Can Our Country afford the Welfare State?

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by Red Rain, May 22, 2017.

  1. Sco

    Scoff Well-Known Member

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    If it goes as bad as i fear, one or both will have gone into exile before they were lynched.
     
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  2. upt

    upthecolliers Well-Known Member

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    Yes, Boris is a complete Bafoon and for May to make him foreign minister just shows how stupid she is as for Farage Trump's dick sucker if it was 1939 he would be marching down the street in his black shirt alongside Oswald Mosley and William Joyce.
     
  3. Sco

    Scoff Well-Known Member

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    Just to put it out there for discussion, but would anyone object to changing NI into two components - one as health component to cover the cost of the NHS, and the other a pension component that covers the pension part of it. All monies collected to go as stated instead of into some government pot to be dished out as they see fit.

    Both would come directly out of the wage at source (as NI is) or through contributions for the self-employed but would increase as needed to continue funding both as they are now.
     
  4. Red

    Red Rain Well-Known Member

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    Let me take NHS funding first.

    In the commercial world, efficient management of resources is a discipline created by market pressures. A business has to continually find new and better ways of operating in order to create and advantage over a competitor. It is market pressure that creates an efficient business, but where there are no external pressures, the pressures that drive efficiency have to be created artificially. By saying the taxation system will pay, whatever the cost might be, you would be removing even the artificial pressure on efficiency. Basically, you are giving the NHS an open cheque. Not only will the NHS become increasingly less efficient, but the burden on the few remaining tax payers will increase until at last they cry "no more". We are not going to stump up increasingly large sums for someone else's benefit because we are not drawing any benefit ourselves.

    Similarly with pensions. The contributions of my generation paid for the pensions of our parents, but they were not the burden on my generation that our pensions will be on our children's generation. How long before that generation says no more.

    Which pot does geriatric care come out of. The baby boom generation has not reached that stage yet, but the cost of that will be astronomical. No, as you said previously, the answer was immigration and we are about to close the door on that solution. The baby boom generation, and its concentration on self-interest has a lot to answer for.
     
  5. Sco

    Scoff Well-Known Member

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    There is another answer, but Logans Run might not be a popular solution. :)
     
  6. ark

    ark104 (v2) Well-Known Member

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    The problem is it was the new managerialism agenda of the 80s, that sought to artificially introduce market efficiencies in public services, that have created much of the inefficiency in those services. The time and money spent on procurement of services from the market is crippling, only to appoint large scale national and multinational companies who are at least as inefficient (due to their size). The Trojan horses of Capita and the like offer solutions and identifying short term savings by recommending stripping back departments to the bone, before providing those services at a cost that rapidly inflates over time, employing people on reduced wages and terms whilst generating shareholder profit, and often avoiding the tax payable.

    Public services as a whole can't be run as a business. They primarily provide loss making functions that would be immediately cut in a private sector world, and are subject to the whims of political weather. What they need to do is take the best examples and thinking and practice of the business world and embed them in delivery as far as possible. But an assumption that marketisation of the sector will produce cheaper long term options for the tax payer are a fallacy. The cost will remain the same but will result in an underpaid exploited workforce, the ditching of unfashionable and unprofitable services, and taxpayer money being transferred in to shareholders profits.

    Where there is certainly room for improvement is in the operation of things like car parking. But running that on a commercially basis leads to the criticism that they are screwing people over. It is a very difficult like to tread when money making elements of the public sector are needed to cross subsidise the loss making parts.

    Of course the real answer is for the services people want we need to pay more tax.
     
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  7. Redstar

    Redstar Well-Known Member

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    Who is suggesting taxing "until the pips squeak"?

    It seems you've fallen hook line and sinker for the line that those paid the most generate the most Wealth and must be the most talented so don't tax them as their wealth will "trickle down". The biggest load of nonsense since 4231, tika taka and privatisation.

    A suggested top rate of tax of 50p isn't that bad in terms of comparison to other similar nations.
     

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