On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
And there's the rub.
We have persuaded ourselves that tax rates should be low and thresholds should be high. In the face of it, those sound like good positions to take.
But one of the consequences of that is that we have to withdraw benefits far too quickly at the bottom end, because there doesn't seem to money to do anything else.
It was Blair who talked about ideas that sound good after thirty seconds can sound bad after three minutes, wasn't it?
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
No they won't and indeed where they are widened as in Canada it is to the likes of those with severe mental illness who are often the young and middle aged more than the old. Not that that should be allowed anyway as it is effectively state sanctioned murder
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
No they won't and indeed where they are widened it is to the likes of those severe mental illness who are often the young and middle aged as much as the old. Not that that should be allowed anyway as it is effectively state sanctioned murder
Exactly what they said in canada then low and behold they got widened
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
No they won't and indeed where they are widened it is to the likes of those severe mental illness who are often the young and middle aged as much as the old. Not that that should be allowed anyway as it is effectively state sanctioned murder
Exactly what they said in canada then low and behold they got widened
And more young people with mental illness in Canada are killing themselves, so doing sod all about the ageing population, indeed even making it worse.
Polls in the UK of course are firmly anti euthanasia for mental illness and if it wasn't for Trump the Liberals would have lost power in part because of Canada's now too lax euthanasia law.
Indeed Canada is even worse off than we are with a TFR of just 1.33 now and a median age of 40.6 to our 40.1
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
No they won't and indeed where they are widened as in Canada it is to the likes of those with severe mental illness who are often the young and middle aged more than the old. Not that that should be allowed anyway as it is effectively state sanctioned murder
Besides this country has a long history of state sanctioned murder even to the present day, unless you don't think drone strikes, or sending an sas unit to gibralter are not state sanctioned murder by a conservative government too I note
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
No they won't and indeed where they are widened as in Canada it is to the likes of those with severe mental illness who are often the young and middle aged more than the old. Not that that should be allowed anyway as it is effectively state sanctioned murder
The one that was interesting was the disabled lady who was offered euthanasia because she was requesting some additional help - a ramp for her house, IIRC.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
No they won't and indeed where they are widened as in Canada it is to the likes of those with severe mental illness who are often the young and middle aged more than the old. Not that that should be allowed anyway as it is effectively state sanctioned murder
Besides this country has a long history of state sanctioned murder even to the present day, unless you don't think drone strikes, or sending an sas unit to gibralter are not state sanctioned murder by a conservative government too I note
No they aren't, they are eliminating terrorists and those threatening British territory ie defence of the realm and national security
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
God how idiotic can you get.?
Well he would have sided with Trump on Ukraine if he had been PM and is therefore a traitor.
Has anyone who is of the view we should have let Putin overrun Ukraine managed to explain why they think this yet declaring war on Nazi Germany to protect Poland was the right thing to do?
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
God how idiotic can you get.?
Well he would have sided with Trump on Ukraine if he had been PM and is therefore a traitor.
That doesn’t make him a traitor. It just means you disagree with him on foreign policy
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
So you want to give people who have made a conscious decision to cost the tax payer more a tax break?
Sounds sensible given our now well below average fertility rate
Because you believe more people in the world is a good thing....its not
It certainly is in the West and Far East otherwise the young will have to pay ever higher taxes to support an ageing population and we will need even more immigrants to fill job roles leading and yet more far right backlash.
Africa could do with a few less babies maybe, the UK a few more
No they won't because now we have the assisted dying bill going through
Which only applies to those with a terminal illness and less than 6 months to live and who want it anyway, so little difference.
We continue to be ever more top heavy population wise and with an ever ageing population indeed the median voter in the UK is now 50
Correction only applies currently to those, like every other country that has brought one in the parameters will be widened.
No they won't and indeed where they are widened it is to the likes of those severe mental illness who are often the young and middle aged as much as the old. Not that that should be allowed anyway as it is effectively state sanctioned murder
Exactly what they said in canada then low and behold they got widened
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
God how idiotic can you get.?
Well he would have sided with Trump on Ukraine if he had been PM and is therefore a traitor.
Has anyone who is of the view we should have let Putin overrun Ukraine managed to explain why they think this yet declaring war on Nazi Germany to protect Poland was the right thing to do?
I'm not of that view but I don't think it's that difficult to justify why the two cases are different from the perspective of our national interest, and in any case we didn't do that much to protect Poland directly.
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
God how idiotic can you get.?
Well he would have sided with Trump on Ukraine if he had been PM and is therefore a traitor.
That doesn’t make him a traitor. It just means you disagree with him on foreign policy
Nope. If you side with a dictator who wants to overturn the international order, despises us, and who poisoned people living in the UK you are a traitor.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
Merging tax and NI after offering the 3 year NI exception to secure the deal with India would be quite ruthless.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
If you do it, you do it at the start of your five year term and hope to ride it out.
