Work gives people structure. People in work are less prone to depression or illness. They derive self worth from making an economic contribution to society.
We want as many people to work as possible.
Perhaps we should pay people more if they work. Some that say that this is a subsidy to employers. Maybe it is. But I reckon the benefits to society of more people working massively outweigh the costs. Wouldn't it be great if everyone* worked, and everyone felt they were doing something useful?
No. Basic first year microeconomics - if the goal of government is to maximise welfare, you want to strike an optimal balance between work and non-work (leisure). So you draw an indifference curve and there is an optimal level for everyone, and everyone's will be different. Some will value leisure (or hate work) so much that it won't benefit them or society for them to do so. Others will want to work as much as they can. But government should not make those decisions for them - they know better what they want, a clear example of asymmetric information. So it should confine itself to raising revenue and let peopel make decisions for themselves.
That's true at an individual level: what's the right balance of work and leisure for you?
But is that true of someone who isn't producing any economic output at all?
I'm not trying to make workers work 100% of the time, I'm trying to make 100% of people workers, even if only for five hours a week.
But why if they don't want to? Who are you to nudge them to do so? You reduce individual welfare, and therefore social welfare overall. And what insight do you have into the marginal value of their output which neither they nor the market has?
Eh?
The empirical evidence is that not working sucks. A 30 year old man who doesn't work is going to suffer all kinds of issues.
We have marginal tax rates of close to 100% (once removal is benefits is included) for people at the lower end of the spectrum.
Given all the proven benefits of work, why not make the marginal tax rate -10%?
If these proposals had been put through by Labour, there would be a big pb discussion around the laffer curve by now! How sure are people that the proposals will raise 1) around what the treasury predict or even 2) more than we do now?
Or does the laffer curve only apply to Labour policies?
Of course the Laffer curve applies and it is being mentioned by a lot of people but indirectly.
A lot of people have responded to say that this is going to discourage work, encourage tax evasion, encourage displacement activity, encourage salary sacrifice etc, etc - those are all part and parcel of what makes the Laffer Curve real.
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, the tax hike hits us high earners quite heavily, from April 2022.
The devil is in the detail though. I note that there is no change in how Social Care is funded until October 2023, and in the meantime current arrangements prevail. The £86 000 cap is roughly 3 years of Social Care at current prices, so will only benefit people after October 2026 or thereabouts, so well after the next election.
The campaign on waiting lists is needed, but cannot really start until operating staff and anaesthetists are freed from working in ICU. In the meantime waiting lists will continue to pile up.
So pay more, get nothing.
How well can the NHS digest a three year (we've been promised it's three years only, after all!) spending boost?
I am sure it will be spent!
What is needed is extra capacity, so new build operating theatres and outpatients clinics and consequent equipment. There also needs to be recruitment and postgraduate training (many surgical residents at my teaching hospital have barely operated in more than a few of the last 18 months).
All this takes time, and planning to create permanent capacity so it won't happen. What will happen is a lot of overtime and WLI payments, and private outsourcing. The private out sourcing is done by moonlighting NHS staff in the vast majority of cases. The end result will be exhausted staff, with money salted away for early retirement and no permanent extra capacity. I may well do quite well out of it personally, as like HGV drivers, my skills are in short supply, and I can be pretty assertive over rates as they can't make me do it.
Off topic, I am back in the country after a couple of months on the US west coast, mixing business with pleasure. Here are some random observations, some of which I've made on here before:
- the scale of the homeless problem in the big cities I visited (in particular SF, LA, Portland and Seattle) is truly shocking. There are shantytowns of a few dozen or so camping tents set up in parks or along roads or freeways and the city governments take weeks or longer to clear them. And in Portland and Seattle in particular, the police seem to have given up enforcing the law around those areas, on the grounds that jailing the homeless "will just make the problem worse" - though if non-homeless jaywalk or something that will raise money for the city, they're onto you quickly enough. I was in Mexico before I headed north, and the homeless were far more numerous and visible in the US - the reverse of my last visit to both countries a couple of years back. - America is expensive to eat in - this is a trend that dates back a couple of decades at least. Limited competition in supermarkets and a government in hock to farmers even more than ours is, together with a strong dollar and general inflation has meant that even eating the crap that poor Americans have to consume is expensive, and eating even moderately well is eye-poppingly so compared to Europe. - the scale of pollution caused by wildfires in the west is literally eye-watering. It wasn't so bad in LA, but I have spent time in Beijing, Delhi and Kathamandu and never experienced worse air quality than in Reno (it was 300-400 while I was there - described as hazardous). Portland was bad too. - the debacle in Afghanistan has ended or at least greatly diminished the halo effect that Biden had in liberal America for disposing of Trump. - mask wearing is much more strictly enforced in the big cities than it ever was in the UK, while in the small towns and rural areas, it is pretty lax. - to judge by yard signs and bumper stickers in the big cities, BLM is still a live issue. And to judge by the same (and casual conversations) in small towns, the allegedly "stolen" Presidential election is too. - there is a stunning property boom, resulting in an incredibly tight market, especially in SF and LA. One of my friends offered more than 10% over asking on 8 properties in LA before he managed to buy one, and in seven of those he wasn't even in the top ten. Bizarrely, the used car market is similarly hot.
(OK, they all come across as moans, but it was a great trip and I'm glad I went).
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
Over the next decade 6000 people are forecast to inherit £200bn. How about those people?
Off topic, I am back in the country after a couple of months on the US west coast, mixing business with pleasure. Here are some random observations, some of which I've made on here before:
- the scale of the homeless problem in the big cities I visited (in particular SF, LA, Portland and Seattle) is truly shocking. There are shantytowns of a few dozen or so camping tents set up in parks or along roads or freeways and the city governments take weeks or longer to clear them. And in Portland and Seattle in particular, the police seem to have given up enforcing the law around those areas, on the grounds that jailing the homeless "will just make the problem worse" - though if non-homeless jaywalk or something that will raise money for the city, they're onto you quickly enough. I was in Mexico before I headed north, and the homeless were far more numerous and visible in the US - the reverse of my last visit to both countries a couple of years back. - America is expensive to eat in - this is a trend that dates back a couple of decades at least. Limited competition in supermarkets and a government in hock to farmers even more than ours is, together with a strong dollar and general inflation has meant that even eating the crap that poor Americans have to consume is expensive, and eating even moderately well is eye-poppingly so compared to Europe. - the scale of pollution caused by wildfires in the west is literally eye-watering. It wasn't so bad in LA, but I have spent time in Beijing, Delhi and Kathamandu and never experienced worse air quality than in Reno (it was 300-400 while I was there - described as hazardous). Portland was bad too. - the debacle in Afghanistan has ended or at least greatly diminished the halo effect that Biden had in liberal America for disposing of Trump. - mask wearing is much more strictly enforced in the big cities than it ever was in the UK, while in the small towns and rural areas, it is pretty lax. - to judge by yard signs and bumper stickers in the big cities, BLM is still a live issue. And to judge by the same (and casual conversations) in small towns, the allegedly "stolen" Presidential election is too. - there is a stunning property boom, resulting in an incredibly tight market, especially in SF and LA. One of my friends offered more than 10% over asking on 8 properties in LA before he managed to buy one, and in seven of those he wasn't even in the top ten. Bizarrely, the used car market is similarly hot.
(OK, they all come across as moans, but it was a great trip and I'm glad I went).
Interesting observations. Glad you had a good trip.
Tight markets are a by-product of the money that the working and generally better off have saved from a year of not spending.
It would be pedantic to point out that a strong $ makes imported food cheaper, or to wonder whether anyone ever takes a bumper sticker off their car?
Of course the stimulus has helped to some extent, but the tight real estate market in the big cities is I think far more a product of absurdly tight planning laws, or "zoning" as Americans call it, like it is over here. A friend in Sacramento works in a lobby group on the subject. The market in LA was very tight before the pandemic.
On the imported food point - America is much more self-sufficient in food than we are. So a stronger $ will indeed lower imported food prices, but less so than here. In addition, of course, you have to allow for protectionism, and the fact that the final price of food is often a relatively small component of the price one pay in a supermarket.
The bumper stickers point is a good one.
Quite interesting - AIUI our planning system here is somewhat the other way, with the glutinous processes being because individual panning applications can be gummed up ad infinitum.
There is zoning to degree (eg shops, gyms -> town centre), but "zonal" is usually described as a feature of mainland European setups, which the latest reforms here are a step towards.
I very much doubt all this extra money for the NHS and social care will change anything.
It will mostly be soaked up by prices and inflation, and the rest will be pissed up the wall, so the extra tax will just crowd out more of the productive economy and suppress people's standard of living.
And, as was said on the previous thread, it won't be the end of it. I expect this precept will increase several times further in the years to come.
It definitely won't help social care. The 'reforms' will almost certainly increase costs to councils, owing to the equalisation of individual and council costs - at the moment the former pay around 40% more on average, subsidising the system. Reducing individual costs would bankrupt care homes, so council costs will go only one way. The vast bulk of the money for social care in these plans is to be used for the overall contributions cap; the net effect for councils will be a very large increase in costs, and a smaller increase in funding.
Before I go to bed, how on earth did you manage to get into the US? I can't leave the US, because if I do I won't be allowed back in (unless I spend two weeks in Mexico or Canada or Bermuda first).
What irritates me more than the actual increases is the fact that it is designed to allow me to pass on my wealth to my children by allowing me to get my consumption paid for by others who have less than me.
How anyone thinks this is right is beyond me.
Yes, but this particular consumption is not a choice. The fact that some incur massive care cost needs and others don't is a form of unfairness. If you disagree then why is expensive cancer care, for example, and also a lottery, not charged to the wealthy? The NHS isn't means-tested and why should care costs which typically are for dementia be any different to other health issues.
I think this is why the issue is so tricky.
Good point. I am rather reacting the selfishness of those who think they have a right to inherit.
This is also tricky. I wouldn't express inheritance of parental assets as a right but the emotional attachment to the family home is different to cash and should not be underestimated.
For many, many people the only asset they amass is the family home, prudently brought and paid for with their hard-earned over their lifetimes. The financial achievement of their lives. That this should be taken away in a care-home lottery whereas others who have no such asset gets their costs paid by other taxpayers (so the home-owner is in effect paying twice) is the source of much indignation and genuine upset.
