Brexit Britain unable to afford basic public services

The point I'm making David is that there are much bigger changes afoot than Brexit.

Rather than assuming any negative story is because of Brexit maybe you should ask yourself why a record tax take is still insufficient to cover public services? What could possibly be driving the increased cost of public service provision?

Demographics are going to be the major story across most of the world's advanced economies in the next few decades. The cuts you've highlighted are just the beginning of that story.

Not everything is to do with Brexit. Shocking news to you I know but that's the way it is.

Demographics are a far bigger deal than Brexit and will be for the foreseeable future.

You might think that long term we're better off in a stagnant protectionist trading bloc. I disagree.

The actual truth of the matter won't be apparent for at least a decade, in the meantime blaming every local authority cutback on Brexit comes across as a little unhinged.

Rendel Harris wrote:

How's the old India trade deal coming on Rich? As I recall back in July and August you were confidently telling us that it was imminent and then we would really start seeing the good old Brexit benefits...

It's likely fairing better than the "deal" with Canada: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/23/hard-cheese-canada-rejects-british-attempt-to-secure-tariff-free-exports

Eat the rich old and rich?

Time ago I read someone pointing out that the proportion we spend on health is increasing, and there doesn't seem to be a limit to people's appetite to spend more there (because we don't want ourselves / our loved ones to suffer and die).

General welfare spending though? Might be cheaper to *increase* that as I suspect we're still doing too much of that via the (extremely expensive) health care side.

I think we need to find a way of taxing wealthy boomers and Gen Xers to provide the services which those generations are now requiring or will imminently require.

Property taxes are the most obvious way IMO. Reform council tax to make it truly progressive and you'll tap a lot of unearned property wealth and also encourage better functioning of the housing market.

Rich_cb wrote:

I think we need to find a way of taxing wealthy boomers and Gen Xers to provide the services which those generations are now requiring or will imminently require.

Property taxes are the most obvious way IMO. Reform council tax to make it truly progressive and you'll tap a lot of unearned property wealth and also encourage better functioning of the housing market.

This is an idea I agree with, but it's difficult, both practically and politically. If tax on cake went up, I could cut back. But if I'm to be taxed on the current value of my house, I can't hive off a bedroom or part of the garden.

Politically, if you remember the poll tax, a big part of the motivation was that elderly Tory voters were complaining about their rates bills but didn't want to move house. I'm far from sure that the current Tories feel any different, and Labour clearly feels that it needs to attract floating voters.

I agree that politically it is a very difficult move to pull off. I'd suggest packaging it up with an abolition of inheritance tax.

This will appeal to older pensioners, helpfully dividing the main group opposed to the changes and reducing the political opposition to the overall package.

Rich_cb wrote:

I think we need to find a way of taxing wealthy boomers and Gen Xers to provide the services which those generations are now requiring or will imminently require. Property taxes are the most obvious way IMO. Reform council tax to make it truly progressive and you'll tap a lot of unearned property wealth and also encourage better functioning of the housing market.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on how a property tax would work, there will be a lot of people who as they get older, due to property inflation in the 2000s, will be "home rich, cash poor", i.e. living in a modest home (with a market value of ~£750000), but getting by on state pension plus whatever other pension provisions they made. Until the auto-enrol schemes became law around 10 years ago, there's a whole generation of people from the 80s/90s who have little or no pension provision. 

People in the home rich cash poor situation above could sell and downsize, but this won't always be possible. Interestingly, when a similar scheme was introduced to encourage people in social housing in 4-5 bedroom houses to downsize and make their house available to larger families on the housing waiting list, the under-occupancy charge, it was described as a "bedroom tax" by opponents. 

I think the 'bedroom tax' debacle was a real missed opportunity.

Under occupancy of social housing is a significant factor in the lack of social housing for families but due to the furore whipped up over the 'bedroom tax' it's something that's unlikely to be addressed anytime soon.

I'd allow the 'home rich, cash poor' to defer their payments until the house changes ownership. At that point a charge equivalent to the deferred tax would be levied.

A reform of council tax could be a revaluation and more bands. Currently the values are related to 1 april 1991 and 2003 in wales.

Plenty of anomlies still around - I know of one area where there are no band H properties despite one or 2 having a helipad !

I'm not sure it is getting older that will impact welfare spending but I suspect that ultra-processed foods will have a very major impact. Tax payers will pick up the tab for poor science in the food industry and the few who have enriched themselves in the process.

Welfare spending increases with age regardless of diet. Even those with a very healthy diet will still, on average, require more health and social care as they age.

I agree that poor diet certainly doesn't help and those with a poor diet will almost certainly, on average, require more health and social care than their peers.

Being a member of the wokerati I can't work out on which grounds to criticise myself now! On the one hand I eat the odd avocado (bad on CO2 / food miles) but maybe that's good on health grounds and thus ultimately to help Save The NHS? OTOH I eat quite a bit of cake (bad!) Plus I'm not vegan nor do I care for tofu - but then isn't that soya being planted in cleared rainforest?

Further - my main transport is bike with no motor assist (++smugness) but I have several Alu frames and apparently cyclists and cycling infra cause congestion, and I'm not paying all that tax associated with running a motor vehicle ("driving drives the economy" copyright all parties).

If my current good health enables me to live to an age of chronic health conditions (as you say above a certain age humans have effectively exceeded their "natural" service lives and evolution hasn't caught up yet) was I helping?

