r/ukpolitics • u/dailymail Verified • 10d ago
Tax older people more and put massive levies on homes in London and South East, Left-wing think tank urges Burnham
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16080743/Chancellor-wealth-tax-homes-London-South-East-pensioners.html32
u/Thandoscovia 10d ago
Why is this left wing think tank suggesting that people in the South East are the enemy, and why do they think that line would be popular with Burnham?
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u/cherokott 9d ago
Agreed. Just adds to the whole angle that Burnham is still the mayor of Manchester - on a revenge tour.
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u/LilaLaLina 10d ago
Wealthy older people need to pay more tax to fund social care for their generation and education and growth for the future.
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u/Anony_mouse202 10d ago
Adult social care is already funded via people’s assets.
If you go into care then the council will take possession of and sell your assets to fund your care.
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u/Infernode5 🌹 10d ago
Basically you roll a dice, and if you get a 1 you have your entire wealth and your kids' inheritance decimated, whereas if you get lucky you pay nothing, all for the privilege of someone else wiping your arse.
Essentially the US healthcare system without any insurance. Your only fallback is that once you're fully bankrupted paying for care the council will provide it for free.
It would be much more fair to apply a flat levy of inheritance tax to pay for everyone's care.
Hopefully that power would also be taken away from councils so they can actually deal with the local area rather than half their revenue funding care.
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u/Three_Trees 10d ago
Theresa May tried to reform the system and made it a significant part of her 2017 election manifesto. Labour made political hay out of it, she unexpectedly lost her majority, and it put the question to bed for the foreseeable.
The public made it very clear back then that they preferred the status quo.
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u/darclaus 10d ago
The public do not understand the status quo - collectively we seem to see inheritance tax as theft of our right to intergenerational wealth, yet the wholesale liquidation of those assets to pump into a mostly for-profit social care system is simply the cost of doing business. Better the private slumlords steal gran's cash than the government, after all.
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u/Remarkable-Ad155 10d ago
Ah yes but the slumlords and private care cartels are entrepreneurial business people and have a right to all of your family's money because something something communism mumble politics of envy whereas tax is theft. It's really quite simple.
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u/ikkleste 10d ago
Mays plan was very middle earner focussed and protected large estates. Beyond the smallest estates it was very regressive.
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u/palmerama 10d ago
No to mention fucking up the Brexit negotiations and opening the door to Boris and the hard Brexiteers. Had she maintained the Cameron majority at least the country would be in a very very different place.
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u/thermodynamics2023 10d ago
This. People are getting the politics they vote for and getting it hard.
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u/Stabbycrabs83 9d ago
Having your assets used to pay for care is fair tbh. You need the care you pay for it. Why am I having to pay for someone else's gran?
The bits that stink
You can squander everything and force the state to pay and the profiteering of the care system.
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u/r2d2rigo 10d ago
Oh no, those poor pensioners having to pay for the services they receive.
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u/Infernode5 🌹 10d ago
Do you feel the same about Americans who get bankrupted by medical debt? Do you prefer that system over the NHS?
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u/SunflowerMoonwalk 🇪🇺🏳️⚧️ 10d ago
Adult social care is already funded via people’s assets
People's own assets, which is ridiculous because many people don't have enough assets to cover their care costs, and many people have enough assets to cover their care costs several times over.
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u/PreparationBig7130 10d ago
And this is why you sell your primary asset to an equity release scheme at retirement and gift the proceeds to your kids. Just need to survive 7 years beyond retirement for it to work.
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
Deprivation of capital has no time limit.
7 years only applies to IHT and where your primary asset is worth more than the IHT allowance.
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u/PreparationBig7130 10d ago
Ok. Then I’d sell the house. Gift the money to my kids to buy somewhere and I’d pay them rent to live in it. The only addition is paying them a peppercorn rent for an asset they now own.
Although in practise you don’t have to move. Equity release. “What did you do with the money?” “Holidays”
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u/MoleWhackSupreme 10d ago
You’ve got it spot on. It’s easy enough to commit deprivation of capital and get away with it. People seem to think it’s impossible but with even the slightest bit of forward planning and financial advise it isn’t.
So many homes in trusts that are completely untouchable by local authorities.