I can see both sides of this. The proposals yesterday (which are basically Dilnot's) try to steer a middle path.
The issue is that many Gen Xs need their inheritance. Whether or not they'll reward the government, I don't know. It's not like anyone other than on PB is pointing out what this is about.
Personally, I think the issue is that we allowed property prices in London and the South East to get out of control. But once they've gone up, no government wants them to come down (that's a whole world of pain).
Earlier this morning @stocky said, inter alia, 'if you disagree then why is expensive cancer care, for example, and also a lottery, not charged to the wealthy?'
Some years ago we ... bro-in-law and I .... had exactly that 'debate' with the authorities over care for my wife's parents. One of them had Alzheimers, the other a massive stroke, which left them in a situation where 'nothing more could be done for them'. We ended up, I suppose somewhere around a draw; some of the costs were paid, but we did have to sell their house. Which, since neither of them lived in it was fair enough, and in the end there was a little left. If they'd had cancer, of course, and needed in house treatment that would have been provided for as long as necessary. I don't know whether the situation has changed but what struck me at the time was the complete lack of advice and support from those authorities, both LA and NHS; it was just 'you'll, have to pay!'.
I don't think we had a 'right to inherit'; what I did want to do was ensure that there was the maximum amount of ash available to fund both of them...... for what turned out to be a total of five years.
Off topic, I am back in the country after a couple of months on the US west coast, mixing business with pleasure. Here are some random observations, some of which I've made on here before:
- the scale of the homeless problem in the big cities I visited (in particular SF, LA, Portland and Seattle) is truly shocking. There are shantytowns of a few dozen or so camping tents set up in parks or along roads or freeways and the city governments take weeks or longer to clear them. And in Portland and Seattle in particular, the police seem to have given up enforcing the law around those areas, on the grounds that jailing the homeless "will just make the problem worse" - though if non-homeless jaywalk or something that will raise money for the city, they're onto you quickly enough. I was in Mexico before I headed north, and the homeless were far more numerous and visible in the US - the reverse of my last visit to both countries a couple of years back. - America is expensive to eat in - this is a trend that dates back a couple of decades at least. Limited competition in supermarkets and a government in hock to farmers even more than ours is, together with a strong dollar and general inflation has meant that even eating the crap that poor Americans have to consume is expensive, and eating even moderately well is eye-poppingly so compared to Europe. - the scale of pollution caused by wildfires in the west is literally eye-watering. It wasn't so bad in LA, but I have spent time in Beijing, Delhi and Kathamandu and never experienced worse air quality than in Reno (it was 300-400 while I was there - described as hazardous). Portland was bad too. - the debacle in Afghanistan has ended or at least greatly diminished the halo effect that Biden had in liberal America for disposing of Trump. - mask wearing is much more strictly enforced in the big cities than it ever was in the UK, while in the small towns and rural areas, it is pretty lax. - to judge by yard signs and bumper stickers in the big cities, BLM is still a live issue. And to judge by the same (and casual conversations) in small towns, the allegedly "stolen" Presidential election is too. - there is a stunning property boom, resulting in an incredibly tight market, especially in SF and LA. One of my friends offered more than 10% over asking on 8 properties in LA before he managed to buy one, and in seven of those he wasn't even in the top ten. Bizarrely, the used car market is similarly hot.
(OK, they all come across as moans, but it was a great trip and I'm glad I went).
The property market in Socal is insane right now.
It is.
Completely bonkers and - you heard it here first - ripe for a correction.
Off topic, I am back in the country after a couple of months on the US west coast, mixing business with pleasure. Here are some random observations, some of which I've made on here before:
- the scale of the homeless problem in the big cities I visited (in particular SF, LA, Portland and Seattle) is truly shocking. There are shantytowns of a few dozen or so camping tents set up in parks or along roads or freeways and the city governments take weeks or longer to clear them. And in Portland and Seattle in particular, the police seem to have given up enforcing the law around those areas, on the grounds that jailing the homeless "will just make the problem worse" - though if non-homeless jaywalk or something that will raise money for the city, they're onto you quickly enough. I was in Mexico before I headed north, and the homeless were far more numerous and visible in the US - the reverse of my last visit to both countries a couple of years back. - America is expensive to eat in - this is a trend that dates back a couple of decades at least. Limited competition in supermarkets and a government in hock to farmers even more than ours is, together with a strong dollar and general inflation has meant that even eating the crap that poor Americans have to consume is expensive, and eating even moderately well is eye-poppingly so compared to Europe. - the scale of pollution caused by wildfires in the west is literally eye-watering. It wasn't so bad in LA, but I have spent time in Beijing, Delhi and Kathamandu and never experienced worse air quality than in Reno (it was 300-400 while I was there - described as hazardous). Portland was bad too. - the debacle in Afghanistan has ended or at least greatly diminished the halo effect that Biden had in liberal America for disposing of Trump. - mask wearing is much more strictly enforced in the big cities than it ever was in the UK, while in the small towns and rural areas, it is pretty lax. - to judge by yard signs and bumper stickers in the big cities, BLM is still a live issue. And to judge by the same (and casual conversations) in small towns, the allegedly "stolen" Presidential election is too. - there is a stunning property boom, resulting in an incredibly tight market, especially in SF and LA. One of my friends offered more than 10% over asking on 8 properties in LA before he managed to buy one, and in seven of those he wasn't even in the top ten. Bizarrely, the used car market is similarly hot.
(OK, they all come across as moans, but it was a great trip and I'm glad I went).
Good analysis: the one thing I'd take issue with is the forest fires.
America is a wooded country. Forest fires happen. Forests grow until they burn. The longer you keep them from burning, the more organic material there is, and the greater the fires.
Over tens of thousands of years before humankind, the forests grew, there was a spark, and they burnt, and new forests arose from the ashes.
The big change has been that we now aggressively attempt to prevent forest fires spreading. This means that over decades massive quantities of dried organic material accumulates.
There is no way to avoid this stuff, given the climate, ending up in flames. The issue is that public policy (no fires, ever) makes things worse, not better.
The problem - as with flood plains in the UK - is that developers have built into more and more risky areas.
I remember a few years ago someone telling me about Screaming Eagle. Their vineyards survived the fire that burnt everything around them… the fire had burnt the exact same area as it had a decade before and 30 years before that which happened to avoid their land.
And if people hadn’t built in the fire zone there wouldn’t have been any damage
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Is £2000 a year even mathematically possible given the start rate and the over £50k taper?
The 1.25% rise applies to all levels of earned income doesn't it? Incidentally to dividend income too it seems, which is not under normal NI.
Oh yes a couple earning 90k each will be about £2k worse off pa.
It does seem a fairly progressive change.
It is not a progressive change, it is a flat rate tax above the NI threshold.
Off topic, I am back in the country after a couple of months on the US west coast, mixing business with pleasure. Here are some random observations, some of which I've made on here before:
- the scale of the homeless problem in the big cities I visited (in particular SF, LA, Portland and Seattle) is truly shocking. There are shantytowns of a few dozen or so camping tents set up in parks or along roads or freeways and the city governments take weeks or longer to clear them. And in Portland and Seattle in particular, the police seem to have given up enforcing the law around those areas, on the grounds that jailing the homeless "will just make the problem worse" - though if non-homeless jaywalk or something that will raise money for the city, they're onto you quickly enough. I was in Mexico before I headed north, and the homeless were far more numerous and visible in the US - the reverse of my last visit to both countries a couple of years back. - America is expensive to eat in - this is a trend that dates back a couple of decades at least. Limited competition in supermarkets and a government in hock to farmers even more than ours is, together with a strong dollar and general inflation has meant that even eating the crap that poor Americans have to consume is expensive, and eating even moderately well is eye-poppingly so compared to Europe. - the scale of pollution caused by wildfires in the west is literally eye-watering. It wasn't so bad in LA, but I have spent time in Beijing, Delhi and Kathamandu and never experienced worse air quality than in Reno (it was 300-400 while I was there - described as hazardous). Portland was bad too. - the debacle in Afghanistan has ended or at least greatly diminished the halo effect that Biden had in liberal America for disposing of Trump. - mask wearing is much more strictly enforced in the big cities than it ever was in the UK, while in the small towns and rural areas, it is pretty lax. - to judge by yard signs and bumper stickers in the big cities, BLM is still a live issue. And to judge by the same (and casual conversations) in small towns, the allegedly "stolen" Presidential election is too. - there is a stunning property boom, resulting in an incredibly tight market, especially in SF and LA. One of my friends offered more than 10% over asking on 8 properties in LA before he managed to buy one, and in seven of those he wasn't even in the top ten. Bizarrely, the used car market is similarly hot.
(OK, they all come across as moans, but it was a great trip and I'm glad I went).
Good analysis: the one thing I'd take issue with is the forest fires.
America is a wooded country. Forest fires happen. Forests grow until they burn. The longer you keep them from burning, the more organic material there is, and the greater the fires.
Over tens of thousands of years before humankind, the forests grew, there was a spark, and they burnt, and new forests arose from the ashes.
The big change has been that we now aggressively attempt to prevent forest fires spreading. This means that over decades massive quantities of dried organic material accumulates.
There is no way to avoid this stuff, given the climate, ending up in flames. The issue is that public policy (no fires, ever) makes things worse, not better.
The problem - as with flood plains in the UK - is that developers have built into more and more risky areas.
I remember a few years ago someone telling me about Screaming Eagle. Their vineyards survived the fire that burnt everything around them… the fire had burnt the exact same area as it had a decade before and 30 years before that which happened to avoid their land.
And if people hadn’t built in the fire zone there wouldn’t have been any damage
That's certainly a problem. But the US is also terribly averse to controlled burns during the non-fire season to reduce the severity of future fires.
One thing perhaps worth considering is what effect this will have on productivity. Reagan placed reducing taxes on income to incentivise work at the heart of his changes, reasoning that if he couldn’t be bothered to work because all his extra income was taken in tax, nor did the lighting man, or the sound man, or the tea lady (I think those were his examples). And there you have trickle down theory.
We come here to perverse incentives. If working productively doesn’t pay, will people still be willing to work those extra hours? Or will they look to reduce them? Might that in itself nullify the effect of an increased tax?
