), to protect Trump's financial interests, and a pliant Republican caucus in Congress to protect against impeachment.
but not both. This, of course, like cheese, is a disgrace.
So much for the party of workers
Those who are paying well under the same share others would on the same income, are paying marginally more.
Spin that however you want, it's the right thing to do.
Ukraine’s Allies Line Up Funds for 800,000 Artillery Shells
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-06/ukraine-s-allies-line-up-funds-for-800-000-artillery-shells
Ukraine’s allies have lined up nearly all the funding required for a Czech-led initiative to purchase hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, according to a government official familiar with the arrangements.
The commitments mean that the shells could be delivered to Ukraine in a matter of weeks, according to separate people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The precise timing would depend on contractual and delivery schedules, and could slip, the people cautioned...
If its like UC etc and means tested then the rich stop having any interest in it and its core principle is undermined. Any person may, by their own efforts, ensure that by being prudent enough they lose out of £11,000 a year. Not good politics. And they all vote.
Enfortumab Vedotin and Pembrolizumab in Untreated Advanced Urothelial Cancer
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2312117
The difference between Forrest Gump and Captain Dan if you like.
There are different ways to slice the sausage, but it doesn't make it bigger.
It's quite possible for middle class voters never to interact with - and therefore not care about - working class voters - and vice versa. Or for voters from London not to interact with voters from the urban north, or the countryside.
But every young voter expects to be an old voter at some stage. Pretty much every young voter is related to an old voter, and vice versa. The old and the young are far more concerned about each other than the north and the south, or the rich and the poor. My parents are very keen on their three foreign holidays a year, but are also very keen that their granddaughters have a future. And conversely, my daughters are keen that their grandparents have adequate healthcare in their dotage.
All that said, I take the Bartholomew Roberts line that the tax/benefits system is far too skewed to the pensioners. But the nature of this argument is different to any tussle for resources between classes or geographies or between public and private sector.
Keep mum till the manifesto’s done.
Reminder: Hunt owns seven flats. Watch our investigation.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1765399402938552715
Led By Donkeys thinks Hunt might have a biscuit in the property game. (6 minute video.)
By hinting that NI could be abolished without explaining how, he has set the hare running that Income Tax must rise to compensate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ir9HC9vYg
Because I'm a simple soul, this has made me very happy.
Nugget for election watchers: budget red book states there will not be another spending review before next election 👀
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1765385311914242412
That's not a blanket rule, of course - many people in the highlands of Scotland are poor and entirely reliant on their cars. But still - most poor people are relatively much more likely walk or take a bus (where it exists).