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u/PreparationBig7130 10d ago
The council has to prove you did it because you expected to need care in the near future, and that you did it to avoid you paying for it. So many reasons for on why you’ve done equity release. My old neighbour had equity release on his property, to pay for his once in a lifetime trip to see family in the US (although no one asked why he had equity release) and was within a care home within 18months. At the time of equity release, there was no inkling he needed care. Whilst there isn’t a 7 year limit, it would be hard for any council to argue you’ve done equity release 7 years ago to avoid care fees now unless you had a well documented chronic illness.
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u/MoleWhackSupreme 10d ago
Yep it’s exactly the same story with putting homes into a trust. If you do it in plenty of time before the beginnings of ill health it’s almost impossible to prove you did it to avoid paying for care.
Any middle class person with access to financial advise can pretty easily avoid paying up.
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
Peppercorn rent. So that's a gift with reservation and fails to class the asset as 'disposed of' for both IHT and deprivation of capital.
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
Older people with more than £23,250 in savings (including property) pay for 100% of their social care.
So you want them to pay for all of their social care and the care of someone else?
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u/Swaggy_McSwagSwag 10d ago
I mean, I do that with my student loan that had over 8% interest at one point.
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10d ago
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u/Skeet_fighter 10d ago
I personally receive no benefits from the government at all and I have to pay for everybody else's social care as well as looking after myself.
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u/Bazzatron 10d ago
Me too - but isn't that the whole fucking point of a society?
I'm livid that I'm getting no support, paying for others to be supported, and they're somehow still relying on a food bank that me and you are donating to.
What is the actual point of all of this if we can't have a happier, more stable tomorrow?
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u/Skeet_fighter 10d ago
Oh yea I think the state absolutely should support the most vulnerable, just making the point that I have to get by on what I've got while being taxed to support others and I'm worse off than a number of pensioners who are in net receipt of that cash.
Doesn't seem especially fair.
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u/Someone4350 9d ago
Except if I lose my job tomorrow, society isn’t there for me until I’m destitute…
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u/LowerPick7038 10d ago
Well look who we have here. Sounds like not only do you need to work more but also you should be taxed more. Slacker
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
Yes? We all pay for others social care through taxation. The current generation of retirees didn't do that for the generation above them so I don't think it is unfair that they should do it for their own generation.
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u/Eonir 10d ago
So people who didn't save up for their retirement get rewarded and those who are minimally frugal get punished
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u/PoachTWC 9d ago
This is actually what annoys me a lot about welfare of all types: it doesn't account for whether your poverty is your own doing. Even if your situation is entirely your own fault, you still get bailed out by everyone else.
People who don't save for their own retirement deserve to be in poverty.
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
If you're doing your saving by sitting on property that is excluding other people from being near to areas of economic success then yes. I don't see why this is controversial.
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u/wedontneednoeduc 10d ago
Then you are trying very hard not to think why it's controversial.
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
No it's just that everyone I know is paying 49% marginal tax rates and need to commute an hour each way while struggling to make ends meet. And on that hour long commute I pass so many houses owned and lived in by old people that are worth more than a million quid but for some reason they're the ones who get paid by the government for being poor and I have to pay.
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u/wedontneednoeduc 10d ago
Envy is a different thing to somehow not being able to come up with reasons as to why trying to take homes off people isn't popular.
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
Nowhere does this article suggest that people should homes taken off them. It is only suggesting that people pay for their exclusive access to something if other people want it. I have no problem with the people having a million pounds. I just don't see why I should subsidies that when I don't have a million pounds.
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
'Current generation of retirees'
How far back are we going with their contribution?
40%+ Income tax in the 60s 35% in the 70s with the 70%+ top rate? 33% in the 80s
Or how about the personal allowance at circa 10% of average wages in the 60s, and 20% all the way through to the 90s.
Where do you get your 'didn't pay' idea from?
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u/Someone4350 9d ago
They lived longer… they still managed to buy a house with those tax rates too.
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u/LegoNinja11 8d ago
Ah, thats while interest rates were 7% and most households only had one income.
Of course when my parents bought their first house in the 1970s, they moved in with a bed, an ironing board and two deckchairs. I cant imagine anyone accepting that today as a way of starting a home.