To pick up the most striking thing in your header though, it also seems to me absolutely crazy that combined NI is actually a higher figure than income tax. I mean - seriously?
It's an easier tax to increase, politically. Irrational, but there it is.
The other point which you made yesterday is that everything which is not health (you gave the example of education) will see an increase in wage/salary costs as a result of this, which they cannot avoid and will not get additional money to cover. Departmental spending for everything outside of health and social care is to be capped.
One other thing, this change actually makes it harder to eventually resolve social care, which will surely need further tax rises beyond this, as in the eyes of the public it will already have been done and paid for. It will be especially hard if the Tories and Boris win the next election.
Before I go to bed, how on earth did you manage to get into the US? I can't leave the US, because if I do I won't be allowed back in (unless I spend two weeks in Mexico or Canada or Bermuda first).
Aren't you allowed in if you are working or studying? A friend's son has just flown out to the States as he starts college there.
Before I go to bed, how on earth did you manage to get into the US? I can't leave the US, because if I do I won't be allowed back in (unless I spend two weeks in Mexico or Canada or Bermuda first).
Aren't you allowed in if you are working or studying? A friend's son has just flown out to the States as he starts college there.
If you're studying, it's fine.
If you've started a business employing 25 Americans, then STAY AWAY.
Interesting post Philip, which I have a great deal of sympathy for, a couple of questions:
i) Do you agree that additional funds need to be raised for the NHS (The Social Care stuff is smoke & mirrors)? ii) If so, would you raise these via taxation or borrowing? iii) If via taxation, how would you raise it? iv) If a general election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
Over the next decade 6000 people are forecast to inherit £200bn. How about those people?
Yes, personally I'm a fan of inheritance tax. It's my favourite tax. Unfortunately the lumpen don't agree. And we know who this government listens to.
The attitude of the younger generation is pathetic. They are the most over-pampered, pandered to generation in history. Everything on a plate and if they cannot do something on their mobile phone they don't give a feck! A generation overwhelmingly unable to read, write, count or spell without the aid of an electronic gadget!
Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before. There was no pot of gold in 1948 when the NHS was set up.
When I first started paying income tax as a student, the basic tax rate was well over 30% and higher rate tax was over 60%. Today it is 21% and 40% in England.
I wouldn't have student loans but then I wouldn't have 100,000+ young adults wasting 3 years attending a jumped up college to get a degree which is largely worthless in the real world when they should be in FE colleges and work based training. That way student tuition for the 200,000 a year in tertiary education could once more be free in England. Blame John Major and Tony Blair for their utterly meaningless drive to have 50% school leavers attending university.
Before I go to bed, how on earth did you manage to get into the US? I can't leave the US, because if I do I won't be allowed back in (unless I spend two weeks in Mexico or Canada or Bermuda first).
As an insurance guy surely you can make Bermuda productive?
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
Over the next decade 6000 people are forecast to inherit £200bn. How about those people?
Yes, personally I'm a fan of inheritance tax. It's my favourite tax. Unfortunately the lumpen don't agree. And we know who this government listens to.
The problem is that IHT is to easy to dodge. Annual property taxes cover the vast majority of wealth, and would hit BTL and second homes as well as most inheiritances, and spread the burden over years rather than as a lump sum.
The attitude of the younger generation is pathetic. They are the most over-pampered, pandered to generation in history. Everything on a plate and if they cannot do something on their mobile phone they don't give a feck! A generation overwhelmingly unable to read, write, count or spell without the aid of an electronic gadget!
Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before. There was no pot of gold in 1948 when the NHS was set up.
When I first started paying income tax as a student, the basic tax rate was well over 30% and higher rate tax was over 60%. Today it is 21% and 40% in England.
I wouldn't have student loans but then I wouldn't have 100,000+ young adults wasting 3 years attending a jumped up college to get a degree which is largely worthless in the real world when they should be in FE colleges and work based training. That way student tuition for the 200,000 a year in tertiary education could once more be free in England. Blame John Major and Tony Blair for their utterly meaningless drive to have 50% school leavers attending university.
Agreed, I blame their parents and grandparents......
Off topic, I am back in the country after a couple of months on the US west coast, mixing business with pleasure. Here are some random observations, some of which I've made on here before:
- the scale of the homeless problem in the big cities I visited (in particular SF, LA, Portland and Seattle) is truly shocking. There are shantytowns of a few dozen or so camping tents set up in parks or along roads or freeways and the city governments take weeks or longer to clear them. And in Portland and Seattle in particular, the police seem to have given up enforcing the law around those areas, on the grounds that jailing the homeless "will just make the problem worse" - though if non-homeless jaywalk or something that will raise money for the city, they're onto you quickly enough. I was in Mexico before I headed north, and the homeless were far more numerous and visible in the US - the reverse of my last visit to both countries a couple of years back. - America is expensive to eat in - this is a trend that dates back a couple of decades at least. Limited competition in supermarkets and a government in hock to farmers even more than ours is, together with a strong dollar and general inflation has meant that even eating the crap that poor Americans have to consume is expensive, and eating even moderately well is eye-poppingly so compared to Europe. - the scale of pollution caused by wildfires in the west is literally eye-watering. It wasn't so bad in LA, but I have spent time in Beijing, Delhi and Kathamandu and never experienced worse air quality than in Reno (it was 300-400 while I was there - described as hazardous). Portland was bad too. - the debacle in Afghanistan has ended or at least greatly diminished the halo effect that Biden had in liberal America for disposing of Trump. - mask wearing is much more strictly enforced in the big cities than it ever was in the UK, while in the small towns and rural areas, it is pretty lax. - to judge by yard signs and bumper stickers in the big cities, BLM is still a live issue. And to judge by the same (and casual conversations) in small towns, the allegedly "stolen" Presidential election is too. - there is a stunning property boom, resulting in an incredibly tight market, especially in SF and LA. One of my friends offered more than 10% over asking on 8 properties in LA before he managed to buy one, and in seven of those he wasn't even in the top ten. Bizarrely, the used car market is similarly hot.
(OK, they all come across as moans, but it was a great trip and I'm glad I went).
The property market in Socal is insane right now.
It is.
Completely bonkers and - you heard it here first - ripe for a correction.
Yes. If I had any certainty of being able to buy our house back I might look at selling it. But my wife would kill me…
Mr. 1000, I had a bit of time without work, and it was loathsome. I'm not a workaholic (indeed, sloth is probably my worst deadly sin) but the sea of time coupled with eroding savings for rent and feeling I couldn't buy much at all was dreadful.
Luckily, it was a purple patch in betting terms, which actually made birthday/Christmas presents easier (in stark contrast to the 2021 season).
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Many wealthy punters like you will of course avoid the rises by salary sacrificing more into their pension schemes and thus avoiding both employer and employee NI rises (and all income tax).
Only to an extent - we have a heavy mortgage and childcare costs so we need the money now.
Also, we don't actually have much in the bank (I've got about 8k savings and my wife has 4k) - our "wealth" derives from our salaries, which we've built through sheer hard work and climbing the corporate ladder over 15+ years, and otherwise won't really be real until the kids leave home and we've paid off the mortgage.
The attitude of the younger generation is pathetic. They are the most over-pampered, pandered to generation in history. Everything on a plate and if they cannot do something on their mobile phone they don't give a feck! A generation overwhelmingly unable to read, write, count or spell without the aid of an electronic gadget!
Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before. There was no pot of gold in 1948 when the NHS was set up.
When I first started paying income tax as a student, the basic tax rate was well over 30% and higher rate tax was over 60%. Today it is 21% and 40% in England.
I wouldn't have student loans but then I wouldn't have 100,000+ young adults wasting 3 years attending a jumped up college to get a degree which is largely worthless in the real world when they should be in FE colleges and work based training. That way student tuition for the 200,000 a year in tertiary education could once more be free in England. Blame John Major and Tony Blair for their utterly meaningless drive to have 50% school leavers attending university.
Sorry, couldn't sleep without addressing this point:
"Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before."
Historically there were a lot more people of working age than there were retirees.
Go look at a chart of the dependency ratio (i.e. the number of retirees per person of working age) for the UK.
Now tell me that the young people of today - who need to spend 10x an average income to get a "starter" home, and where half of income tax receipts are spent on pensions and the NHS - are somehow uniquely coddled.
I can’t see how the tax burden and the UK’s elderly population don’t move up in tandem, no matter how you plan to allocate that burden out via different taxes.
IHT/land taxes/closing loopholes/soak the rich all seem less likely to actually work in practice, let alone to be agreed to by the voting public.
What we really need is massive productivity boosting innovation in medicine and social care - to essentially make it easier to look after more people more effectively with less resource. Easy to say but hard to do. Perhaps this tax increase (and any private insurance market it kickstarts) May start to get entrepreneurs and innovators more focused on this? I don’t know much about any progress made in this area apart from reading the occasional story around use of of robotics in care settings in Japan, which never seem very convincing.
Off topic, I am back in the country after a couple of months on the US west coast, mixing business with pleasure. Here are some random observations, some of which I've made on here before:
- the scale of the homeless problem in the big cities I visited (in particular SF, LA, Portland and Seattle) is truly shocking. There are shantytowns of a few dozen or so camping tents set up in parks or along roads or freeways and the city governments take weeks or longer to clear them. And in Portland and Seattle in particular, the police seem to have given up enforcing the law around those areas, on the grounds that jailing the homeless "will just make the problem worse" - though if non-homeless jaywalk or something that will raise money for the city, they're onto you quickly enough. I was in Mexico before I headed north, and the homeless were far more numerous and visible in the US - the reverse of my last visit to both countries a couple of years back. - America is expensive to eat in - this is a trend that dates back a couple of decades at least. Limited competition in supermarkets and a government in hock to farmers even more than ours is, together with a strong dollar and general inflation has meant that even eating the crap that poor Americans have to consume is expensive, and eating even moderately well is eye-poppingly so compared to Europe. - the scale of pollution caused by wildfires in the west is literally eye-watering. It wasn't so bad in LA, but I have spent time in Beijing, Delhi and Kathamandu and never experienced worse air quality than in Reno (it was 300-400 while I was there - described as hazardous). Portland was bad too. - the debacle in Afghanistan has ended or at least greatly diminished the halo effect that Biden had in liberal America for disposing of Trump. - mask wearing is much more strictly enforced in the big cities than it ever was in the UK, while in the small towns and rural areas, it is pretty lax. - to judge by yard signs and bumper stickers in the big cities, BLM is still a live issue. And to judge by the same (and casual conversations) in small towns, the allegedly "stolen" Presidential election is too. - there is a stunning property boom, resulting in an incredibly tight market, especially in SF and LA. One of my friends offered more than 10% over asking on 8 properties in LA before he managed to buy one, and in seven of those he wasn't even in the top ten. Bizarrely, the used car market is similarly hot.
