Can Our Country afford the Welfare State?

The Labour manifesto is about raising money to invest in services but also about INVESTING in infrastructure and the nation ergo the state will play an active role in developing the economy.

All this hand wringing about welfare is not necessary.

 

I would agree about working tax credit. Make businesses pay a living wage and use the money saved to help small business do so.

Housing is a complex matter. I agree in part. Though if you become unemployed you do get assistance with your mortgage as a home owner. The straightforward 'cure' is to invest in council housing.

 

Not that I agree but isn't there a contradiction to saying things were better in the olden days and thenn saying Labour are rooted in past. I would say to you that things lime re-nationalisation are not about the past they are about the future. Look at Europe efficiently run public services allowing investment and generate funds. You could say that this is learning from.our mistakes. The denationalised railways cost more to the public purse than they ever did.

If you look at the major parties. The conservatives seem to have a very negative view of Britain. They have little positive to say. The Lib Dems are shackled by the lies they told in 2010 and by the poor leadership that allowed them to be out thought over Pr. I admire some of their policies but at the same time by and large it's more of the same. Maybe it's time for something different.

I don't really understand the obsession with welfare. What would you suggest. Shutting the NHS. Making all schools private. Stopping bin collections. Most of the welfare bill goes on pensioners and people in work (over 80 percent) not tbe feckless unemployed. Capitalism has failed these people.

As I said on a separate thread tbe other day visit have volunteered at a Foodbank for 7 years over that time tbe oeople using it have changed from being 60/70 percent unemployed to being 60/70 percent employed. The status quo has failed them. Capitalism had failed them. They work hard they cannot make ends meet. They may get a small amount of welfare. Should we just let them.starve? Bring back the poor house? I also volunteer as a Samaritan the amount of desperation about in work poverty should not be underestimated.

 

Problem is with a mortgage you get (or used to) interest paid after nine months - by that time it could be too late. Agree about council housing but it's unlikely to happen in the near future, so renters need to take responsibility like people with a mortgage should. And I just resent the idea of paying off buy to let mortgages.

 

I remember when the coal industry, the steel industry, the electricity industry, the gas industry, the water industry etc etc were all run by the government. Customers complained that those businesses were not customer oriented. The management made decisions that were not market based. But most of all, it was the relationship with the workforce that was the problem. Industrial relations were a shambles. Why? Because any labour dispute was automatically a dispute with government. The industry could not be allowed to manage its own industrial relations because when the lights went out, it was automatically a government problem. Governments were to blame and governments fell because of it. I do not want to go back to the industrial strife of the 1970s and when the country remembers what that was like, neither will the electorate.

With regard to the welfare state, I do not have any answers, unfortunately. I do think there will come a time when the people say enough, and Brexit might be the catalyst for that. I just do not see a good side to Brexit, and how the voters of Barnsley fell for the lies of Farage and his cronies is anyone's guess.

 

Fully agreed. Quick (well I'll try) example of real life working tax credit flaw;

I am employed by a company. I get my tax and NI stopped at source, plus have a company car and health insurance, so pay a little more tax through benefit in kind. I am a lower rate tax payer, but still, for every £10 I earn, around £6-£6.50 lands in my pocket.

Other side of the coin. I have a 'friend' who is a self-employed 'tradesman'. What bit of tax he does pay, he claims straight back for his fancy van, top notch tools and 'company (sports) car' which his wife drives as she is also an employee as she washes his uniform and bags his receipts up once a year for their accountant to work his magic.

After that, he declares so little, he pays no tax. In fact, he declares so little that the government give him 'top up' to the extent that they even got a grant for a pram and cot when their last child was born. Hence, for every £10 he earns, around £12 lands in his pocket. Twice what lands in mine.

Without self employed trades people, I wouldn't do the job I do, but this is one example of very many I know of. I pay my tax for people who pay none, to benefit from what I, and most of us employed people, do pay.

Hence, working tax credit is majorly flawed.

 

Why have demonized people on the the dole but not the tax dodgers????

 

The self employed argument is a complex one.
I have a limited company & will probably see a sizeable rise in my takes if Labour get in.
I'll still be voting for them though, as I have very little in the way of pension & my family have benefited massively from the NHS, as we have an inherited heart condition. Both my brother & I would have been a long time dead without the NHS. We wouldn't have been covered under a US
insurance type system, as it is a genetic condition & would have had to raise the hundreds of thousands for the operation ourselves, or died.
That's what happens over there.