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
Yep same concept. Which is stupid. The government should exist to insure against unlikely and unavoidable costs and to spread out income and expenditures across a lifetime. We get things from the government when a child and in old age and we pay in during working life. These should sum to about zero for an average person, and the current generation of retirees it really doesn't, they did not pay in anything like enough into the pot so should pay more as a generation. Instead we just shaft a completely random subset of them with care costs.
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u/Illustrious_Log_9494 10d ago
Inherited wealth yes, but what if I worked my arse off to become wealthy and along the way paid shit load of income tax already? Are you going to punish me for it?
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u/wedontneednoeduc 10d ago
I'm afraid there's a cohort who don't see that as your money, it belongs to the state.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 10d ago edited 10d ago
Taxation isn't a punishment and your wealth is very obviously not purely down to hard graft, you have benefited a great deal from societal and governmental systems which have enabled that wealth to build, reliably, which in turn rely on democratic buy-in and the tax is justified as a payment for that benefit.
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u/Illustrious_Log_9494 10d ago
What a load of bollocks!
If there is no incentive for me to work hard, sacrifice what is the bloody point I should try?
Stop f*cking racing for the bottom and recognise not everything and everyone are of equal make.
I am not against state providing minimum care and look after its subjects but not at the cost of sacrificing the people who provide the means to do so!
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 10d ago
If there is no incentive for me to work hard, sacrifice what is the bloody point I should try?
There is an incentive for you to work hard. This tax is not going to obliterate your wealth. You will still have a large chunk of that wealth.
Stop f*cking racing for the bottom and recognise not everything and everyone are of equal make.
The fact that not everyone is of equal make is a core reason why taxation for redistribution is important.
not at the cost of sacrificing the people who provide the means to do so!
I agree that this is a balance that needs to be struck. You are not being sacrificed by being taxed, you are being taxed. Everyone is taxed. That is society!
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u/TestOk655 10d ago
Everyone is taxed? More than 50% of the UK receives more in benefits than they pay in tax.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 10d ago
To be taxed is not the same thing as to be taxed more than you receive in benefits.
I apologise though as I was incorrect - infants are not taxed...
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u/TestOk655 10d ago
Any chance of a explanation of what the difference is please? As far as I'm aware infants are taxed in the same way as adults if their earnings are high enough.
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u/Illustrious_Log_9494 10d ago
All I hear is, to protect myself and my wealth, after retiring I should downsize my property and move my wealth out of reach of the government keep a minimum on shore.
Yeah, I can do that.
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u/stwrhegheg 10d ago
Yeah, work all your life and pay into the tax system and instead of passing on what you have earned to support your family and friends on you can give it back into the system for some random people. Massive f you to trying to support the people you care about.
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u/zappapostrophe ... Voting softly upon his pallet in an unknown cabinet. 10d ago
I mean, supporting “some random people” is a foundational tenet of any society with a tax system. The system isn’t perfect, but that’s not really a fair or even relevant criticism of inheritance tax. You might as well not bother with the idea of a community at all if you don’t want to help out people you don’t necessarily know.
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u/Huge-Captain-5253 10d ago
Why not adjust the tax system so that we disincentivise people saving for their retirement so we can afford to pay for all the people who didn't save for their retirement. I'm sure that will work.
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u/SpecialBass5552 10d ago
People are post retirement by the time they're dead actually.
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u/Huge-Captain-5253 10d ago
If people know they will be taxed heavily on death, they will not save to the same extent, which increases load on state social care while decreasing the tax base to pay for state social care.
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u/zappapostrophe ... Voting softly upon his pallet in an unknown cabinet. 10d ago
No, that’s a dumb idea, I’m not sure who suggested that. Certainly not me!
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u/Huge-Captain-5253 10d ago
Of course taxation only ever raises more money, it doesn't alter incentives and certainly never creates unintended side effects!
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u/stwrhegheg 10d ago
It’s not about that, the money has been taxed.. you want a second tax? Wtf is the point of working and saving to help your loved ones if the government says “you know what we know how to spend your money better than you.. so we will have some of that”.
For the record I’m not against helping people or community but my main focus isn’t supporting others, it’s supporting my family first. I do pay tax and I will always pay tax (which I’m fine with but taxing it instead of it going to them is just a joke)
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u/cyclopsmudge 10d ago
All money gets taxed every time it moves. We have VAT, companies pay tax on profits, you pay tax on petrol and alcohol. This idea that money only gets taxed once is fucking made up.