(OK, they all come across as moans, but it was a great trip and I'm glad I went).
Good analysis: the one thing I'd take issue with is the forest fires.
America is a wooded country. Forest fires happen. Forests grow until they burn. The longer you keep them from burning, the more organic material there is, and the greater the fires.
Over tens of thousands of years before humankind, the forests grew, there was a spark, and they burnt, and new forests arose from the ashes.
The big change has been that we now aggressively attempt to prevent forest fires spreading. This means that over decades massive quantities of dried organic material accumulates.
There is no way to avoid this stuff, given the climate, ending up in flames. The issue is that public policy (no fires, ever) makes things worse, not better.
The problem - as with flood plains in the UK - is that developers have built into more and more risky areas.
I remember a few years ago someone telling me about Screaming Eagle. Their vineyards survived the fire that burnt everything around them… the fire had burnt the exact same area as it had a decade before and 30 years before that which happened to avoid their land.
And if people hadn’t built in the fire zone there wouldn’t have been any damage
That's certainly a problem. But the US is also terribly averse to controlled burns during the non-fire season to reduce the severity of future fires.
Don’t forget that the firemen get upwards of $1,500 per day to fight forest fires…. It’s a nice little earner.
That said they don’t like doing it. There is another organisation that employed a bunch of seasonal firefighters which is responsible. And they resent the full timers. So when they pitch up to help they get out to work coiling hoses while the part-timers get to fight the fires.
Apparently being paid $1,500 per day for coiling hoses is really boring…
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
Over the next decade 6000 people are forecast to inherit £200bn. How about those people?
Yes, personally I'm a fan of inheritance tax. It's my favourite tax. Unfortunately the lumpen don't agree. And we know who this government listens to.
The problem is that IHT is to easy to dodge. Annual property taxes cover the vast majority of wealth, and would hit BTL and second homes as well as most inheiritances, and spread the burden over years rather than as a lump sum.
Not inherently, only because of the 7 year exemption. Abolish that and have a capital transfer tax and its dodgeability disappears. The advantage then is that you have a tax payable only at the point a transaction is made, so there is automatic liquidity, and you don't get that little old lady cropping up who lives in a £20m mansion but has an income of 57p a week.
What we really need is massive productivity boosting innovation in medicine and social care - to essentially make it easier to look after more people more effectively with less resource.
A thoughtful piece from Philip - we have robust debates but I know that he puts his convictions front and centre which more than others manage. Leaving the party you have supported for a long time is a big thing, for me when I realised it was time to go it was a moment of peaceful clarity - only afterward did I realise I should heva done it years before.
On topic this is the government steering themselves towards the rocks on the lip of a big waterfall. A whopping tax rise which will smash their core vote and their new red wall vote, leaving only a dying off pool of rich pensioners protected.
Whats more its explicitly being called an "NHS and Social Care Levy". But provides zero money for social care. And will be swallowed whole by an NHS previously starved of front-line cash without managing to do anything other than slow the decline. "Things will get worse before they get better" said Javid, not facing up to the fact that to divert the cash to social care in a few years he would have to cut the NHS and thus guarantee no getting better at all.
This is the apocalypseofuck of policy disasters. Breaking the manifesto. Breaking their long-standing position on tax. To make the NHS worse and do nothing at all for social care.
I have absolutely no disagreement with @Philip_Thompson comment piece and he does highlight that taxing working people is at a very high level, but it is also true that this has been the case for a long time.
I did say before it was announced I could only support it if it was extended to all working pensioners and that the 8%+ pensioner increase due in April under the triple lock was abolished, and to be fair HMG did apply both
There is tendency to attack pensioner home owners but the vast majority of the 36 billion over 3 years is going to the NHS with 5.5 billion to social care and no change to pensioner contribution to their care before October 2023 and even then they will face substantial sums from their own assets before the state steps in
I would just comment that the sums for social care are not enough and more tax rises are going to be needed
I was not aware that corporation tax rises from 19% today to 25% in 2023 and that is a substantial increase
However, it is necessary and urgent to address the perceived inequality between earned and unearned income, as expressed by Phillip, and I support an increase in IHT and CGT and more council tax bands are needed above the present top one
I would just refer to an anomaly within the NHS re care and it relates to my late sister
She received a terminal cancer diagnosis and then spent 2 years in a nursing home before passing at a cost to the NHS of £110,000
In the next door but one room an elderly lady was admitted with dementia and passed away shortly after my sister. The whole £110,000 had to be paid by her estate
In that example there is an unfairness in the system but to address it would be vastly expensive
I await Rishi's budget on the 27th October with great interest as he does need to put fairness into taxation and let none of us be under any illusion, our NHS and social care system is vastly expensive but it is much treasured institution and we all will need to pay more
A small pedantic point no doubt - but wasn't "Levelling Up" meant to refer to helping the North of England?
Yes - taxes are high and likely to get higher. The country has spent a huge amount in the last 2 years and before then too. The Tories have abandoned their previous policies and approach but this has been known ever since Boris and his brand became a thing in the modern day Tory party.
Add @Philip_Thompson to the ever growing list of people let down by Boris.
On topic, the young are being treated abysmally. And I doubt these proposals will do much to help with social care either anyway. Even worse, neither of the other parties seem to have any ideas either and they're not much better on the trust front either.
Interesting post Philip, which I have a great deal of sympathy for, a couple of questions:
i) Do you agree that additional funds need to be raised for the NHS (The Social Care stuff is smoke & mirrors)? ii) If so, would you raise these via taxation or borrowing? iii) If via taxation, how would you raise it? iv) If a general election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?
i) Yes ii) Borrowing first since its temporary and pandemic-related, not structural. As the economy recovers the deficit will fall. iii) Taxation applicable to all. Income Tax > National Insurance for that, I've long advocated for NI to be abolished and merged into Income Tax but instead the opposite has happened. iv) Spoilt ballot, or possibly tempted to the Lib Dems. Not seen what their alternative proposals are yet.
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
This is the apocalypseofuck of policy disasters. Breaking the manifesto. Breaking their long-standing position on tax. To make the NHS worse and do nothing at all for social care.
The attitude of the younger generation is pathetic. They are the most over-pampered, pandered to generation in history. Everything on a plate and if they cannot do something on their mobile phone they don't give a feck! A generation overwhelmingly unable to read, write, count or spell without the aid of an electronic gadget!
Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before. There was no pot of gold in 1948 when the NHS was set up.
When I first started paying income tax as a student, the basic tax rate was well over 30% and higher rate tax was over 60%. Today it is 21% and 40% in England.
I wouldn't have student loans but then I wouldn't have 100,000+ young adults wasting 3 years attending a jumped up college to get a degree which is largely worthless in the real world when they should be in FE colleges and work based training. That way student tuition for the 200,000 a year in tertiary education could once more be free in England. Blame John Major and Tony Blair for their utterly meaningless drive to have 50% school leavers attending university.
Basic rate was 31% when you were young?
Oh great, well its 49.8% now as per my thread header.
49.8% is higher than 31%
Just because you rebrand income tax as National Insurance and only apply it to workers instead of everyone doesn't make it any less income tax for those who are workers.
This is the apocalypseofuck of policy disasters. Breaking the manifesto. Breaking their long-standing position on tax. To make the NHS worse and do nothing at all for social care.
And the backbenchers will all vote for it today
And the polls tomorrow and next month will show MOE changes.
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
Over the next decade 6000 people are forecast to inherit £200bn. How about those people?
Yes, personally I'm a fan of inheritance tax. It's my favourite tax. Unfortunately the lumpen don't agree. And we know who this government listens to.
The problem is that IHT is to easy to dodge. Annual property taxes cover the vast majority of wealth, and would hit BTL and second homes as well as most inheiritances, and spread the burden over years rather than as a lump sum.
Recipients should have it taxed as income, with some option for spreading the hit over a number of years. Much harder to dodge, then.
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Is the objective not that the "rather well paid" should pick up a bigger chunk of the costs, not that that will make you happy?
I think a variety of sources will continue to be tapped as we saw yesterday- eg the amount on Council Tax per annum raised from "Adult Social Care Precept" is heading towards a billion a year, even though it is voluntary.
I don't doubt that squeezing those who are paid more is politically low-resistance but there are limits, and I already know of a couple of colleagues who are looking to move abroad to Australia.
A lot of people can aspire to salaries of £60-80k at the pinnacles of their careers and my view is we're already heavily taxed whereas those with asset wealth are undertaxed. If workers are made to feel nothing like cash cows here then don't be surprised if more leave.
The attitude of the younger generation is pathetic. They are the most over-pampered, pandered to generation in history. Everything on a plate and if they cannot do something on their mobile phone they don't give a feck! A generation overwhelmingly unable to read, write, count or spell without the aid of an electronic gadget!
Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before. There was no pot of gold in 1948 when the NHS was set up.
When I first started paying income tax as a student, the basic tax rate was well over 30% and higher rate tax was over 60%. Today it is 21% and 40% in England.
I wouldn't have student loans but then I wouldn't have 100,000+ young adults wasting 3 years attending a jumped up college to get a degree which is largely worthless in the real world when they should be in FE colleges and work based training. That way student tuition for the 200,000 a year in tertiary education could once more be free in England. Blame John Major and Tony Blair for their utterly meaningless drive to have 50% school leavers attending university.
Sorry, couldn't sleep without addressing this point:
"Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before."
Historically there were a lot more people of working age than there were retirees.
Go look at a chart of the dependency ratio (i.e. the number of retirees per person of working age) for the UK.
Now tell me that the young people of today - who need to spend 10x an average income to get a "starter" home, and where half of income tax receipts are spent on pensions and the NHS - are somehow uniquely coddled.
The system worked on the basis that you were supposed to retire, play golf for five or ten years tops, and then drop dead. But punters have become too cunning in avoiding that last bit.