Which is why labours first budget was a lost opportunity to do something about the triple lock and tax/NI.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
You could always go half way - lower combined tax rate, for the lower rate, for pensioners. So it would be pensioners with more than £50k income who bear the brunt of it.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
it making the country richer is not obvious to any one that is unthinkingly pro immigration, some immigration does, some doesn't and costs more in public services than they pay in tax
GDP is really a shit measure to argue because gdp often doesnt increase the general populations wealth
Individual immigrants can be a burden on the state, as can individual British citizens, to a rather greater extent as it happens. If you want to talk about how to be selective in immigration, I am happy to have that conversation. But we're talking about immigration in aggregate. The assertion that immigration overall makes the country poorer is incorrect. This is backed up by data.
It’s not clearly phrased but what he is saying is that an increase in gdp doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in gdp per capita
I just typed an invented (by me) phrase into Google to see what their AI made of it.
The phrase was: "heir to the throne of the cat royal family".
It came up with: "The "heir to the throne" in the fictional "cat royal family" concept refers to the cat family's leader, the one who will inherit the position of head of the family. In this context, it's not about succession to a crown or a throne, but rather about the leader role within the family. Cat Royal Family: This refers to a fictional or metaphorical group of cats, often presented as if they are a royal family, with specific family members and roles. Metaphor: The idea of a "cat royal family" and "heir to the throne" is a fun, imaginative way to discuss the dynamics within a cat family, how they might interact with each other, and who might be the "leader" of their group."
Very amusing. I suppose it would do this for any nonsense phrase.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
it making the country richer is not obvious to any one that is unthinkingly pro immigration, some immigration does, some doesn't and costs more in public services than they pay in tax
GDP is really a shit measure to argue because gdp often doesnt increase the general populations wealth
Individual immigrants can be a burden on the state, as can individual British citizens, to a rather greater extent as it happens. If you want to talk about how to be selective in immigration, I am happy to have that conversation. But we're talking about immigration in aggregate. The assertion that immigration overall makes the country poorer is incorrect. This is backed up by data.
It’s not clearly phrased but what he is saying is that an increase in gdp doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in gdp per capita
It doesn't. But it also doesn't necessarily mean a decrease in wealth in GDP per capita, as others here imply, and the figures show it doesn't in practice.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
And the band played believe it if you like.
Well, going back to the point about care workers. I'm not sure the country will get behind: "Your grandmother died covered in her own shit because there weren't any care workers. And that's OK because we knocked a couple of digits off a number Reform are banging on about."
I really don't know what Yvette Cooper thinks she's doing,
88% of care workers are British and it's a job that does not require any qualifications, other than passing a DBS for safeguarding.
If homes can't fill their vacancies it's either they are not paying enough, or they have poor conditions for their staff. Both are fixable by management without recourse to minimum wage migrants.
It is fixable if the higher costs are funded by individuals and the government, which they won't be. So you are in practice saying it's OK for our grandmothers to die covered in their own shit, because to allow immigration is worse. We have options and each option has consequences.
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
God how idiotic can you get.?
Well he would have sided with Trump on Ukraine if he had been PM and is therefore a traitor.
That doesn’t make him a traitor. It just means you disagree with him on foreign policy
Nope. If you side with a dictator who wants to overturn the international order, despises us, and who poisoned people living in the UK you are a traitor.
We are not at war with Russia.
Farage’s position makes him a despicable human being, but not a traitor
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 2m This is potentially huge for the pharma industry, if it is sustained. US pharma prices equalling the lowest elsewhere in the world would force massive structural change in international pharma pricing, including across Europe.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
And there's the rub.
We have persuaded ourselves that tax rates should be low and thresholds should be high. In the face of it, those sound like good positions to take.
But one of the consequences of that is that we have to withdraw benefits far too quickly at the bottom end, because there doesn't seem to money to do anything else.
It was Blair who talked about ideas that sound good after thirty seconds can sound bad after three minutes, wasn't it?
Reality is we have to give money to people who otherwise don't have the money to live on.
Equally we can't give them too much money because we don't want people working to not work.
But I suspect the taper is because we never looked at other options - and a lot of that is Gordon Brown's fault because he gave tax credits to anyone earning less than £4x,000 who had children (I know because we received it).
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
Oh that's easily fixed - you bring back the WFA for OAPs and the income tax merger is the quid pro quo...
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
If you do it, you do it at the start of your five year term and hope to ride it out.
Which is why labours first budget was a lost opportunity to do something about the triple lock and tax/NI.
I see you have had fun and games on here today, lots of racially charged posts about immigration (which is a shame and why I thought it best to keep off before I started effing and jeffing at some of the truly unpleasant posts) and @kamski got banned for insulting @Taz
Well the other day @Taz called me a sp@cker. Not a term I was familiar with but apparently it means I have cerebral palsy. Classy guy.
Kamski did not get banned for calling someone a spacker
No he didn't he got banned for swearing at the poster that offended me with that vile term.