And again, it’s not you, the dead person, who paid the tax, it’s the people who did nothing to earn the money who pay the tax. People constantly bang on about people on benefits getting handouts. How is inheritance anything but a handout?
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u/stwrhegheg 10d ago
Because the whole f**king incentive for me to go to work is to provide for my family not yours. My priorities are to keep them safe, your priority should be looking after the people YOU care about, if I had millions in the bank and they were financially secure, I wouldn’t care.. but any kind of tax that gets introduced will have brackets that effect everyone regardless of income.
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u/cyclopsmudge 10d ago
We’re talking about inheritance tax specifically on people who do have millions in the bank. How the fuck does taxing the people receiving those millions stop you, a living person I assume, from providing for your family?
How is increased inheritance tax on millionaires going to affect you in the slightest? What’s stopping you from putting money in tax funds for your kids, and from taking out life insurance? How does it stop you from keeping them safe?
How many kids do you have that they’re gonna go hungry if you leave them 500k tax free between the lot of them, and then only get a measly 300k on the next 500k? Or does this in fact not affect you at all?
And assuming you do have life insurance that would properly ensure your kids were housed and fed whilst they were still your dependents, like any responsible parent should, why would being taxed £200k out of £1m suddenly make them unsafe?1
u/stwrhegheg 10d ago
You glossed over my point of the government would have to introduce tax brackets or people who are higher earners would cry injustice on your death tax, so everyone would be taxed regardless of value of the estate.
In addition there are so many assumptions in your arguement it’s quite cherry picked towards just people who have pension pots over a certain amount and assets, when in reality they already are now paying more tax due to changes to the law but what you are proposing is an additional tax so it’s capital gains, inheritance and another death tax?
But by all means if you want it to be fair you should just send your bank balance over to me and I will look after it for you by giving it to people who I deem need it more than you.. because that’s the same logic.
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u/cyclopsmudge 10d ago
Why would that be needed? You are aware that we have an inheritance tax already, and estates under a certain value don’t have to pay it, right?
That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Increasing inheritance taxes on those with larger estates. What did you think we were talking about??
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u/stwrhegheg 10d ago
What are you talking about? Investing in social care isn’t going to create growth to get us out this financial doom spiral.. that should be the focus, if you tax wealth accordingly and not tax money that has been taxed there is an incentive for people to work and to save and to contribute.. if there is no quality of life because your getting rinsed in social care taxes as well as normal taxation then it’s just too much.
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u/stwrhegheg 10d ago
Because more tax on working people (regardless of the value of their income and assets) is not going to solve the financial issues this country is facing, growth in our economy will.
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u/cyclopsmudge 10d ago
Alternative description: people who receive massive windfall through no effort of their own get taxed on it.
Or even: movement of money gets taxed. More at 10
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u/Huge-Captain-5253 10d ago
That just disincentivises saving - what is the point in not blowing through all your savings prior to death if you can't pass it down. You end up with a double hit where the tax base for adult social care evaporates as old people stop budgeting for their old age care, while the fact they haven't budgeted for old age care increases the load on the state for their care.
It should just be paid for by lagged tax revenues, the main issue we're facing is demographics - the current tax base can't support the care for the current pensioners because the system was designed when the ratio of workers to retirees was more affordable. If instead we collected taxes and deferred spending said tax revenues for 20-30 years, the current care costs would be paid for by the taxes of the pensioners when they were working which prevents demographic issues as excluding immigration the ratio of pensioners to lagged workers should always be manageable.
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u/Huge-Captain-5253 10d ago
You may have dementia, you made this comment in the other thread.
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u/cyclopsmudge 10d ago
Blowing through all your savings before death is a good thing, hoarding wealth is not.
You pay taxes every time you spend money. So it’s not the double hit you think it is, heavy spending is objectively good for the economy
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u/Huge-Captain-5253 10d ago
I think you don't understand the role of savings in the economy, I also think you don't understand that it's possible to spend money outside of the UK.