The attitude of the younger generation is pathetic. They are the most over-pampered, pandered to generation in history. Everything on a plate and if they cannot do something on their mobile phone they don't give a feck! A generation overwhelmingly unable to read, write, count or spell without the aid of an electronic gadget!
Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before. There was no pot of gold in 1948 when the NHS was set up.
When I first started paying income tax as a student, the basic tax rate was well over 30% and higher rate tax was over 60%. Today it is 21% and 40% in England.
I wouldn't have student loans but then I wouldn't have 100,000+ young adults wasting 3 years attending a jumped up college to get a degree which is largely worthless in the real world when they should be in FE colleges and work based training. That way student tuition for the 200,000 a year in tertiary education could once more be free in England. Blame John Major and Tony Blair for their utterly meaningless drive to have 50% school leavers attending university.
Just flying by and was surprised to read your announcement. Although not of your political persuasion I take no joy in it and hope that this does not lead to a disenchantment with the political process and cause you to detach from political engagement generally and this site in particular. Your wit, wisdom and honesty would be sorely missed.
Keep well and I hope to be engaging with you again in due course, in the best sense naturally!
Given the author has also voted for Tony Blair and Nigel Farage, we should remember he has frequently failed to support the Conservative Party in the past so what is new? It is true that under Cameron the Tory Party won most voters over 35 in 2015, indeed in 2010 the Tories won most voters over 25 so Cameron would probably have had more reservations about raising NI by 1.25% than Boris did.
However the money the NHS needs from Covid and the cost of social care at home in particular needs to come from somewhere. As a result of the Brexit the author also voted for most under 45s voted Labour in both 2017 and 2019. Even Boris in 2019 lost the vote of workers to Labour, it was only the Tories huge lead amongst pensioners in 2019 which won them a majority. So now Boris will put the interest of pensioners and those 45 to 65 year olds waiting for an inheritance first, that it just the nature of the Tory coalition now post Brexit
Interesting post Philip, which I have a great deal of sympathy for, a couple of questions:
i) Do you agree that additional funds need to be raised for the NHS (The Social Care stuff is smoke & mirrors)? ii) If so, would you raise these via taxation or borrowing? iii) If via taxation, how would you raise it? iv) If a general election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?
i) Yes ii) Borrowing first since its temporary and pandemic-related, not structural. As the economy recovers the deficit will fall. iii) Taxation applicable to all. Income Tax > National Insurance for that, I've long advocated for NI to be abolished and merged into Income Tax but instead the opposite has happened. iv) Spoilt ballot, or possibly tempted to the Lib Dems. Not seen what their alternative proposals are yet.
i) Agree - the Social Care problem has been punted into the long grass - though its worth bearing in mind that over half the Social Care budget is not spent on the elderly - so "rich pensioner defending heir's inheritance from working tax payer" is a bit of a caricature. ii) Likely Rishi responsible. iii) Agree - even Guernsey has "NI" on pension income, unlike the UK.
A thoughtful piece from Philip - we have robust debates but I know that he puts his convictions front and centre which more than others manage. Leaving the party you have supported for a long time is a big thing, for me when I realised it was time to go it was a moment of peaceful clarity - only afterward did I realise I should heva done it years before.
On topic this is the government steering themselves towards the rocks on the lip of a big waterfall. A whopping tax rise which will smash their core vote and their new red wall vote, leaving only a dying off pool of rich pensioners protected.
Whats more its explicitly being called an "NHS and Social Care Levy". But provides zero money for social care. And will be swallowed whole by an NHS previously starved of front-line cash without managing to do anything other than slow the decline. "Things will get worse before they get better" said Javid, not facing up to the fact that to divert the cash to social care in a few years he would have to cut the NHS and thus guarantee no getting better at all.
This is the apocalypseofuck of policy disasters. Breaking the manifesto. Breaking their long-standing position on tax. To make the NHS worse and do nothing at all for social care.
I'm not sure it will impact their red wall voters - to do that requires Labour candidates grasping how to vote for it and I just can't see them doing that.
A thoughtful piece from Philip - we have robust debates but I know that he puts his convictions front and centre which more than others manage. Leaving the party you have supported for a long time is a big thing, for me when I realised it was time to go it was a moment of peaceful clarity - only afterward did I realise I should heva done it years before.
On topic this is the government steering themselves towards the rocks on the lip of a big waterfall. A whopping tax rise which will smash their core vote and their new red wall vote, leaving only a dying off pool of rich pensioners protected.
Whats more its explicitly being called an "NHS and Social Care Levy". But provides zero money for social care. And will be swallowed whole by an NHS previously starved of front-line cash without managing to do anything other than slow the decline. "Things will get worse before they get better" said Javid, not facing up to the fact that to divert the cash to social care in a few years he would have to cut the NHS and thus guarantee no getting better at all...
It's not quite as clear cut as that. As I understand it, some of the money raised will initially go to pay for direct Covid costs (eg testing), rather than the existing funding of them entirely from borrowing.
Assuming the end of the pandemic within a year or so, some of that cash will be freed up without a direct hit to the NHS.
The facts are straight forward. We have a growing population of old gits - I am one. We can cure or ameliorate many diseases or illnesses that we couldn't before, and the cost is steadily rising. Everyone is in favour of continuing these advances, but no one wants to pay for them.
Successive governments have backed away from the solutions because they know it would lose them votes. Hypocritical posturing by the opposition is par for the course. Of course they won't put forward an alternative solution because there is no easy one.
With an 80 seat majority, it's up to BoJo to bite the bullet. I can't see Labour ever having that kind of majority in the near future. I admire his pluck.
"Nothing in his life became him, like the leaving it." It could be his valedictory action.
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
Mr G, of N Wales, highlighted one point which the 'fixed, once and for all of social care', ignored: ' A relative received a terminal cancer diagnosis and then spent 2 years in a nursing home before passing at a cost to the NHS of £110,000
In the next door but one room an elderly lady was admitted with dementia and passed away shortly after his relative. The whole £110,000 had to be paid by her estate'
That was our problem, and is the problem for many, many people. We fought, first of all ourselves, and then with the aid of an expert solicitor and a support group, and got some NHS support.
Simply setting a limit doesn't come anywhere near dealing with the issue. It's the fundamental inequality of treatment between different diseases. And until one is affected one doesn't realise the iniquity of the situation.
A small pedantic point no doubt - but wasn't "Levelling Up" meant to refer to helping the North of England?
Yes - taxes are high and likely to get higher. The country has spent a huge amount in the last 2 years and before then too. The Tories have abandoned their previous policies and approach but this has been known ever since Boris and his brand became a thing in the modern day Tory party.
Add @Philip_Thompson to the ever growing list of people let down by Boris.
On topic, the young are being treated abysmally. And I doubt these proposals will do much to help with social care either anyway. Even worse, neither of the other parties seem to have any ideas either and they're not much better on the trust front either.
A mess.
What did you make of Burnham's ideas on social care ?
Just flying by and was surprised to read your announcement. Although not of your political persuasion I take no joy in it and hope that this does not lead to a disenchantment with the political process and cause you to detach from political engagement generally and this site in particular. Your wit, wisdom and honesty would be sorely missed.
Keep well and I hope to be engaging with you again in due course, in the best sense naturally!
PtP
That was nice, so ditto.
I both enjoy and get challenged by discussions with you @Philip_Thompson We agree on a lot but also have had some humdinger disagreement on a number of topics. It is funny that when we agree I think you are putting forward brilliant arguments and when we disagree I think you are being completely dogmatic (I was going to say irrational, but I don't think I could ever call you that). I think that might say more about me than you.
You would be welcome in the LDs, but I suspect you may struggle on a few issues (eg FPTP) so in a way I hope the Tory party changes to fit people like you and @TSE better.
I am not sure this is purely about inheritance anyway. If I was put in a home in my late 70s I'd want to feel that my house full of my stuff was sitting waiting for me to return to. "Don't worry, the only way you are leaving here is in a coffin" is not an answer to that that anyone is likely to give me, or that I'm necessarily going to understand or accept. So it's about security and dignity.
A small pedantic point no doubt - but wasn't "Levelling Up" meant to refer to helping the North of England?
Yes - taxes are high and likely to get higher. The country has spent a huge amount in the last 2 years and before then too. The Tories have abandoned their previous policies and approach but this has been known ever since Boris and his brand became a thing in the modern day Tory party.
Add @Philip_Thompson to the ever growing list of people let down by Boris.
On topic, the young are being treated abysmally. And I doubt these proposals will do much to help with social care either anyway. Even worse, neither of the other parties seem to have any ideas either and they're not much better on the trust front either.
A mess.
What did you make of Burnham's ideas on social care ?
Is there a summary of them?
I think it was something to do with IHT, which wont work.
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Is the objective not that the "rather well paid" should pick up a bigger chunk of the costs, not that that will make you happy?
I think a variety of sources will continue to be tapped as we saw yesterday- eg the amount on Council Tax per annum raised from "Adult Social Care Precept" is heading towards a billion a year, even though it is voluntary.
I don't doubt that squeezing those who are paid more is politically low-resistance but there are limits, and I already know of a couple of colleagues who are looking to move abroad to Australia.
A lot of people can aspire to salaries of £60-80k at the pinnacles of their careers and my view is we're already heavily taxed whereas those with asset wealth are undertaxed. If workers are made to feel nothing like cash cows here then don't be surprised if more leave.
My wife and I had the Switzerland discussion again, neither of us believe this 1.25% will ever stay at 1.25%. before long it's 7.5% and we're into a ~50% net tax rate situation.
Fwiw, that's a loss to the state of around £250k in tax per year in total from our incomes plus whatever we pay in consumption taxes.
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
But unless you do then your views are junk. You are blinded to reality by your own partisan politics
It’s possible to accept that there was a need to sort out social care, something that governments of all colours have found too-difficult for decades. But National Insurance was the wrong way to go about it, for precisely the reasons you raise about the difference between income from work and income from capital. NI is quite literally a tax on jobs.
They could also, of course, have found the money required by reducing spending in other areas.
A small pedantic point no doubt - but wasn't "Levelling Up" meant to refer to helping the North of England?