There's an argument that the country would be better off if we all smoked ourselves into an early grave as we'd pay far more in tax and receive far less in pensions but morally I think aiming for a healthier populace is probably the safer bet.

Rich_cb wrote:

There's an argument that the country would be better off if we all smoked ourselves into an early grave as we'd pay far more in tax and receive far less in pensions...

I was tickled by that one back in the day but IIRC it was criticised on the financial details as much as the ethics. (People stop when they get ill then linger with chronic illness, there *is* elasticity in demand for drugs and certainly drug addicts do shift drug use when costs go up).

Anyway the issue is we always want a cheaper lunch than is sustainable at population level. Live longer - it costs and a LOT more above a certain age as you said.
Plus we need carers because while we're getting zet we don't want to be caring for the old.

Rich is relative, so as we become richer we find the poor are still with us (living on our crumbs) - albeit in "the West" everyone is on balance a *bit* better off than 100 years ago. (But because "relative" we don't feel it because there are others doing better than us.)

I think a 'bit' better off might be underselling it somewhat when you look at progress in the last 100 years.

Virtually every advanced economy on the planet has a looming demographic crisis. We've either got to figure out a way of spreading the associated financial burden to the older generations or see the welfare state collapse.

Unfortunately as the older generations make up an ever increasing proportion of the electorate that gets more difficult to do with every passing year.

Rich_cb wrote:

I think a 'bit' better off might be underselling it somewhat when you look at progress in the last 100 years. Virtually every advanced economy on the planet has a looming demographic crisis. We've either got to figure out a way of spreading the associated financial burden to the older generations or see the welfare state collapse. Unfortunately as the older generations make up an ever increasing proportion of the electorate that gets more difficult to do with every passing year.

How about we lower the voting age to 16, cap the maximum voting age to 60 and ship pensioners over to Rwanda whilst swapping them for younger refugees?

Wait - this isn't the plan already? I thought we'd been sending older people (3) to Rwanda while we have signed a deal that Rwandan refugees can come here anytime?

Just make sure they're happy to work in the health / social care industries (or do the cleaning / food serving we don't want to) and job done.

Rich_cb wrote:

We've either got to figure out a way of spreading the associated financial burden to the older generations or see the welfare state collapse.

Not implementing halfwitted ideologically-driven referenda that reduce our GDP by 4% or £100 billion per annum (Office for Budget Responsibility, Bloomberg), roughly 75% of the pensions budget, might help.

1. GDP does not equal tax take.
2. The predictions are over 15 years, not immediate.
3. The OBR have been wrong in almost every forecast they've made recently. If they can't get a forecast right 6 months into the future then treating a prediction for 15 years time as gospel seems a bit optimistic.

I can't imagine why a left wing Gen Xer living in London would be opposed to the progressive taxation of unearned property wealth...

Rich_cb wrote:

I can't imagine why a left wing Gen Xer living in London would be opposed to the progressive taxation of unearned property wealth...

Do please show me where I've said that I'm opposed to that, either in this discussion or elsewhere? I'll wait.

I just assumed that from your previous post. As you neatly demonstrated earlier, sometimes it's easy to misconstrue such things. 'If it happens' can easily be mistaken for 'it will happen' for example.

Glad to have you on board. Let's squeeze those wealthy property owning boomers and gen xers until the pips squeak.

Rich_cb wrote:

As you neatly demonstrated earlier, sometimes it's easy to misconstrue such things. 'If it happens' can easily be mistaken for 'it will happen' for example.

Yes indeed, very easy to misconstrue somebody saying "The India deal appears to be on the cusp of final sign off" and "[The India deal] looks like it's getting pretty close" as meaning that the India deal appears to be on the cusp of final sign off and looks like it's getting pretty close, apparently now those statements have been shown to be nonsense that's not what they meant at all.

I know you're a stickler for language Rendel so I find it odd that you'd conflate those phrases with a 'confident assurance'.

I was under the impression that 'confidently' meant 'little room for doubt'. That's rather at odds with the phrases 'appears to be' and 'if it gets over the line' wouldn't you agree?

Perhaps you could kindly give us the link to that discussion so we could get more detail than just a cherry picked screenshot?

Rich_cb wrote:

There's an argument that the country would be better off if we all smoked ourselves into an early grave as we'd pay far more in tax and receive far less in pensions but morally I think aiming for a healthier populace is probably the safer bet.

You're ALMOST there.

The answer, of course, is to invest in preventative health measures instead of allowing chronic diseases to develop and then spending billions treating those (largely) preventable diseases.

Unfortunately our current shit show of a "government" has no interest in actually improving the lives of ordinary people, which is why it bangs on about irrelevant shit like gender and refugees, instead of public health and poverty.

Yet the English NHS still vastly outperforms the Welsh version...

As does the English education system.

Here in Wales the 'show' you describe would be a big improvement when it comes to public service provision.

Same in Shropshire, they've been switching them off for about 5 hours a night for the best part of a decade. But all the cuts made by Conservative run mismanaged Shropshire council won't help. It's all due to Tory fake 'Austerity' that's been hacking away at our public services since 2010. Isn't it what they and all the selfish c**ts who voted Tory over and over wanted? Why else would anyone vote Conservative?

Trade deals are bullshit, a way for other countries to screw ours because we're not in a strong bargaining position. Meanwhile our public services have been sold off to foreign investors at discount prices and the councils are stuck with couldn't-care-less contractors like Keir and Serco that do a shit job and bleed the coffers dry, for their shareholders' benefit.