Generally speaking, means testing is expensive to administer and risks excluding vulnerable individuals who are either not aware that they qualify or are put off by the process.
At least with this, they are piggybacking on an existing means tested benefit, so there isn’t any additional cost.
It’s all tinkering whoever it is. We live beyond our means - NHS unsustainable in its current form, benefits bill too high, aging population meaning pension liability is huge.
It needs some fundamental changes to funding and how it all works or taxes will just keep going up. The tax system is too complex.
And do not get me started on our democracy. Politics is broken. It’s tribal and about winning power - not changing the country for better.
Simple solution: universal basic income.
Cuts on admin costs, renders the myriad benefits obsolete and the government knows what the cost will be.
Or flat tax?
It depends on what you mean by a flat tax. There are multiple definitions.
I think the downside of them is that it makes it more difficult to use as an economic lever.
True it would. Would a universal wage improve or make worse our productivity issue? Not sure.
Well I suppose that is a case of whether people are more productive if they want to work rather than having to work.
I’d suggest that one of the things that would improve it is limiting the amount of hours that people can work. There is a culture of unpaid overtime in the UK that just builds inefficiency into the system.
Very true. The 4 day working week trials seem to show there is a real productivity - and health - benefit.
It was the devil to the Conservatives however. I would have thought that productivity and health improvements were conservative values.
They were at one time, although you would have to go back to Disraeli for that.
Whether that happens will be up to Labour. I don’t agree with playing politics but they need the Tory mess to stick to the Tories and absolutely hammer it home over the next 4 years. Else the Tories will lay it at Labour’s door.
Their mess can be easily forgotten 4 years after the fact.
Excellent article by Prof Jonathan Portes.
I am no fan of Reform. Clearly their list of things they wanted to do was not something they would ever have to but… when I read it I agreed with a lot of it. At least they called out NHS funding etc. Tories should pick up on much of it without the racism and misogyny.
Their economic programme was Truss on steroids. Just their election would send interest rates spiralling, crash the UKs credit rating and plunge the country into the dark ages.
As always with bastards like this, the populist racism is a front for the kind of hyper deregulated capitalism that would destroy us.
Wouldn’t be surprised if this winter fuel payments revelation is compounded down the line by state pensions being taxed.
Snidey cunts will probably be hoping 5 years from now that the boomers affected will either be dead or dementia sufferers.
https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1818161014799520155/video/1
State pensions are already taxable.
Yep. That was another of Sunak’s egregious lies during the campaign. They have always been taxable, but they don’t meet the threshold.
Yes.
But they don’t qualify…yet!
Sunaks lies are not a point of contention.
What we’re now seeing the fallout from, are Starmers lies
They absolutely do, and aways have. It’s just that for those for whom it is the only source of income, it has never reached the personal allowance.
That is more a mark of how small UK state pensions are.
What I meant was, the paltry sum is below the qualifying threshold…for now