Yes - taxes are high and likely to get higher. The country has spent a huge amount in the last 2 years and before then too. The Tories have abandoned their previous policies and approach but this has been known ever since Boris and his brand became a thing in the modern day Tory party.
Add @Philip_Thompson to the ever growing list of people let down by Boris.
On topic, the young are being treated abysmally. And I doubt these proposals will do much to help with social care either anyway. Even worse, neither of the other parties seem to have any ideas either and they're not much better on the trust front either.
A mess.
What did you make of Burnham's ideas on social care ?
Is there a summary of them?
I think it was something to do with IHT, which wont work.
It's unfortunate that social care requires long term thinking (and at least a measure of cross party agreement) and we have the ultimate short termist as PM.
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
But unless you do then your views are junk. You are blinded to reality by your own partisan politics
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
But unless you do then your views are junk. You are blinded to reality by your own partisan politics
The average will do fine, as I pointed out there are nowhere near enough properties for all the Londoners who rent who want to buy in the bottom quartile of properties anyway given over half of Londoners now rent
I am not sure this is purely about inheritance anyway. If I was put in a home in my late 70s I'd want to feel that my house full of my stuff was sitting waiting for me to return to. "Don't worry, the only way you are leaving here is in a coffin" is not an answer to that that anyone is likely to give me, or that I'm necessarily going to understand or accept. So it's about security and dignity.
In one's late 70's (and above) it's a discussion one does have.
Just flying by and was surprised to read your announcement. Although not of your political persuasion I take no joy in it and hope that this does not lead to a disenchantment with the political process and cause you to detach from political engagement generally and this site in particular. Your wit, wisdom and honesty would be sorely missed.
Keep well and I hope to be engaging with you again in due course, in the best sense naturally!
PtP
That was nice, so ditto.
I both enjoy and get challenged by discussions with you @Philip_Thompson We agree on a lot but also have had some humdinger disagreement on a number of topics. It is funny that when we agree I think you are putting forward brilliant arguments and when we disagree I think you are being completely dogmatic (I was going to say irrational, but I don't think I could ever call you that). I think that might say more about me than you.
You would be welcome in the LDs, but I suspect you may struggle on a few issues (eg FPTP) so in a way I hope the Tory party changes to fit people like you and @TSE better.
Philip Thompson voted for Brexit in 2016 thus changing the Tory Party from the coalition of workers it was under Cameron to the coalition of pensioners and their heirs it is now. Due to Brexit the Tories have lost many voters under 45 who voted Remain to Labour and the LDs but the Tories have gained lots of pensioners and those over 45 who voted Leave from UKIP and Labour.
It's unfortunate that social care requires long term thinking (and at least a measure of cross party agreement) and we have the ultimate short termist as PM.
If he was the ultimate short termist PM why has he done this?
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
Those with asset wealth.
We've got to stop squeezing workers.
Agree with your concerns.
How does one define asset wealth? Those who own houses have assets. So tax them. But that includes people like you and the tax would have to be paid out of income or savings.
Pension pots? Again this will hit workers.
Etc.
Not saying that this shouldn't be done. From what I understand, these proposals seem to be incoherent and unfair. I just think that taxing wealth will also hit workers as well. There is no option that won't hit some group or other.
The problem seems to be three-fold in my mind:-
1. First, work out what social care system we want. 2. Then work out how to pay for it in a way that is fair and effective. 3. Additionally, work out a way to pay for other public services and the cost of Covid.
This seems to be a mish-mash of social care and NHS, with little regard for fairness or effectiveness and doesn't deal with point 1 at all, as fas I can see.
God knows what happens on 3. Presumably we'll learn that in October.
Work gives people structure. People in work are less prone to depression or illness. They derive self worth from making an economic contribution to society.
We want as many people to work as possible.
Perhaps we should pay people more if they work. Some that say that this is a subsidy to employers. Maybe it is. But I reckon the benefits to society of more people working massively outweigh the costs. Wouldn't it be great if everyone* worked, and everyone felt they were doing something useful?
No. Basic first year microeconomics - if the goal of government is to maximise welfare, you want to strike an optimal balance between work and non-work (leisure). So you draw an indifference curve and there is an optimal level for everyone, and everyone's will be different. Some will value leisure (or hate work) so much that it won't benefit them or society for them to do so. Others will want to work as much as they can. But government should not make those decisions for them - they know better what they want, a clear example of asymmetric information. So it should confine itself to raising revenue and let peopel make decisions for themselves.
That's true at an individual level: what's the right balance of work and leisure for you?
But is that true of someone who isn't producing any economic output at all?
I'm not trying to make workers work 100% of the time, I'm trying to make 100% of people workers, even if only for five hours a week.
But why if they don't want to? Who are you to nudge them to do so? You reduce individual welfare, and therefore social welfare overall. And what insight do you have into the marginal value of their output which neither they nor the market has?
Eh?
The empirical evidence is that not working sucks. A 30 year old man who doesn't work is going to suffer all kinds of issues.
We have marginal tax rates of close to 100% (once removal is benefits is included) for people at the lower end of the spectrum.
Given all the proven benefits of work, why not make the marginal tax rate -10%?
Eh? Because the population want social services that the higher rates of taxes fund. This is all first year economics at any reputable university. Personally I would be entirely happy, as I've said before, to reduce taxes on work, but it could only be done so by axing useless spending, or by increased borrowing.
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
That is a very fair point, but then don't publish something then that is wildly inaccurate.
You see I agree with you (on the limited information I have) that London house prices are awful for first time buyers, but you shoot your own argument in the foot by publishing rubbish. You would have been better off just stating your opinion which I don't think most of those arguing with you would disagree with. I think @Philip_Thompson put it well when I think he said London house prices are f****d.
So I’ve done the maths and I will be circa £10 a month worse off, which is a bit sad because that’s two coffee or pub trips out with friends a month on an already tight budget.
A pub trip out costs you a fiver? Where the hell is that, Ukraine?
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
But unless you do then your views are junk. You are blinded to reality by your own partisan politics
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
But unless you do then your views are junk. You are blinded to reality by your own partisan politics
The average will do fine, as I pointed out there are nowhere near enough properties for all the Londoners who rent who want to buy in the bottom quartile of properties anyway given over half of Londoners now rent
So I’ve done the maths and I will be circa £10 a month worse off, which is a bit sad because that’s two coffee or pub trips out with friends a month on an already tight budget.
A pub trip out costs you a fiver? Where the hell is that, Ukraine?
One drink to catch up with friends, then drive home
Great piece Philip. Everyone has their red line. Everyone realises at some point the store that can be set by this Conservative government's pledges.
Some are happy to go along with it whatever and it is true that the alternatives will need some analysing. But if people don't make a stand when they believe "their" party has taken a wrong turn then politics goes bad.
Just flying by and was surprised to read your announcement. Although not of your political persuasion I take no joy in it and hope that this does not lead to a disenchantment with the political process and cause you to detach from political engagement generally and this site in particular. Your wit, wisdom and honesty would be sorely missed.
Keep well and I hope to be engaging with you again in due course, in the best sense naturally!
PtP
That was nice, so ditto.
I both enjoy and get challenged by discussions with you @Philip_Thompson We agree on a lot but also have had some humdinger disagreement on a number of topics. It is funny that when we agree I think you are putting forward brilliant arguments and when we disagree I think you are being completely dogmatic (I was going to say irrational, but I don't think I could ever call you that). I think that might say more about me than you.
You would be welcome in the LDs, but I suspect you may struggle on a few issues (eg FPTP) so in a way I hope the Tory party changes to fit people like you and @TSE better.
Philip Thompson voted for Brexit in 2016 thus changing the Tory Party from the coalition of workers it was under Cameron to the coalition of pensioners and their heirs it is now. Due to Brexit the Tories have lost many voters under 45 who voted Remain to Labour and the LDs but the Tories have gained lots of pensioners and those over 45 who voted Leave from UKIP and Labour.
He has nobody to blame but himself
Not a bad point at all. What are you still doing in the party (not a facetious question - genuinely curious).
So is the alternative to raising NI to pay for social care is to take the equity in older persons houses...
That will happen anyway since a large number of people do not have £85k in assets outside of their houses. Councils will still end up having a charge on a significant number of homes.
If these proposals had been put through by Labour, there would be a big pb discussion around the laffer curve by now! How sure are people that the proposals will raise 1) around what the treasury predict or even 2) more than we do now?
Or does the laffer curve only apply to Labour policies?
Nope! The changes, especially when combined with a large increase in corporation tax already announced, will influence decision-making is a way that’s negative for the UK economy.
The changes won’t raise as much as the Chancellor thinks they will, and at the margin will require even more draconian intervention of IR35 rules to clamp down on avoidance. The contractor market will be seriously affected.
My wife and I are rather well paid but we calculated the impact of this last night and our household will be over £2,000 worse off a year under these new proposals.
As you can imagine neither of us are happy about it.
Yes, I get you but but fixing social care was always going to cost money and if people like you don't cough up then who else is?
Those with asset wealth.
We've got to stop squeezing workers.
Agree with your concerns.
How does one define asset wealth? Those who own houses have assets. So tax them. But that includes people like you and the tax would have to be paid out of income or savings.
Pension pots? Again this will hit workers.
Etc.
Not saying that this shouldn't be done. From what I understand, these proposals seem to be incoherent and unfair. I just think that taxing wealth will also hit workers as well. There is no option that won't hit some group or other.
The problem seems to be three-fold in my mind:-
1. First, work out what social care system we want. 2. Then work out how to pay for it in a way that is fair and effective. 3. Additionally, work out a way to pay for other public services and the cost of Covid.
This seems to be a mish-mash of social care and NHS, with little regard for fairness or effectiveness and doesn't deal with point 1 at all, as fas I can see.
God knows what happens on 3. Presumably we'll learn that in October.
Tax unearned income the same as earned income, tax pension income the same as earned income. Those two changes will bring in tens of billions per year. It can be achieved by merging NI and income tax. Keep the £12.5k threshold so lower paid workers and low income pensioners actually see a net reduction/no change in tax, most workers see no change while well off pensioners and rentier types see a huge increase in their tax bills.
The way we treat unearned income is ridiculous, investment is already incentivised with CGT being 20%. We don't need to also give income from investments a tax break.
So I’ve done the maths and I will be circa £10 a month worse off, which is a bit sad because that’s two coffee or pub trips out with friends a month on an already tight budget.