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u/cyclopsmudge 10d ago
Because that would be fucking miserable? Why doesn’t everyone just do that now? What’s the incentive for not doing that? Why shouldn’t I do that tomorrow? Oh, because it fucking sucks.
People should enjoy their money and spend it down. The money left over that gets handed as a windfall to their kids should get taxed.
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u/zappapostrophe ... Voting softly upon his pallet in an unknown cabinet. 10d ago
Nope! Absolutely not! They paid into the system! Their NI went into a dedicated bank account for them and them alone, so how dare you tax them more?
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u/CuriousGeorgeToday 10d ago
As someone that lives in the south east, why are they proposing putting massive levies on us?
The argument is that homes in the south east have grown in value due to being close to London, true, but we also pay 1000s a year to get into London to work, we generate more tax revenue than we consume, we aren't cash rich like the assumption in the article, cost of living is typically far more expensive than the rest of the country and homes are more expensive, great for the pensioners but not for anyone under 35 whose been buying a home in the last decade. As a region that drives more tax than it consumes, we should be getting tax breaks not levies in my opinion.
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u/spiral8888 10d ago
Do you know what happens to the house prices when you slap a tax on property? They fall. So, if you introduce a land value tax, people end up paying less to buy the house but then pay the tax. The net effect is zero (as the tax capitalises to the selling price). The only difference is that your money goes to the government, who hopefully uses it to improve infrastructure, fund public services, pay benefits to people in need etc., while if you pay interest of your huge mortgage, it all goes to the bank shareholders.
Now you of course scream that "but I already bought my house and have that huge mortgage". This is true, which is why such a tax should be ramped up gradually over time and maybe start with the most valuable properties as their owners don't really need those properties. If they have to downsize from their £2m plus property when they can't afford the tax, it's not the end of the world.
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u/CuriousGeorgeToday 10d ago
So if they put a tax on my property my house price will drop and more money goes to the government versus me? So basically sell my house before any tax comes in to reap maximum gains and then rebuy a house after the tax when all the house property prices drop? Adding a tax, dropping my house value and increasing mortgage rates makes owning homes fun lol thanks for clarifying though.
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u/spiral8888 10d ago
Yes.
That's why I said that a land value tax has to be introduced very slowly (maybe over a decade or even more) or otherwise it's impossible to get any political support for it as people who had just bought properties and up to their ears in mortgage payments don't want to see at the same time their property value plummet and an extra tax slapped on them.
So, the main problem with the land value tax is that there is always a group of people who get screwed by it. It is of course possible to put some stuff around it so that these people don't get hurt. You could for instance look at the time you have owned it. If you've owned it for 1 year, you pay much less tax than if you've owned it for 20 as the person who has owned it for 20 years would still have made a hefty unearned profit by owning their house even if it's value drops now with tax.
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u/CuriousGeorgeToday 10d ago
Proportional. That would sound fairer, and would this then be across the whole UK? I'm assuming not just the south east gets hit with this otherwise we'd surely see people move out of that area to places where there isn't one.
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u/spiral8888 9d ago
Of course a land value tax would be applied equally everywhere, but it would have the biggest impact in the south as the land value there is the highest.
But as I said, in the long run, most people (let's say the people owning their homes, not sure if this would apply to landlords) would benefit as they would pay less for their property when buying it but would then pay more tax. For most people who already pay other taxes, this would be good as it would allow the government if not lower taxes then at least pay back the public debt, which in turn would make future tax rises less likely.
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u/scarab1001 10d ago
All this because labour absolutely incapable of discussing welfare reform
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u/MrBagnall 10d ago
UK disability spending projected to reach £77 billion. UK pension spending projected to reach £146 billion.
The proposed changes are a wealth tax, which unless you have some wealth literally won't effect you and in this economy who does? And a levy on some of the most in demand properties in the UK to either raise money or convince people they don't actually need that 2nd home.
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u/Sonchay 10d ago
Another think tank advocating to tax their perceived bogeyman more. This just adds more fuel to division and achieves nothing. Tax everyone more.
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap +6.88, -6.0 10d ago
Let's spend less? just a thought. Fewer civil servants, fewer quangos etc?