If you mean me, I've never used the c-word with you or anyone else on this site. If you don't mean me, nevermind.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
And the band played believe it if you like.
Well, going back to the point about care workers. I'm not sure the country will get behind: "Your grandmother died covered in her own shit because there weren't any care workers. And that's OK because we knocked a couple of digits off a number Reform are banging on about."
I really don't know what Yvette Cooper thinks she's doing,
88% of care workers are British and it's a job that does not require any qualifications, other than passing a DBS for safeguarding.
If homes can't fill their vacancies it's either they are not paying enough, or they have poor conditions for their staff. Both are fixable by management without recourse to minimum wage migrants.
It is fixable if the higher costs are funded by individuals and the government, which they won't be. So you are in practice saying it's OK for our grandmothers to die covered in their own shit, because to allow immigration is worse. We have options and each option has consequences.
Again, 88% of the staff already are British citizens. It is a totally false dichotomy to pretend the choice is immigration or dying covered in their own shit.
The choice is funding it properly, or not - immigration is neither here nor there. If they choose not to fund it, then that's a political choice.
Just as we’ve now - belatedly - admitted that mass immigration makes us poorer, not richer, so we will soon admit that - in many areas - it leads to higher crime
A questionable assertion given the available data.
The lump of labour fallacy is back in fashion. Data doesn't come into it
The lump of labour fallacy cuts both ways. If there isn't a set amount of work that needs doing then you can't assert that we need to import people to do it.
I'm not asserting anything one way or the other one on the need for immigration. I do assert that immigration makes the country richer - that should be obvious - and it could be useful for tax revenues for example that help fund a better lifestyle for the population. The data I have seen shows wealth per head is essentially a wash. Each immigrant on average increases the GDP in proportion. It benefits the indigenous population however as immigrant jobs tend to be lower paid allowing the indigenous population more opportunity for a higher paid job. You might be better restricting higher wage immigration than minimum wage ones that everyone focuses on.
it making the country richer is not obvious to any one that is unthinkingly pro immigration, some immigration does, some doesn't and costs more in public services than they pay in tax
GDP is really a shit measure to argue because gdp often doesnt increase the general populations wealth
Individual immigrants can be a burden on the state, as can individual British citizens, to a rather greater extent as it happens. If you want to talk about how to be selective in immigration, I am happy to have that conversation. But we're talking about immigration in aggregate. The assertion that immigration overall makes the country poorer is incorrect. This is backed up by data.
It’s not clearly phrased but what he is saying is that an increase in gdp doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in gdp per capita
It doesn't. But it also doesn't necessarily mean a decrease in wealth in GDP per capita, as others here imply, and the figures show it doesn't in practice.
Due to the fact that a growing population requires growing infrastructure, which requires capital-heavy investment, then it should be a growth per capita and not just 'a wash' to be neutral.
Neutral per capita but needing extra infrastructure is going backwards.
Which is why we should be bringing in skilled migrants, not unskilled ones. Boost our economy, not drag it down.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
It's analogous to the argument about tariffs. If exporters to the US had the pricing power to charge more, then wouldn't they already be doing it? Either way it's disruptive.
The stupid home Secretary, wet lettuce cooper, has instantly caused a massive crisis in the UK care industry. You can’t just switch off immigration like a tap that shouldn’t be on - how many zillion care homes now close? where do their customers go other than the NHS bed blocking? What now happens to NHS and hospital and treatment waits thanks to this stupid policy decision?
THERES CONSEQUENCES TO JUST SUDDENLY SWITCHING OFF IMMIGRATION WITHOUT WARNING TO INDUSTRIES.
Not least the horrendous damage of your actual actions not meeting your policy announcements.
Care homes pre-dated these visas and they'll survive past them too. Last data I've seen showed shows that 88% of employees in care homes are British anyway.
Supply and demand may mean that wages need to rise beyond minimum wage to fill vacancies. Oh dear, how sad, nevermind.
You havn’t provided any answers to social care crisis in your pirate response.
The Boris, Truss and Sunak governments were not nearly stupid enough to do something as stupid as what Labour announced today - switching off immigration whilst there is a need for it. The last government are known as stupid and unelectable for putting out vibes they would switch the gushing immigration off, whilst actually doing the opposite. Labour have so quickly shredded themselves by making the same mistakes, trapping themselves between fantasy and reality.
To be tough on immigration you first need to get in place mitigation for all immigration you don’t really need. No other way of doing it. Labour have kicked sorting social care crisis into the long grass, just like, for all their bluster, the Conservatives did.
This bolsters what an awful week it’s been for this Labour government. This little period of getting themselves caught with rhetoric they can’t deliver on, caught in no man’s land between EU and Trump on trade, is defining why they lose the next election.
Yes, it's completely insane.
They are not taking any active steps to stop the most visible form of illegal migration, that causes the most anger among voters, which is the boats crossing the channel. Their war on the migration 'gangs' will be as successful as the 'war on drugs' & the boats will continue to arrive & the hotels will keep filling up.
