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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

scaramanga said:
Not sure if you saw the news this morning, but public finances aren't nearly as bad as Reeves told us they were.

The current tax burden is the highest since WWII, due to exceed that and become the highest ever by the end of this parliament.

The government absolutely does not have an income problem, it has a spending problem.


They are still spending more than they did before and planning to spend more in the future. Until they control spending, these budgets will only be a sticking plaster.

Cut the spending and the problem is solved for a dozen budgets into the future.


The NHS is long overdue a trip to a farm where it can happily run around and play. The govt can both reduce its liability to healthcare and improve healthcare beyond recognition with that simple step.

There are far more efficient and effective ways to improve education without taxing and wasting more. For starters, the VAT increase is only helping to overload the state system. Offering a tax break to those paying for independent schooling would both simultaneously reduce the load on the state sector and vastly improve the education for those kids joining the independent schools.


What kind of poverty are you talking about here? The made up, loaded, politicised relative "poverty" or actual, real poverty?

What do you think the end result will be of incentivising having more children for families that don't work? The data are pretty clear about the fact that kids born to families that don't work are unlikely to ever look for work themselves or complete a solid education. What might seem, to some, on a very superficial level, to be a good idea will likely entrench generations of more and more welfare liabilities. But Labour don't care about that, those people are overwhelmingly likely to vote Labour.


Don't believe the headlines. Not the ones written by Labour nor the ones written by the Conservatives.

When Labour got in, were you paying more or less tax than in 2010 (in real terms)?

When Labour got in, was the govt spending more or less than in 2010?

Once you've answered those questions, ask yourself how it is that the govt are taking more of our money, spending more of our money, yet we are getting less for it.


You know the best way to ensure poor people stay poor? Stop them working.

Every measure that costs business, costs jobs. Every ridiculous piece of legislation that makes it harder to employ people, costs jobs. Every pointless increase in minimum wage, costs jobs.

Two steps will make huge and lasting changes to the welfare problems our country has. Increase the gap between welfare and working and make it easier to employ people.
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Almost everything you’re saying comes back to the Government cutting spending.I totally respect your opinion on that, I just think we had a long austerity experiment which yielded nothing much. And meanwhile real people suffered a lot.

Real people rely on the NHS. And just to take your child poverty point, plenty of other data suggests that keeping kids in poverty actually costs the state more in the long run. If they’re hungry, and can’t study, there’s a massive argument that that is what keeps them entrenched in that lifestyle. I’m not sure the data on whether the two child cap impacted people’s propensity to have children supports that it altered anyone’s behaviour?

As for the ‘public finances not being as bad as Reeves told us they were’, if the argument being put forward is that actually things are great, I’m just not buying it. She did what she did to give herself over 20bn of headroom, and the OBR saying things were slightly better than anticipated didn’t remove the necessity to do that. As I said, I accept that she could have got there with spending cuts. I just think that real people rely on this spending, and it’s time they got some relief. We had the Tories for 14 years and we had austerity for definitely 6, arguably 9 of those years. We’ve then had Brexit, Covid, Truss (who from what it sounds like you would actually agree a lot with her program) and a global cost of living crisis.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Would love to engage with you on the spirit of debate around this. Full disclosure I learn centre left but actually take more of a view of ‘what does the country need at the time’ and so can be pragmatic about when it’s time to be more pro business, or tighter on immigration etc.

When I look at this budget (and the government’s first) I think about some starting assumptions. First, public finances are screwed. Secondly, public services are on their knees. The country has been through this he shocks of Brexit which impacted output and Covid were simply put that money has to be paid back. We’ve also been through the Truss budget, and so bond markets are watching us closely for any hint of profligacy. With all of that in mind, what would you do differently? Or asked another way, why is the budget actually so bad?

Take the headroom. I saw Sunak on The Times website talking about how Reeves needed to leave herself at least 20bn of headroom. She exceeded that. This ensures that regardless of the swings in projections over the coming years, she now should actually have the room to manoeuvre. It took two budgets, but I believe they won’t have to do something like this again. Headroom and confidence of the markets leads to lower interest rates, stability for people’s mortgages but also for businesses borrowing to invest. I think this is a foundarional plank of boosting growth later in the parliament. I think they are looking at this as a 10 year project where they had to fix the foundations first. I don’t know if they will get the second term but I see the logic.