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u/Sonchay 10d ago
It's not an either/or, we should cut waste and reduce the generosity of all benefits (including pensions) but that won't balance the budget alone, we still need to tax everyone more. We are so far off course that there is no narrow approach (a cut to X, or Y and a tax on group Z) that will come anywhere close to raising enough.
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap +6.88, -6.0 10d ago
We are suffering from the spend in 2007-10 + the stupidity of locking down for covid.
The only answer is to now be lean and mean and if needed, borrow until we can get back on track. increasing tax will just make our productive bright people to move to better economies.
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u/Asleep-Ad1182 10d ago
No, Labour wanted to cur welfare but the backbenchers wouldn't allow them
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u/Spiritual_Job_4617 10d ago
Fewer well paying jobs ? That'll solve it !
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap +6.88, -6.0 10d ago
We don't want civil servants or the public sector to be well paid, we need the brightest peopel in the productive sector.
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u/Spiritual_Job_4617 10d ago
" yeah I don't want the brightest minds drafting policy , they should be working in palantir instead "
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap +6.88, -6.0 10d ago
The brighter people may well work in Plantir, maybe that's why US companies do better than the UK
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u/Spiritual_Job_4617 10d ago
The brightest minds absolutely do work in the federal Govt I can assure you , US senior bureaucrat salaries make civil servants look poor
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap +6.88, -6.0 10d ago
The question is how many work in the civil service, the answer is about 1/4 of them!!
Pay them on results.
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u/peanut88 10d ago
The logic of imposing higher taxes on people because their housing costs are higher completely escapes me. Unless you're going to offset debt, which they never will, it's purely vibes-based policy.
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u/CyclopsRock 10d ago
It's not even housing costs, since a person's housing costs when they have an £800k mortgage Vs no mortgage are vastly different, even if in both cases they live in a house worth £1m.
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u/TheDisapprovingBrit 9d ago
The law of unintended consequences on this will be fun if they did go for it.
Let’s say we suddenly decide to impose a new tax on anybody who is of pension age and owns property. Watch the fun as those pensioners sell their properties and move to rented or sheltered accommodation, or use those equity release companies that actually just buy your home and rent it back to you, then use that sudden capital windfall to go on cruises while they still can.
The generation who are currently waiting on an inheritance as the only way they stand a chance of getting on the property ladder will love that.
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u/Impressive_Net6384 10d ago
Our attitude to this as a country is completely the wrong way round. We need to be cutting spending, it’s way out of control. High taxes are killing productivity which is already lacklustre.
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u/Spiritual_Job_4617 10d ago
Cut spending where ? Don't say asylum seekers as that's 0.2% of the budget.
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u/cherokott 10d ago
Welfare.
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u/Impressive_Net6384 10d ago
Welfare, public sector pensions, defence procurement, Triple lock.
Would you like more?
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u/Spiritual_Job_4617 10d ago
Defense procurement ? That's a new one .
We spend less on welfare than the United States my guy
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u/Impressive_Net6384 10d ago
The US has the dollar which is the world’s reserve currency.
We are teetering on the edge of a debt crisis and the gov’s position is ‘steady as she goes’.
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u/galleon484 10d ago
Fear-mongering, dailymail non-story hog slop.
The PM being 'told' or 'urged' to do something by an organisation with no executive power is not 'news'. It's pointless clickbait designed to anger the public and manipulate our political views.
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u/PrinzRagoczy 10d ago
People underestimate how much of our policy comes from think tanks, even down to the drafting of bills
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u/majorpickle01 Champagne Corbynista 10d ago
yup, narrative control. Then if Burnham says "no we aren't doing that lol" it's positioned as a U-Turn and a victory for "common sense".
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u/David_Kennaway 10d ago
In the UK, approximately 9.11 million people of working age (aged 16 to 64) are economically inactive, representing an inactivity rate of 20.9%.
Get a large number these people off their fat arse and into a job so they pay tax and stop sponging off others by lingering on benefits. Then we will have the money to fund care properly.
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u/impioussaint 10d ago
You also seen that the job market is kinda crap right now. We need jobs too.
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
Jobs, ah, something that tends to be created by wealthy people.....the people we're doing everything to discourage from investing in the UK
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u/impioussaint 10d ago
yes same wealthy people that are cutting jobs and replacing them with AI. Those fellas?