Instead Labour are stopping migration from the one source, aged care workers, where even a lot of Reform voters might be Ok to have a limited number of migrants.
I doubt many Reform voters are eager to go and work in aged care. They want to stop the entry of migrant criminals, as a top priority, and then the entry of migrants who take good well-paying jobs, such as tradesmen & factory workers. Instead of prioritising this, Labour instead goes & stops the entry of aged care workers.
And, no, a Labour government that is cutting Winter Fuel Allowance, won't be putting any more money into aged care. So, the end result will voters who continue being angry about the boats and are now also angry about the deteriorating quality of aged care services.
See the numbers I posted from the gov (above). Visas for recruited abroad carers have collapsed under scrutiny.
- The care home workforce is 750k - It’s 88% U.K. origin. - So 90,000 of immigrant origin. - at one point, the number of visas for carers was 6 figures. Per year. - Last year, one company arranged for 1200 visas. But employs 20. The BBC found multiple allegations against them of selling non-existent jobs.
I strongly suspect that the government found that very few of the people getting visas to work in care homes were ending up working in care homes.
Very strange that Yvette Cooper isn't saying anything like that, if that's the reason.
But is instead talking about improving carers' pay to make the jobs more attractive to UK workers. I wonder whether there is any kind of plan to fund better pay.
Almost certainly no plan.
The only reason to restrict visas is if there are too many UK nationals chasing limited vacancies.
I could think of another reason - the visas aren’t leading to people in the actual jobs.
If they are merely enriching the kind of middle man con man everyone so loves, why not ditch them and let the immigration numbers tumble?
Not really. Either there's a shortage of available labour or there's not. If there is a shortage but visas aren't alleviating that shortage, you need to fix how you do the visas. If there's no shortage you don't need to offer the visas.
My point stands.
No. You are again making the lump of labour fallacy!
There's never a shortage of labour. Import people and the quantity of jobs needed goes up. Lose people and it goes down. It scales.
There might be a shortage of skilled labour, but this is unskilled work (as in it requires no qualifications and anyone can do it) so it's moot.
ONS comparison of average incomes. Caring comes under "Caring, leisure and other services". The message if you look at the top pay in that sector, is you need someone like Mick Lynch to negotiate for you. He may be looking for a new role now he has retired.
I see you have had fun and games on here today, lots of racially charged posts about immigration (which is a shame and why I thought it best to keep off before I started effing and jeffing at some of the truly unpleasant posts) and @kamski got banned for insulting @Taz
Well the other day @Taz called me a sp@cker. Not a term I was familiar with but apparently it means I have cerebral palsy. Classy guy.
Kamski did not get banned for calling someone a spacker
No he didn't he got banned for swearing at the poster that offended me with that vile term.
If you mean me, I've never used the c-word with you or anyone else on this site. If you don't mean me, nevermind.
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
God how idiotic can you get.?
Well he would have sided with Trump on Ukraine if he had been PM and is therefore a traitor.
That doesn’t make him a traitor. It just means you disagree with him on foreign policy
Nope. If you side with a dictator who wants to overturn the international order, despises us, and who poisoned people living in the UK you are a traitor.
We are not at war with Russia.
Farage’s position makes him a despicable human being, but not a traitor
The "interesting" financial relationship both with the Leave campaign and Farage personally suggests, at best, Russian subversion- but potentially something a lot more sinister.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
You are absolutely correct: the second order effect one would expect, however, would be that as the total amount of money you could make from Drug X is now (say) 20% lower, then you will simply do slightly less R&D, and therefore you will see slightly less new drug development.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
If you do it, you do it at the start of your five year term and hope to ride it out.
Which is why labours first budget was a lost opportunity to do something about the triple lock and tax/NI.
I think I've been saying that for months now...
Well you were not a lone voice. I was saying it last year as were a few others here.
Attitudes to Russia and Ukraine are a useful Britishness litmus test, I feel.
neither labour nor lib dems can complain....corbyn would have sold us out to a foreign power...putin....whoever is the leader of the lib dems would sell us out to a foreign power the eu
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
And there's the rub.
We have persuaded ourselves that tax rates should be low and thresholds should be high. In the face of it, those sound like good positions to take.
But one of the consequences of that is that we have to withdraw benefits far too quickly at the bottom end, because there doesn't seem to money to do anything else.
It was Blair who talked about ideas that sound good after thirty seconds can sound bad after three minutes, wasn't it?
All the greedy gits wanting to impoverish pensioners, the ones that worked hard for 50 years so the lazy barstewards can do next to nothing now but whinge and collect free money from the state. Get out and work you lazy barstewards and if you cannot afford children keep your pants zipped up.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
That just shows how out of touch you are with the base.
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
Malthouse's letter only supported recognition of Palestine as a state, as 149 UN members states now do and as the UK government has supported a 2 state solution.