A pub trip out costs you a fiver? Where the hell is that, Ukraine?
Welcome to the North - we don't necessarily want to be "levelled up", you know
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
But unless you do then your views are junk. You are blinded to reality by your own partisan politics
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
But unless you do then your views are junk. You are blinded to reality by your own partisan politics
The average will do fine, as I pointed out there are nowhere near enough properties for all the Londoners who rent who want to buy in the bottom quartile of properties anyway given over half of Londoners now rent
Ms. Hughes, I cannot fathom the mind of a Johnson.
I save by instinct. I dislike spending. I have never had an affair. I know how many children I have. I'm not quite the antithesis of the PM but I'm pretty close.
Interesting post Philip, which I have a great deal of sympathy for, a couple of questions:
i) Do you agree that additional funds need to be raised for the NHS (The Social Care stuff is smoke & mirrors)? ii) If so, would you raise these via taxation or borrowing? iii) If via taxation, how would you raise it? iv) If a general election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?
i) Yes ii) Borrowing first since its temporary and pandemic-related, not structural. As the economy recovers the deficit will fall. iii) Taxation applicable to all. Income Tax > National Insurance for that, I've long advocated for NI to be abolished and merged into Income Tax but instead the opposite has happened. iv) Spoilt ballot, or possibly tempted to the Lib Dems. Not seen what their alternative proposals are yet.
So is the alternative to raising NI to pay for social care is to take the equity in older persons houses...
That will happen anyway since a large number of people do not have £85k in assets outside of their houses. Councils will still end up having a charge on a significant number of homes.
We may see a private insurance market for the £86K now that it is capped. Dilnot thought it could happen with a cap.
Just flying by and was surprised to read your announcement. Although not of your political persuasion I take no joy in it and hope that this does not lead to a disenchantment with the political process and cause you to detach from political engagement generally and this site in particular. Your wit, wisdom and honesty would be sorely missed.
Keep well and I hope to be engaging with you again in due course, in the best sense naturally!
PtP
That was nice, so ditto.
I both enjoy and get challenged by discussions with you @Philip_Thompson We agree on a lot but also have had some humdinger disagreement on a number of topics. It is funny that when we agree I think you are putting forward brilliant arguments and when we disagree I think you are being completely dogmatic (I was going to say irrational, but I don't think I could ever call you that). I think that might say more about me than you.
You would be welcome in the LDs, but I suspect you may struggle on a few issues (eg FPTP) so in a way I hope the Tory party changes to fit people like you and @TSE better.
Philip Thompson voted for Brexit in 2016 thus changing the Tory Party from the coalition of workers it was under Cameron to the coalition of pensioners and their heirs it is now. Due to Brexit the Tories have lost many voters under 45 who voted Remain to Labour and the LDs but the Tories have gained lots of pensioners and those over 45 who voted Leave from UKIP and Labour.
He has nobody to blame but himself
Not a bad point at all. What are you still doing in the party (not a facetious question - genuinely curious).
I am a loyal Tory.
I voted for Cameron, I voted Remain in 2016 but I accepted the result and I still back the Tories. I always vote Tory and am a Tory member, even voting Tory in 2001 under Hague when Philip Thompson was voting Labour. I will also vote Tory in 2023/4 when it seems Philip Thompson will vote LD.
However I also recognise Brexit has changed the nature of the Tory coalition from the party mainly of workers under Cameron who had only a small lead amongst pensioners (with some of the latter in particular also voting UKIP in 2015) to a party with a huge lead amongst pensioners but which has lost the vote of most under 45s. It was Brexit which did that and it was Philip Thompson who voted for it not me, he should accept the consequences of his actions
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The empirical evidence is that not working sucks. A 30 year old man who doesn't work is going to suffer all kinds of issues.
We have marginal tax rates of close to 100% (once removal is benefits is included) for people at the lower end of the spectrum.
Given all the proven benefits of work, why not make the marginal tax rate -10%?
A lot of people have responded to say that this is going to discourage work, encourage tax evasion, encourage displacement activity, encourage salary sacrifice etc, etc - those are all part and parcel of what makes the Laffer Curve real.
What is needed is extra capacity, so new build operating theatres and outpatients clinics and consequent equipment. There also needs to be recruitment and postgraduate training (many surgical residents at my teaching hospital have barely operated in more than a few of the last 18 months).
All this takes time, and planning to create permanent capacity so it won't happen. What will happen is a lot of overtime and WLI payments, and private outsourcing. The private out sourcing is done by moonlighting NHS staff in the vast majority of cases. The end result will be exhausted staff, with money salted away for early retirement and no permanent extra capacity. I may well do quite well out of it personally, as like HGV drivers, my skills are in short supply, and I can be pretty assertive over rates as they can't make me do it.
There is zoning to degree (eg shops, gyms -> town centre), but "zonal" is usually described as a feature of mainland European setups, which the latest reforms here are a step towards.
Roughly.
The 'reforms' will almost certainly increase costs to councils, owing to the equalisation of individual and council costs - at the moment the former pay around 40% more on average, subsidising the system. Reducing individual costs would bankrupt care homes, so council costs will go only one way.
The vast bulk of the money for social care in these plans is to be used for the overall contributions cap; the net effect for councils will be a very large increase in costs, and a smaller increase in funding.
Before I go to bed, how on earth did you manage to get into the US? I can't leave the US, because if I do I won't be allowed back in (unless I spend two weeks in Mexico or Canada or Bermuda first).
Personally, I think the issue is that we allowed property prices in London and the South East to get out of control. But once they've gone up, no government wants them to come down (that's a whole world of pain).
Some years ago we ... bro-in-law and I .... had exactly that 'debate' with the authorities over care for my wife's parents. One of them had Alzheimers, the other a massive stroke, which left them in a situation where 'nothing more could be done for them'. We ended up, I suppose somewhere around a draw; some of the costs were paid, but we did have to sell their house. Which, since neither of them lived in it was fair enough, and in the end there was a little left.
If they'd had cancer, of course, and needed in house treatment that would have been provided for as long as necessary.
I don't know whether the situation has changed but what struck me at the time was the complete lack of advice and support from those authorities, both LA and NHS; it was just 'you'll, have to pay!'.
I don't think we had a 'right to inherit'; what I did want to do was ensure that there was the maximum amount of ash available to fund both of them...... for what turned out to be a total of five years.
Completely bonkers and - you heard it here first - ripe for a correction.
This will reduce to £8.30 per day
Puts Casino Royale and Phillip's problems into perspective
25% fall
I remember a few years ago someone telling me about Screaming Eagle. Their vineyards survived the fire that burnt everything around them… the fire had burnt the exact same area as it had a decade before and 30 years before that which happened to avoid their land.
And if people hadn’t built in the fire zone there wouldn’t have been any damage
Strange world, isn't it?
The other point which you made yesterday is that everything which is not health (you gave the example of education) will see an increase in wage/salary costs as a result of this, which they cannot avoid and will not get additional money to cover. Departmental spending for everything outside of health and social care is to be capped.
If you've started a business employing 25 Americans, then STAY AWAY.
i) Do you agree that additional funds need to be raised for the NHS (The Social Care stuff is smoke & mirrors)?
ii) If so, would you raise these via taxation or borrowing?
iii) If via taxation, how would you raise it?
iv) If a general election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?
Who could possibly have known that Johnson was a mendacious spendthrift giving lip service to levelling up? 🤔
Play nicely everyone.
Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before. There was no pot of gold in 1948 when the NHS was set up.
When I first started paying income tax as a student, the basic tax rate was well over 30% and higher rate tax was over 60%. Today it is 21% and 40% in England.
I wouldn't have student loans but then I wouldn't have 100,000+ young adults wasting 3 years attending a jumped up college to get a degree which is largely worthless in the real world when they should be in FE colleges and work based training. That way student tuition for the 200,000 a year in tertiary education could once more be free in England. Blame John Major and Tony Blair for their utterly meaningless drive to have 50% school leavers attending university.
Mood music here sounds like the situation has developed not necessarily to the Government's advantage.
Luckily, it was a purple patch in betting terms, which actually made birthday/Christmas presents easier (in stark contrast to the 2021 season).
Also, we don't actually have much in the bank (I've got about 8k savings and my wife has 4k) - our "wealth" derives from our salaries, which we've built through sheer hard work and climbing the corporate ladder over 15+ years, and otherwise won't really be real until the kids leave home and we've paid off the mortgage.
"Every generation since 1948 has been taxed to pay for the retirement and healthcare of the generations before."
Historically there were a lot more people of working age than there were retirees.
Go look at a chart of the dependency ratio (i.e. the number of retirees per person of working age) for the UK.
Now tell me that the young people of today - who need to spend 10x an average income to get a "starter" home, and where half of income tax receipts are spent on pensions and the NHS - are somehow uniquely coddled.
IHT/land taxes/closing loopholes/soak the rich all seem less likely to actually work in practice, let alone to be agreed to by the voting public.
What we really need is massive productivity boosting innovation in medicine and social care - to essentially make it easier to look after more people more effectively with less resource. Easy to say but hard to do. Perhaps this tax increase (and any private insurance market it kickstarts) May start to get entrepreneurs and innovators more focused on this? I don’t know much about any progress made in this area apart from reading the occasional story around use of of robotics in care settings in Japan, which never seem very convincing.
That said they don’t like doing it. There is another organisation that employed a bunch of seasonal firefighters which is responsible. And they resent the full timers. So when they pitch up to help they get out to work coiling hoses while the part-timers get to fight the fires.
Apparently being paid $1,500 per day for coiling hoses is really boring…
Oh, wait...
On topic this is the government steering themselves towards the rocks on the lip of a big waterfall. A whopping tax rise which will smash their core vote and their new red wall vote, leaving only a dying off pool of rich pensioners protected.
Whats more its explicitly being called an "NHS and Social Care Levy". But provides zero money for social care. And will be swallowed whole by an NHS previously starved of front-line cash without managing to do anything other than slow the decline. "Things will get worse before they get better" said Javid, not facing up to the fact that to divert the cash to social care in a few years he would have to cut the NHS and thus guarantee no getting better at all.
This is the apocalypseofuck of policy disasters. Breaking the manifesto. Breaking their long-standing position on tax. To make the NHS worse and do nothing at all for social care.