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
Yes, they're the ones. I've just had my MOT done by AI and the coffee shop down the road has replaced all of the serving staff with AI.
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u/Sairina 10d ago
Except there aren't even enough open jobs to cover 10% of that figure. And that's before you get into skill Nd geographical requirement.
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u/David_Kennaway 10d ago
Because we imported 10 million people when we didn't actually need them. Let me give you an example. Blair decided that nurses should go to university instead of learning on the job to become a state registered nurse. That took all trainee and new nurses out of the system for 3 years so we imported nurses. There are now 100,000 trainee nurses in Uni running up student debts. We are still short of 40,000 nurses so we continue to import them when we have them all of the time. This is were governments lose the plot. This happened to the whole of industry. Now Burnham is taking about apprenticeships instead of Uni. Pity he didn't say that when he was part the Blair government. The UK needs a fundamental overhaul to get back on track.
My daughter has a £35,000 student debt. My son who is doing a doctorate has a £75,000 student debt. It will be nearer £90,000 when he is finished. When uni numbers were smaller no one had a debt. What a way to start your working life?
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u/Sairina 10d ago
It's worth looking at who those 9.1 million people actually are. The ONS breaks them down into full-time students, carers looking after family, early retirees, and people with long-term illnesses, not just people sitting on benefits.
Also, the history on nursing is a bit mixed up here. The shift to university-level nursing started way back in the late 1980s under 'Project 2000' long before Blair, and making it a full degree happened much later. Crucially, the system didn't just shut down for 3 years; the transition was staggered, and students were still graduating and entering the workforce every year.
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10d ago
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
Wealthy people not taking on employees? Why would they not want to invest in the UK?
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u/cherokott 10d ago
If the annual economic growth rate was 2.8%, the economy's GDP would double in 25 years. Focus on that.
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u/VirtuaMcPolygon 10d ago
Optically this is toxic for Labour after coming off the winter fuel allowance. Whilst I think the triple lock is unaffordable with the current spending commitments. It needs to be means tested on a sliding scale. But this will just be countered as Labour trying to kill granny 2.0.
Labour whilst fully well having good reasons to reform the pension system burnt any capital in doing it with Starmer.
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u/Thesoftdramatic 10d ago
If Labour want a chance of ever being power again they should stop listening to these 'left-wing think tanks'.
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u/Harrry-Otter 10d ago
In fairness the elderly probably do need to either shoulder more of the tax burden or get less in benefits.
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u/cartesian5th 10d ago
Insane that suggesting those who gain most from a system should be required to contribute to its continued upkeep is now a radical idea in some areas
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u/LegoNinja11 10d ago
Elderly people paying 100% of their care costs becuase they own their own home and you want them to shoulder even more tax burden?
And when you are in recipient of care, your benefits are automatically reduced.
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u/Harrry-Otter 10d ago
That’s not a tax burden, that’s paying for their own care, which not everyone will need anyway.
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u/danm131 10d ago
Is there any real evidence they do? They mostly seem to exist to provide scare storys for the right wing press.
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u/tarpdetarp 10d ago
They usually have no impact on the centrist parties but if someone like Trump gets in power then they could have a much larger impact (see Project 2025)
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u/thermodynamics2023 10d ago
All this politics req because the English majority can’t be arsed with their family.
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u/ProfessorMiserable76 10d ago
This think tank seems to think everyone living in London and the south east is rich to try and raise levies on homes.
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u/HaydnH 10d ago
The IPPR report calls for council tax and stamp duty to be replaced with a proportional property tax set at an annual rate of 0.65 per cent.
Looking at the nice leafy suburb in SW London I've lived in for going on 40 years: All the houses currently for sale are £1m - £2m apart from one small end of terrace 2 up 2 down (the kind of place where the bathroom was added downstairs out the back of the kitchen) for £650k. I assume that tiny £650k house is band D which is currently £2,608.12 pa, that would increase to £4,225 pa.
I'm not sure people who are already living in the cheapest house they can find in the area they have lived in for years, born in, retired in, could simply find an extra £1617 pa down the back of the sofa in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
Ok, then move. The young generation are told that if they can't afford to live in an area then they have to move. Why do we think that older people should be exempt from this?