I assume your parents believe Israel should take full control of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and support full Jewish settler occupation of Palestinian lands? ie little different to the hardline parties in Netanyahu's Cabinet hence their vote for Reform. However even most Tory voters aren't that hardline Zionist and the oldest ones remember the King David Hotel bombing
No. This is very simple.
Only left-wingers bleat on about Palestine, and Palestinian statehood.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
But then doesn't working 16 hours and claiming benefits become the local maximum for millions more people? You've only saved 20% on your bill. And that's if the changes don't encourage more people to choose that local maximum. Maybe you save nothing.
Perhaps something time-limited -- some sort of glideslope?
The key is to avoid cliff edges, and there are many ways to do it (including simply taxing benefits), but if it is not done you end up disincentivizing people from working because you have insanely high real marginal tax rates.
And then the longer they are out of work, the harder it is to get them back into work.
Our tax and benefits system discourages people from working, and also encourages us to import low skilled labour. This seems like a deeply fucked up situation to be in.
This statement – the longer they are out of work, the harder it is to get them back into work – should be reversed. The longer applicants have been jobless, the more likely their application is to be dismissed because the hiring manager infers they are mentally ill or incapacitated through drink or drugs or have just been released from prison, or because the hiring manager simply figures that every other company they've applied to has found something wrong so why take the chance, or because the hiring manager has 50 otherwise similar applicants doing the same job for a rival company just up the road or even in a faraway land of which we know nothing, who can hit the ground running.
And this matters because it alters the framing. The question is no longer how to force the idle and feckless into work but how to persuade employers to give the long-term unemployed an even break.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
But then doesn't working 16 hours and claiming benefits become the local maximum for millions more people? You've only saved 20% on your bill. And that's if the changes don't encourage more people to choose that local maximum. Maybe you save nothing.
Perhaps something time-limited -- some sort of glideslope?
The key is to avoid cliff edges, and there are many ways to do it (including simply taxing benefits), but if it is not done you end up disincentivizing people from working because you have insanely high real marginal tax rates.
And then the longer they are out of work, the harder it is to get them back into work.
Our tax and benefits system discourages people from working, and also encourages us to import low skilled labour. This seems like a deeply fucked up situation to be in.
This statement – the longer they are out of work, the harder it is to get them back into work – should be reversed. The longer applicants have been jobless, the more likely their application is to be dismissed because the hiring manager infers they are mentally ill or incapacitated through drink or drugs or have just been released from prison, or because the hiring manager simply figures that every other company they've applied to has found something wrong so why take the chance, or because the hiring manager has 50 otherwise similar applicants doing the same job for a rival company just up the road or even in a faraway land of which we know nothing, who can hit the ground running.
And this matters because it alters the framing. The question is no longer how to force the idle and feckless into work but how to persuade employers to give the long-term unemployed an even break.
That's a different question and it has little to do with the problem we were trying to solve.
The question we were trying to solve is @BartholomewRoberts one that people are only working 12 say hours a week because the marginal tax on the 13th hour of work makes working it economically insane because there is little point in working more than 12 hours when you only receive £1-2 an hour from the extra work once your tax credits are cut.
And the reduced hours people on tax credits work is one reason why we've ended up needing to import low skill foreign workers.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
You are absolutely correct: the second order effect one would expect, however, would be that as the total amount of money you could make from Drug X is now (say) 20% lower, then you will simply do slightly less R&D, and therefore you will see slightly less new drug development.
It could go the other way
If the revenue per drug variant drops, the way for the drug companies to increase revenue is to increase the number of drug variants they sell.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
And there's the rub.
We have persuaded ourselves that tax rates should be low and thresholds should be high. In the face of it, those sound like good positions to take.
But one of the consequences of that is that we have to withdraw benefits far too quickly at the bottom end, because there doesn't seem to money to do anything else.
It was Blair who talked about ideas that sound good after thirty seconds can sound bad after three minutes, wasn't it?
All the greedy gits wanting to impoverish pensioners, the ones that worked hard for 50 years so the lazy barstewards can do next to nothing now but whinge and collect free money from the state. Get out and work you lazy barstewards and if you cannot afford children keep your pants zipped up.
Nope - the consequences of changing the tax system won't impoverish poor pensioners - it may however reduce the number of overseas cruises for some who could easily afford to pay more tax.
You will note my scheme has always included returning the WFA to ensure the very poorest pensioners receive more money.
Yes that is a different problem which is why I isolated one particular statement in my reply. Different but related in that it is not applicants at fault.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
Oh gee that's a completely novel concept, completely missed it. Never knew that. That changes everything. 😉
You are one of the few people who gets it: and it's infuriating to me. Everyone is so focused on the symptoms of a broken tax and benefits system, and they are desperate to solve those, that they miss the underlying cause.
It's like trying to treat an alcoholic with repeated liver transplants.