BoZo will win the vote
I have absolutely no disagreement with @Philip_Thompson comment piece and he does highlight that taxing working people is at a very high level, but it is also true that this has been the case for a long time.
I did say before it was announced I could only support it if it was extended to all working pensioners and that the 8%+ pensioner increase due in April under the triple lock was abolished, and to be fair HMG did apply both
There is tendency to attack pensioner home owners but the vast majority of the 36 billion over 3 years is going to the NHS with 5.5 billion to social care and no change to pensioner contribution to their care before October 2023 and even then they will face substantial sums from their own assets before the state steps in
I would just comment that the sums for social care are not enough and more tax rises are going to be needed
I was not aware that corporation tax rises from 19% today to 25% in 2023 and that is a substantial increase
However, it is necessary and urgent to address the perceived inequality between earned and unearned income, as expressed by Phillip, and I support an increase in IHT and CGT and more council tax bands are needed above the present top one
I would just refer to an anomaly within the NHS re care and it relates to my late sister
She received a terminal cancer diagnosis and then spent 2 years in a nursing home before passing at a cost to the NHS of £110,000
In the next door but one room an elderly lady was admitted with dementia and passed away shortly after my sister. The whole £110,000 had to be paid by her estate
In that example there is an unfairness in the system but to address it would be vastly expensive
I await Rishi's budget on the 27th October with great interest as he does need to put fairness into taxation and let none of us be under any illusion, our NHS and social care system is vastly expensive but it is much treasured institution and we all will need to pay more
Yes - taxes are high and likely to get higher. The country has spent a huge amount in the last 2 years and before then too. The Tories have abandoned their previous policies and approach but this has been known ever since Boris and his brand became a thing in the modern day Tory party.
Add @Philip_Thompson to the ever growing list of people let down by Boris.
On topic, the young are being treated abysmally. And I doubt these proposals will do much to help with social care either anyway. Even worse, neither of the other parties seem to have any ideas either and they're not much better on the trust front either.
A mess.
ii) Borrowing first since its temporary and pandemic-related, not structural. As the economy recovers the deficit will fall.
iii) Taxation applicable to all. Income Tax > National Insurance for that, I've long advocated for NI to be abolished and merged into Income Tax but instead the opposite has happened.
iv) Spoilt ballot, or possibly tempted to the Lib Dems. Not seen what their alternative proposals are yet.
We've got to stop squeezing workers.
Telegraph
Oh great, well its 49.8% now as per my thread header.
49.8% is higher than 31%
Just because you rebrand income tax as National Insurance and only apply it to workers instead of everyone doesn't make it any less income tax for those who are workers.
Yes I am tediously going on about this stuff because it renders your posts meaningless, as they can be wildly inaccurate, but you really are living in cloud cuckooland if you think this is just me. Yesterday's thread was littered with posts either pointing out your arithmetic errors or making fun of them. There are even posts this morning doing so, even though the topic is not being discussed.
It is worth pointing out that in each discussion it was not me arguing with you in the first place so unless you were arguing with phantoms I certainly am not alone. In fact I didn't actually disagree with you (although you keep failing to see this) I was just pointing out your view may be correct but your argument was wildly flawed.
OK just to make clear the following is not rocket science, in fact I am not particularly knowledgeable on stats and probability. Not my sphere, but this is basis stuff:
We seem to have now convinced you that the arithmetic average was not a good average to use to make your point and you are now accepting the median. I have some bad news for you as the median and mode aren't good either, although they are likely to produce a more realistic result, although they may produce an outrageous result as well eg prices around £200,000 are likely to have increments of £5000, whereas prices around £1,000,000 increments of £50,000 and at £10,000,000 increments of £1,000,000 so you could get a mode of £1,000,000. Also depending upon what price ranges you use you will get different results depending upon clusters.
The point others were trying to make (whether correctly or not) is there are plenty of houses well below the average price you were using so a better argument you could have put for your case would have been to take the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile or decile.
That is just my opinion though and not a fact (just for clarity).
A lot of people can aspire to salaries of £60-80k at the pinnacles of their careers and my view is we're already heavily taxed whereas those with asset wealth are undertaxed. If workers are made to feel nothing like cash cows here then don't be surprised if more leave.
Just flying by and was surprised to read your announcement. Although not of your political persuasion I take no joy in it and hope that this does not lead to a disenchantment with the political process and cause you to detach from political engagement generally and this site in particular. Your wit, wisdom and honesty would be sorely missed.
Keep well and I hope to be engaging with you again in due course, in the best sense naturally!
PtP
However the money the NHS needs from Covid and the cost of social care at home in particular needs to come from somewhere. As a result of the Brexit the author also voted for most under 45s voted Labour in both 2017 and 2019. Even Boris in 2019 lost the vote of workers to Labour, it was only the Tories huge lead amongst pensioners in 2019 which won them a majority. So now Boris will put the interest of pensioners and those 45 to 65 year olds waiting for an inheritance first, that it just the nature of the Tory coalition now post Brexit
Hope he gets asked how he will guarantee that after 2023 the money will go to social care and not be nabbed by NHS.
ii) Likely Rishi responsible.
iii) Agree - even Guernsey has "NI" on pension income, unlike the UK.
A way of avoid all these concerns as per the header that the young are paying for oldies to be in care homes?
As I understand it, some of the money raised will initially go to pay for direct Covid costs (eg testing), rather than the existing funding of them entirely from borrowing.
Assuming the end of the pandemic within a year or so, some of that cash will be freed up without a direct hit to the NHS.
Successive governments have backed away from the solutions because they know it would lose them votes. Hypocritical posturing by the opposition is par for the course. Of course they won't put forward an alternative solution because there is no easy one.
With an 80 seat majority, it's up to BoJo to bite the bullet. I can't see Labour ever having that kind of majority in the near future. I admire his pluck.
"Nothing in his life became him, like the leaving it." It could be his valedictory action.
On the point in question of course I am not going to spend hours trawling the internet to find the arithmetic mean of the bottom quartile of properties, which even then would not provide enough properties for the half of Londoners who rent to buy in the capital even if they wanted
' A relative received a terminal cancer diagnosis and then spent 2 years in a nursing home before passing at a cost to the NHS of £110,000
In the next door but one room an elderly lady was admitted with dementia and passed away shortly after his relative. The whole £110,000 had to be paid by her estate'
That was our problem, and is the problem for many, many people. We fought, first of all ourselves, and then with the aid of an expert solicitor and a support group, and got some NHS support.
Simply setting a limit doesn't come anywhere near dealing with the issue. It's the fundamental inequality of treatment between different diseases. And until one is affected one doesn't realise the iniquity of the situation.
That seems to me to be the easiest tax to avoid.
I both enjoy and get challenged by discussions with you @Philip_Thompson We agree on a lot but also have had some humdinger disagreement on a number of topics. It is funny that when we agree I think you are putting forward brilliant arguments and when we disagree I think you are being completely dogmatic (I was going to say irrational, but I don't think I could ever call you that). I think that might say more about me than you.
You would be welcome in the LDs, but I suspect you may struggle on a few issues (eg FPTP) so in a way I hope the Tory party changes to fit people like you and @TSE better.
I think it was something to do with IHT, which wont work.
Fwiw, that's a loss to the state of around £250k in tax per year in total from our incomes plus whatever we pay in consumption taxes.
It’s possible to accept that there was a need to sort out social care, something that governments of all colours have found too-difficult for decades. But National Insurance was the wrong way to go about it, for precisely the reasons you raise about the difference between income from work and income from capital. NI is quite literally a tax on jobs.
They could also, of course, have found the money required by reducing spending in other areas.
He has nobody to blame but himself
How does one define asset wealth? Those who own houses have assets. So tax them. But that includes people like you and the tax would have to be paid out of income or savings.
Pension pots? Again this will hit workers.
Etc.
Not saying that this shouldn't be done. From what I understand, these proposals seem to be incoherent and unfair. I just think that taxing wealth will also hit workers as well. There is no option that won't hit some group or other.
The problem seems to be three-fold in my mind:-
1. First, work out what social care system we want.
2. Then work out how to pay for it in a way that is fair and effective.
3. Additionally, work out a way to pay for other public services and the cost of Covid.
This seems to be a mish-mash of social care and NHS, with little regard for fairness or effectiveness and doesn't deal with point 1 at all, as fas I can see.
God knows what happens on 3. Presumably we'll learn that in October.
You see I agree with you (on the limited information I have) that London house prices are awful for first time buyers, but you shoot your own argument in the foot by publishing rubbish. You would have been better off just stating your opinion which I don't think most of those arguing with you would disagree with. I think @Philip_Thompson put it well when I think he said London house prices are f****d.
Some are happy to go along with it whatever and it is true that the alternatives will need some analysing. But if people don't make a stand when they believe "their" party has taken a wrong turn then politics goes bad.
Councils will still end up having a charge on a significant number of homes.
The changes won’t raise as much as the Chancellor thinks they will, and at the margin will require even more draconian intervention of IR35 rules to clamp down on avoidance. The contractor market will be seriously affected.
Superb stuff. Impassioned defence of Johnson and Javid's plan.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/09/07/tell-un-conservative-failing-guarantee-elderly-dignified-old/
The way we treat unearned income is ridiculous, investment is already incentivised with CGT being 20%. We don't need to also give income from investments a tax break.
I save by instinct. I dislike spending. I have never had an affair. I know how many children I have. I'm not quite the antithesis of the PM but I'm pretty close.
He is talking about the Care Act of 2014 which was then binned by Cameron and Osborne. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/care-bill-becomes-care-act-2014
I voted for Cameron, I voted Remain in 2016 but I accepted the result and I still back the Tories. I always vote Tory and am a Tory member, even voting Tory in 2001 under Hague when Philip Thompson was voting Labour. I will also vote Tory in 2023/4 when it seems Philip Thompson will vote LD.
However I also recognise Brexit has changed the nature of the Tory coalition from the party mainly of workers under Cameron who had only a small lead amongst pensioners (with some of the latter in particular also voting UKIP in 2015) to a party with a huge lead amongst pensioners but which has lost the vote of most under 45s. It was Brexit which did that and it was Philip Thompson who voted for it not me, he should accept the consequences of his actions