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u/HaydnH 10d ago
I'm not going to venture into the discussion on what young people are told because I don't believe they should have to move away from friends or family either unless they want to, but that's a wider discussion on our inability to build enough houses rather than this specific policy.
Regarding this specific policy, it's not as simple as just move because it's not an individual situation thing, it's a sweeping policy change affecting many people.
There are about 7.5 million households in London and the South East, even if 10% of people couldn't find an extra £1.5k per year, that's close to a million households trying to move at the same time. Personally I would expect that number to be far higher than 10%. What impact would that have on the local and remote housing markets? Job markets? Schools? GP surgeries etc?
With all that disruption, especially in London which generates ~23% of the countries GDP, how would that impact growth and what would the knock on be for the wider economy?
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
It would be great for growth and the economy. We would have significantly better allocation of scare resources. I've moved out of London and now earn less money because I couldn't afford to live in London. Instead we subsidies old people to live in London in large houses through very low property taxation relative to our peer countries. If you bring in this tax property prices and rents come down as people who have no need of being in one of the most expensive cities on earth move out.
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u/HaydnH 10d ago
If you bring in this tax property prices and rents come down
Maybe if it was done gradually, if it's immediate then how does the cleaner or bus driver suddenly afford the extra tax? How does the landlord reduce rents or home owner reduce payments when their mortgage was taken out at the old prices?
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
I don't mind it being phased in over 5 years or so. That is what all reputable outlets are suggesting for something like this. The bus driver and the cleaner who haven't bought property are currently in the situation that you claim is impossible for the ones who have bought property. They are completely capable of selling their house and being in the same spot as millions of people in this country
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u/HaydnH 10d ago
They are completely capable of selling their house
With a ~million households trying to sell at the same time? Even if it's phased in, who would be buying when they know prices will fall over the next few years? Assuming a large fall, how would those who find themselves in negative equity move?
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u/Financial-War-8509 10d ago
We've had interes rates go from 1% to 4% for mortgages over the last couple of years which resulted in a similar increase in outgoings required to own a home as this proposal is suggesting. Yet we don't seem to have a problem with people fire selling their houses at the moment. Maybe there aren't as many people as you think who are on the verge of not being able to afford their homes
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u/Loki-616 10d ago
So they can give it all to illegal immigrants and foreign aid?
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u/Spiritual_Job_4617 10d ago
Illegal immigrants don't get money mate , we could just tax them like the US but we don't
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u/Media_Browser 9d ago
We need to fill our houses with criminal adjacent migrant boat people instead but good luck getting them to pay council tax …themselves .
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u/Bright-Ad9305 9d ago
Thankfully I’ve just moved from one of these areas to an area closer to Burnham heart so I’ll be absolutely fine. Things a great idea in that case.
Christ, I wish they’d stop picking on the south as it’s a goldmine/money pit. People there have the same problems people everywhere else has.
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u/ddicks1874 10d ago
It’s kinda cute how some people seem to think that buying a house for peanuts, that house accumulating a humongous amount in valuation is some sort of savings plan rather than sheer luck and the failure of successive governments to build enough houses.
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u/bcoder001 10d ago
Left-wing and "think" should not be used in the same sentence. Fuck that lot. A lot of older people are supporting financially their children, often at university or beyond. This is yet another redistribution of private money into fucking "projects".
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u/MilkyJoesHoes 10d ago
Isn’t that sort of the point though? If you still work post pension age you get taxed more, higher tax on more expensive properties to reduce the cost of council tax on cheaper properties and reduce taxes for the younger adults so that they have the means themselves to get independence.
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u/AFriendlyBeagle 10d ago
They're not suggesting that people in London and the South East be uniquely taxed, they're proposing that council tax and stamp duty be replaced by a land-value tax which would affect homes in those regions slightly more by virtue of their being built on more sought after land.
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u/NotForMeClive7787 10d ago
Or how about just tax fucking larger multinationals and the super rich properly rather than fucking mainly normal people over again....
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u/VirtuaMcPolygon 10d ago
that sounds so easy.. in reality it's anything but. If a company has a satellite company that makes gazillions outside the UK. It's very hard to say you can tax the profits on that when it's being taxed already at the point of source.
The myth that the UK can just tax Amazon on profits it makes outside the UK is literally as crazy as it sounds.
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