I understand that there is a trap and that people behave rationally around it. I hate them for it a bit as I think working for a living is the right thing to do, but I get that others will disagree. But I have not yet seen a solution that’s fair to those in the trap at the same time as other people who don’t recieve the benefits but are low paid. Are they not unfairly penalised if the others get a boost to help them out?
The taper is the killer because to reduce the percentage of the taper you end up with more people receiving it at the fringes because suddenly people earning up to £35,000 or so start qualifying for a tiny bit of it.
I actually wonder if the only solution is to give children a £5000 or so tax allowance that can be given to the parents. if that was tapered away between £40,000 and £60,000 it might solve a lot of low paid issues. I suspect it would require putting a penny on income tax but it may solve a lot of the problems we see at the moment.
Why taper between £40,000 and £60,000? All that does is mean that the marginal tax rate for parents in that group is really high? Why not simply give each kid a £5,000 tax benefit transfers to the parents.
Now, sure, it'd be expensive, but maybe you could combine it with reducing the personal allowance slightly, and merging NI and income tax.
In other words:
(1) Parents would be better off (2) Unemployed parents would be able to enter the workforce without having ruinious tax rates - which would benefit the whole country, because we'd have more British people working (3) The burden would most largely on wealthy pensioners
But *if* it could reduce levels of economic activity, it would not just be morally good, it would largely pay for itself, and it would significantly reduce the demand for unskilled immigrant labour.
Why taper - because I'm trying to work out how to make it as tax and cost neutral as possible and the first objection from the Treasury would be do you really want 3-5p on income tax to pay for this (to which my answer would be yes but it would be dead as proposal before we began).
To make it tax neutral, you simply merge income tax and NI, therefore taxing pensioners more.
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
Merging tax and NI after offering the 3 year NI exception to secure the deal with India would be quite ruthless.
Yep but it would solve the complaint that Indian consultancies now have an unfair advantage.
Personally I wouldn't want to 100% merge employee NI with Income tax - but 4% off NI and on income tax would generate some extra revenue..
Yes that is a different problem which is why I isolated one particular statement in my reply. Different but related in that it is not applicants at fault.
To solve that you need to provide support / incentives for companies which would probably best be done via a different level of employer NI for the first 2 years of employment for long term unemployed people.
Yes that is a different problem which is why I isolated one particular statement in my reply. Different but related in that it is not applicants at fault.
To solve that you need to provide support / incentives for companies which would probably best be done via a different level of employer NI for the first 2 years of employment for long term unemployed people.
Or research, persuasion, and if necessary directives to public sector employers or those who would do business with the public sector.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 2m This is potentially huge for the pharma industry, if it is sustained. US pharma prices equalling the lowest elsewhere in the world would force massive structural change in international pharma pricing, including across Europe.
The lowest anywhere in the world is ridiculous.
But it’s quite common to have the lowest from a basket of similar countries.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
You are absolutely correct: the second order effect one would expect, however, would be that as the total amount of money you could make from Drug X is now (say) 20% lower, then you will simply do slightly less R&D, and therefore you will see slightly less new drug development.
Is there also a risk as this is a form of price control then some drug supply will simply dry up ?
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
"I am a liberal, centrist dad Remainer. I desperately wish we could rejoin the European Union. I really don’t like Donald Trump. I could go on. But if a general election were held tomorrow, I would seriously consider voting Reform. In fact, Nigel Farage’s party is increasingly likely to get my support.
Nick is an interesting man who works for a think tank. I’ve read (skimmed) a couple of his reports on how to get people back into work. It’s thoughtful.
They need to go after Farage and even if it’s controversial someone in the Labour Party needs to call him a traitor . Cause controversy by calling him that, have a big argument . It might at least get some media attention .
God how idiotic can you get.?
Well he would have sided with Trump on Ukraine if he had been PM and is therefore a traitor.
That doesn’t make him a traitor. It just means you disagree with him on foreign policy
Nope. If you side with a dictator who wants to overturn the international order, despises us, and who poisoned people living in the UK you are a traitor.
We are not at war with Russia.
Farage’s position makes him a despicable human being, but not a traitor
The "interesting" financial relationship both with the Leave campaign and Farage personally suggests, at best, Russian subversion- but potentially something a lot more sinister.
If you have evidence post it.
Don’t just smear. Papers have reported on people like Aaron Banks but we need to be careful for OGH’s sake
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
You are absolutely correct: the second order effect one would expect, however, would be that as the total amount of money you could make from Drug X is now (say) 20% lower, then you will simply do slightly less R&D, and therefore you will see slightly less new drug development.
Or you accept that the Pharma industry has massively abused Tufts/diMasi and that they will accept a lower return on capital.
(More likely it will accelerate the shift of R&D to biotech at the same time as restricting the risk capital available until there is more clarity. Glad I am not long the XBI!)
Kit Malthouse's letter to Palestine has gone down like a cup of cold sick in North-West Hampshire amongst the Tory base.
He's lost both my parents vote to Reform over it.