Some self employed people might not declare their fair share. The HMRC's staff levels are cut to a minimum, but they do investigate different trades where they can.

My business I have people booking us for weddings & parties & corporate events. Everyone on both sides wants a written contract & everything goes through the bank. The only things I do for cash are mates jobs, that I do for cheap anyway.

It's a complicated world out there, but people often see the terms regulation and nationalisation as bad things. If we had more people in HMRC
chasing people for taxes, would that be a bad thing, if the money came in fairly. Anyone who travels on our railways can see that privatisation has largely not worked. One looks at France, a highly unionised country, with a lower population density & they seem to manage a nationalised rail system superbly. Whether a right or left wing government is in power there is never a thought of privatisation over there.

 

Shareholder directors who are paid dividends and are basic rate taxpayers have already seen a tax rise since 2016/17 of up to £2,000.00 approx. Over ten years that will be £20,000 but likely to be more as successive gov'ts reduce the dividend allowance and increase the dividend tax rates. This is under a 'tax cutting' Conservative government.

BTW I'm not commenting whether this is fair, it is just something I didn't expect a Tory chancellor to do. It seems as if the Tories must be supremely confident about their majority as they look to be alienating their traditional core voters... small company owners, buy to let landlords, ageing people with investments who will need social care. They could also be trying to lose the election so they don't have to deal with brexit.

 

You are not the first person to suggest that. Having had nearly a year, but with no sign of actually doing anything constructive towards achieving Brexit and seemingly having not produced detailed analysis into several of the options, it is not hard to see that the task could be beyond them, or the "dire consequences" are so bad that they can't go forward with them without it ending with blood on the streets. No matter how strong the mandate from the people, if their best case analysis indicates job losses in the millions then it would be a serious problem if they pushed on regardless.

 

You make some good points there Scoff.

 

Of course we can afford it. Just stop the high earners from avoiding paying the tax that they should be paying. The rest of us have to sodding well pay and never get away with anything.

 

I can honestly say I wish I were paying 20k a week in tax.

 

I am 66 now and well over the top, but when I was 35 I was sent on a senior managers course at Bradford University. On the final evening, there was an end of course dinner. A senior executive from the HQ of Nestle in Switzerland came over to talk to us. His role in the company was to lead a part of the business concerned with recognising future trends and grasping the opportunities that those trends offered the Nestle business. The first thing he said was UK is in trouble... not now but 30 years down the line. He identified the baby boom generation as the reason. He quite rightly identified the big bulge in the population of the UK, and in most other European countries too. However, he identified it as a particular problem for the UK because of our welfare state.

The jump in the birth rate following the end of the 2nd world war has caused problems for our economy throughout. First it was post natal care, then it was overcrowding in our schools. When the baby boom generation hit the jobs market, the economy was not growing fast enough to provide enough jobs for all the young people that hit the jobs market together. Things have been quiet for the last 20 years or so, but now the baby boom generation is starting to retire. They are drawing their pensions, the are increasing demands on the NHS and they will soon be in need of geriatric care. Someone has to pay. Unfortunately, the baby boom generation were the first to have access to the birth control pill, which cut birth rates dramatically. So now, the first generation that has had to pay for their own university education is the one that has to fork out taxes to pay for the aging costs of the baby boom generation. I'm sorry but the answer is not squeeze them until their pips squeak. The only effect that that will have is to convince our most talented individuals, those who will generate the growth that our economy so badly needs, that it should move somewhere else. Somewhere that will respect their talents more. The country is part of a global market for the best talent, and if it is to keep that talent, it must be competitive in all areas, including tax.

 

Over the last 10-15 years, immigration has increased the number of workers in the country, and they've had kids - increasing the birth rate in the country. So the demographics are not as skewed as they were 20 years ago. It doesn't help that a lot of the baby boomers have now voted to stop immigration which is needed to actually fund their increasingly expensive needs...

 

Quite so, but do not blame me. I was a remainer.

 

Nor me at 58 I was too

 

I did say a lot. I include my parents in this. I might be able to forgive them for it at some point.

 

I remain convinced that once the full horror of our Brexit negotiations are revealed, there will be a huge demand for a re-vote, after all, the original vote was on a principle, but the final decision to leave should be based upon the facts!

 

I wouldn't rule anything out.

One thing I can guarantee is that the likes of Boris & Farage will be nowhere to be seen when the **** hits the fan.