Secondly, public services on their knees which ever way you look. NHS waiting lists sky rocketed. Schools were crumbling. Not withstanding Trump’s influence requiring an increase in defence spending. Sure, a government can give themselves this headroom with cuts. But I’m not sure how many more cuts our public services can bear. People who relied on them were struggling. They’ve taken action to get public services on a firmer footing, and I think there’s a fair argument for doing that.

Then, welfare. The two child limit lift will see those arguments play out in the coming weeks and months. But this will be the government to have the biggest impact on child poverty ever. That’s not nothing.

I believe there are things they absolutely need to be done. The welfare debacle was a ridiculous error from them, and that needs reform for sure. They also need more overtly pro growth politicies. My suspicion is that they will come in the next two budgets. But first they needed to fix the foundations, get to an acceptable level of headroom and get public services back into a passable state.

To do that, they chose tax rises rather than cuts. It’s a political choice, but this is where the consideration of what the country needs at the time. I think in the last 15 years the poorest have suffered most from austerity, and from the cost of living. The Tories had nothing meaningful to show for their 14 years, other than the argument that the finances would have been worse after Covid if not for their cuts.

Is it harder for business right now? Yes. Should the poorest continue to be shafted most? I don’t believe so. They need some relief. It’s about fairness. Labour are creating the conditions for more investment into the county and I believe the next two budgets will be more pro growth and pro business. But right now the poorest are getting some relief and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We can all run our businesses and make sacrifices just like the poorest have had to.
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SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Almost everything you’re saying comes back to the Government cutting spending.I totally respect your opinion on that, I just think we had a long austerity experiment which yielded nothing much. And meanwhile real people suffered a lot.

Real people rely on the NHS. And just to take your child poverty point, plenty of other data suggests that keeping kids in poverty actually costs the state more in the long run. If they’re hungry, and can’t study, there’s a massive argument that that is what keeps them entrenched in that lifestyle. I’m not sure the data on whether the two child cap impacted people’s propensity to have children supports that it altered anyone’s behaviour?

As for the ‘public finances not being as bad as Reeves told us they were’, if the argument being put forward is that actually things are great, I’m just not buying it. She did what she did to give herself over 20bn of headroom, and the OBR saying things were slightly better than anticipated didn’t remove the necessity to do that. As I said, I accept that she could have got there with spending cuts. I just think that real people rely on this spending, and it’s time they got some relief. We had the Tories for 14 years and we had austerity for definitely 6, arguably 9 of those years. We’ve then had Brexit, Covid, Truss (who from what it sounds like you would actually agree a lot with her program) and a global cost of living crisis.
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Yeah, that’s all great - but don’t you know she’s Labour?
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Almost everything you’re saying comes back to the Government cutting spending.I totally respect your opinion on that, I just think we had a long austerity experiment which yielded nothing much. And meanwhile real people suffered a lot.
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We haven't had austerity. The press may have called it that, Labour may have called it that, but the reality is a massive increase in tax and spend over their time in govt.

When the Conservatives left government, the tax burden was the highest since WWII (until Labour fudged it even more).

SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Real people rely on the NHS.
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Germany doesn't have an NHS and their healthcare is decades ahead of ours. Their preventative scanning and treatment makes the NHS look like leeches and bleeding.

SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
And just to take your child poverty point, plenty of other data suggests that keeping kids in poverty actually costs the state more in the long run. If they’re hungry, and can’t study, there’s a massive argument that that is what keeps them entrenched in that lifestyle. I’m not sure the data on whether the two child cap impacted people’s propensity to have children supports that it altered anyone’s behaviour?
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Of course I don't think children should be without food. But if we're going to use loaded and specific words like "poverty" then we need to be clear of the meaning.

We should do everything we can to avoid child poverty. But relative "poverty" is just made up political nonsense that means nothing whatsoever.

I can guarantee you that when Labour use the word poverty in their literature and campaign speeches, they're talking about relative "poverty"

Somewhere around 60 or 70% of families on benefits were affected by the cap on child benefit (from memory but I linked or screenshotted the data here the other day). Now I don't know how many children those not receiving benefits have as those data aren't published directly but the UK average is 1.7. So it clearly is significantly lower. So the skew of more children is clearly far over to those claiming from the government.

SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
As for the ‘public finances not being as bad as Reeves told us they were’, if the argument being put forward is that actually things are great, I’m just not buying it. She did what she did to give herself over 20bn of headroom, and the OBR saying things were slightly better than anticipated didn’t remove the necessity to do that. As I said, I accept that she could have got there with spending cuts. I just think that real people rely on this spending, and it’s time they got some relief. We had the Tories for 14 years and we had austerity for definitely 6, arguably 9 of those years. We’ve then had Brexit, Covid, Truss (who from what it sounds like you would actually agree a lot with her program) and a global cost of living crisis.
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The problem with many of Reeves's measures is that they're just storing up costs and problems further down the line.

Charging extra tax on EVs will slow their uptake and cost more eventually. Taxing comparatively low pension contributions will reduce them and cost more eventually. Paying families that don't work to have kids will store up benefit costs long into the future.

I do agree with what Truss did, the problem is that she only got it half right. She didn't have the nerve (or political capital) to cut spending to balance the books, she just decided to pay for her tax cuts with borrowing.

The govt won't create jobs by taxing us more. It won't reduce the massive increase in population (and claimants) by taxing us more. It won't make us internationally competitive by taxing us more. It certainly won't fix public sector bloat and inefficiency by taxing us more.
 
Tax and spend may have both gone up, but through the quasi-privitisation of most public services, the money has all been leaking out to big businesses, rather than actually being spent on services
 
scaramanga said:
We haven't had austerity. The press may have called it that, Labour may have called it that, but the reality is a massive increase in tax and spend over their time in govt.

When the Conservatives left government, the tax burden was the highest since WWII (until Labour fudged it even more).


Germany doesn't have an NHS and their healthcare is decades ahead of ours. Their preventative scanning and treatment makes the NHS look like leeches and bleeding.


Of course I don't think children should be without food. But if we're going to use loaded and specific words like "poverty" then we need to be clear of the meaning.

We should do everything we can to avoid child poverty. But relative "poverty" is just made up political nonsense that means nothing whatsoever.

I can guarantee you that when Labour use the word poverty in their literature and campaign speeches, they're talking about relative "poverty"

Somewhere around 60 or 70% of families on benefits were affected by the cap on child benefit (from memory but I linked or screenshotted the data here the other day). Now I don't know how many children those not receiving benefits have as those data aren't published directly but the UK average is 1.7. So it clearly is significantly lower. So the skew of more children is clearly far over to those claiming from the government.


The problem with many of Reeves's measures is that they're just storing up costs and problems further down the line.

Charging extra tax on EVs will slow their uptake and cost more eventually. Taxing comparatively low pension contributions will reduce them and cost more eventually. Paying families that don't work to have kids will store up benefit costs long into the future.

I do agree with what Truss did, the problem is that she only got it half right. She didn't have the nerve (or political capital) to cut spending to balance the books, she just decided to pay for her tax cuts with borrowing.

The govt won't create jobs by taxing us more. It won't reduce the massive increase in population (and claimants) by taxing us more. It won't make us internationally competitive by taxing us more. It certainly won't fix public sector bloat and inefficiency by taxing us more.
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On austerity, it’s why I specified the first 6 years and arguably the first 9 years. I listen to the Balls and Osborne podcast and I hear Osborne describing it that way so I feel confident in doing so. There was a definite objective to shrink the size of the state.

No doubt NHS needs to improve and especially moving towards more preventative care. This seems to be a big part of Streeting’s program.

I don’t have the poverty stats to hand either but did I not see something that 60-70% of families impacted by the two child cap are in work?

As for problems down the line, I think there’s a fair argument that what Reeves is doing is buying flexibility so that she has more freedom and less problems down the line. Headroom is part of that. The tax on EV is down to the fact that if they don’t introduce it, and more and more EV’s are on the road relative to petrol, the revenue is gonna be less. It’s actually an attempt to get ahead of a potential problem down the line, rather than create one.

The government will create jobs and help us be internationally competitive by investing alongside the private sector, keeping interest rates low with their fiscal discipline, and building a skills strategy so that businesses can hire what they need. Among many other things. There needs to be more pro growth and pro business measures in this parliament, and I think they’re coming in the next two budgets.

Tax doesn’t immediately preclude competitiveness as long as the government is willing to invest. It’s just centre left - it’s absolutely a political choice and it’s definitely viable to do what you’re advocating for too if done well. But it’s not that one side have all the answers and there’s something the Labour Party just doesn’t understand in comparison. It’s choices around how to go about things and who they want to benefit from their decisions.
 
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German healthcare works in pretty much the same way as it does over here, it’s just a defined tax line on your pay slip deductibles rather than being in more general deductions as it is over here.
 
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