I'd be especially worried about my father who is as staunch and loyal a Conservative as they come.
So the Tories lose supporters over a rare outbreak of basic humanity in their ranks, in the face of an increasingly ugly attempt to eradicate an entire people?
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
That is a complete misrepresentation. I’d go so far to say it’s a lie.
Reform - who I do not and will not vote for - have banned ALL flags except the Union flag, the cross of St. George and the county flags.
That is not the same as banning the flag of Ukraine specifically.
On the subject of importing low skilled workers (as carers, etc.), I think that this board is missing the biggest problem.
Marginal tax rates - once benefit reductions are included - are often in the 70-80% range for the poorest. For an unemployed mother trying to get back to work, and currently receiving housing benefit, marginal tax rates can be well over 100%.
Brits aren't stupid: if you offer them the opportunity to work 20 hours a week in a care home, and to end up with less money than they started with... well, they will choose not to work.
If you want to reduce the dependence on the care industry on low skilled, low paid immigrants, then ensure that for people coming off unemployment, that they get to keep 80% of what they earn.
But then doesn't working 16 hours and claiming benefits become the local maximum for millions more people? You've only saved 20% on your bill. And that's if the changes don't encourage more people to choose that local maximum. Maybe you save nothing.
Perhaps something time-limited -- some sort of glideslope?
The key is to avoid cliff edges, and there are many ways to do it (including simply taxing benefits), but if it is not done you end up disincentivizing people from working because you have insanely high real marginal tax rates.
And then the longer they are out of work, the harder it is to get them back into work.
Our tax and benefits system discourages people from working, and also encourages us to import low skilled labour. This seems like a deeply fucked up situation to be in.
This statement – the longer they are out of work, the harder it is to get them back into work – should be reversed. The longer applicants have been jobless, the more likely their application is to be dismissed because the hiring manager infers they are mentally ill or incapacitated through drink or drugs or have just been released from prison, or because the hiring manager simply figures that every other company they've applied to has found something wrong so why take the chance, or because the hiring manager has 50 otherwise similar applicants doing the same job for a rival company just up the road or even in a faraway land of which we know nothing, who can hit the ground running.
And this matters because it alters the framing. The question is no longer how to force the idle and feckless into work but how to persuade employers to give the long-term unemployed an even break.
What you *don't* do is increase the risk to the employer of giving them a chance
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
You are absolutely correct: the second order effect one would expect, however, would be that as the total amount of money you could make from Drug X is now (say) 20% lower, then you will simply do slightly less R&D, and therefore you will see slightly less new drug development.
It could go the other way
If the revenue per drug variant drops, the way for the drug companies to increase revenue is to increase the number of drug variants they sell.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1m Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
Bad optics for Labour if this ends up making the NHS model unviable just after they signed a deal with Trump.
The theory that, if pharma firms get less from the US, they can simply demand more elsewhere is a bit dubious. I mean, they want to make as much money as possible, and always have. How has their pricing power in non-US markets increased? Were they just being charitable to us before?
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
You are absolutely correct: the second order effect one would expect, however, would be that as the total amount of money you could make from Drug X is now (say) 20% lower, then you will simply do slightly less R&D, and therefore you will see slightly less new drug development.
Or you accept that the Pharma industry has massively abused Tufts/diMasi and that they will accept a lower return on capital.
(More likely it will accelerate the shift of R&D to biotech at the same time as restricting the risk capital available until there is more clarity. Glad I am not long the XBI!)
I don't get how it's going to work. Let's suppose the NHS buys at the lowest price (and it doesn't because there will be third world countries paying less). But the NHS is a single purchaser buying in massive bulk and once the sale agreement all that's left is marketing and selling to GPs and similar.
In the US you've got to sell to the consumer on TV who will then demand drug X rather than Y (due to TV advertising) after diagnosis. That TV advertising isn't cheap and will disappear if the cost can't be covered by the price the drug manufacturer can sell them for.
On the other hand the price of insulin in the US is so insanely high something needs to be done.
Rabbit hole for those that wish to jump down - It's all about Greenland.
If the profit on the drugs produced by Novo Nordisk is seriously compromised and given the company's contribution to Denmark's finances, the Danish may want to do a deal with Donald.
@StillWaters would you prefer if I didn't faithfully reflect sentiment on the ground?
I could do without the histrionic ad hominem, please. Otherwise me and people like me will shut up, you'll stay in a comfortable little bubble, and be wholly surprised and blindsided by the political change when it comes.
Comments
Polls in the UK of course are firmly anti euthanasia for mental illness and if it wasn't for Trump the Liberals would have lost power in part because of Canada's now too lax euthanasia law.
Indeed Canada is even worse off than we are with a TFR of just 1.33 now and a median age of 40.6 to our 40.1
Real “ballast existence” stuff, eh?
Trump attacks ‘Big Pharma’
https://x.com/kobeissiletter/status/1921693313993703458?s=61
I realise they vote, which makes it a non-starter. While the poor people being screwed by the tax system don't. But I'm trying to do what's right, rather than what's popular.
Which is why labours first budget was a lost opportunity to do something about the triple lock and tax/NI.
The phrase was: "heir to the throne of the cat royal family".
It came up with: "The "heir to the throne" in the fictional "cat royal family" concept refers to the cat family's leader, the one who will inherit the position of head of the family. In this context, it's not about succession to a crown or a throne, but rather about the leader role within the family.
Cat Royal Family:
This refers to a fictional or metaphorical group of cats, often presented as if they are a royal family, with specific family members and roles.
Metaphor:
The idea of a "cat royal family" and "heir to the throne" is a fun, imaginative way to discuss the dynamics within a cat family, how they might interact with each other, and who might be the "leader" of their group."
Very amusing. I suppose it would do this for any nonsense phrase.
Huge immigration crackdown launched as Keir Starmer vows to STOP courts from letting foreign crooks dodge deportation
Farage’s position makes him a despicable human being, but not a traitor
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
2m
This is potentially huge for the pharma industry, if it is sustained. US pharma prices equalling the lowest elsewhere in the world would force massive structural change in international pharma pricing, including across Europe.
erm…
For a boring berk, he has more front than Southend!
Equally we can't give them too much money because we don't want people working to not work.
But I suspect the taper is because we never looked at other options - and a lot of that is Gordon Brown's fault because he gave tax credits to anyone earning less than £4x,000 who had children (I know because we received it).
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
1m
Suppose the NHS medicines bill rose only 50% as a consequence of Trump's move here (& it could be more). That would be an extra £10bn Reeves would have to find.
https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1921704286850855379
The choice is funding it properly, or not - immigration is neither here nor there. If they choose not to fund it, then that's a political choice.
Neutral per capita but needing extra infrastructure is going backwards.
Which is why we should be bringing in skilled migrants, not unskilled ones. Boost our economy, not drag it down.
Any effect must be indirect & second-order, surely?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc551/occupationpay/index.html
Crazy they took such a hit for WFA.
Only left-wingers talk about Palestine.
Only left-wingers bleat on about Palestine, and Palestinian statehood.
It's a dog whistle. In the wrong way.
Mods?
And this matters because it alters the framing. The question is no longer how to force the idle and feckless into work but how to persuade employers to give the long-term unemployed an even break.
The question we were trying to solve is @BartholomewRoberts one that people are only working 12 say hours a week because the marginal tax on the 13th hour of work makes working it economically insane because there is little point in working more than 12 hours when you only receive £1-2 an hour from the extra work once your tax credits are cut.
And the reduced hours people on tax credits work is one reason why we've ended up needing to import low skill foreign workers.
However, one concern is that Trump mentions the lowest prices paid internationally which often are by poor countries.
Another is that benefiting American insurance companies is not the same as benefiting American patients.
If the revenue per drug variant drops, the way for the drug companies to increase revenue is to increase the number of drug variants they sell.
That means more R&D
You will note my scheme has always included returning the WFA to ensure the very poorest pensioners receive more money.
Personally I wouldn't want to 100% merge employee NI with Income tax - but 4% off NI and on income tax would generate some extra revenue..
NEW THREAD
But it’s quite common to have the lowest from a basket of similar countries.
Don’t just smear. Papers have reported on people like Aaron Banks but we need to be careful for OGH’s sake
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61782578.amp
(More likely it will accelerate the shift of R&D to biotech at the same time as restricting the risk capital available until there is more clarity. Glad I am not long the XBI!)
If that’s the case then I despair. I say that as someone who for several months after October 7th (anyone is welcome to search old posts) was defending Israel’s right to hit back hard at Hamas.
And they lose supporters to a party whose Kent council leader’s first action in office was to ban the flag of Ukraine from council buildings. There’s a pattern there.
That is a complete misrepresentation. I’d go so far to say it’s a lie.
Reform - who I do not and will not vote for - have banned ALL flags except the Union flag, the cross of St. George and the county flags.
That is not the same as banning the flag of Ukraine specifically.
You are better than that.
In the US you've got to sell to the consumer on TV who will then demand drug X rather than Y (due to TV advertising) after diagnosis. That TV advertising isn't cheap and will disappear if the cost can't be covered by the price the drug manufacturer can sell them for.
On the other hand the price of insulin in the US is so insanely high something needs to be done.
If the profit on the drugs produced by Novo Nordisk is seriously compromised and given the company's contribution to Denmark's finances, the Danish may want to do a deal with Donald.
https://fortune.com/europe/2024/05/01/novo-nordisk-market-value-570-billion-bigger-than-danish-denmark-economy/
Ignoring the Rabbit hole, there is going to be a lot of economic fallout if this goes ahead.
I could do without the histrionic ad hominem, please. Otherwise me and people like me will shut up, you'll stay in a comfortable little bubble, and be wholly surprised and blindsided by the political change when it comes.