In which case housing benefit would pay the rent anyway and if pension credit was claimed loads more freebies would be on offer.
For most people the state pension pays out far more than they ever paid in via NI and net tax during their lives.
The problem is that house prices and rents are too high and that is all down to overpopulation and greed.
Where ?.
There are 12 million pensioners and the cost of buying not simply a fully RPI-linked annuity but one with added guarantees linked to wages gives the figures above.
I believe the Zimbabwean government are trying to persuade the farmers who were evicted from their efficient farms, to come back.
HMRC tax figures are stark. The top 1% of taxpayers pay a staggering 29% of the total income tax. Most of those live in the South East and a goodly proportion will be (or used to be) Non Doms. (Yes Non Doms DO pay tax on all their UK derived income).
If only a third of this cohort leave then that leaves a big black hole that the squeezed middle class and others will have make up.
I don't understand that reply.
People coming here to work have to pay something like £1035/year in order to use the NHS, but that is not what I am talking about I am referring to the debt known as GILTS that the treasury sells to cover the DEFICIT between annual expenditure and annual spending. (The UK has been living beyond its means almost every year since the end of WW2).
This deficit is added to the national debt, now up to £3 trillion.
Without overseas buyers of Gilts, the interest rate would soar, and far more than the (expected and inevitable) correction to the
15 year policy of negative interest rates which ended abruptly in October 2022.Forget politically controlled/interfered bank base rate, what matters is the yield on gilts that have about 10 years and 30 years to run before maturity.
Yes, I realise - which is why I chose a 2 countries with different characteristics and benefits of each far beyond 2p.
Ah, nationalisation. That worked well in the past.
While not defending the abuses of some private companies nationalised sections of the past UK economy were not well run, often being starved of timely investment for decades on a political whim or necessity. Many companies/utilities/services were sold off because they desperately needed a massive amount of investment money - something the Government couldn't afford. Even the sections the Government held on to longer are now attempting to play catch-up.
Rents are high because house prices are high. Why let a house for less than your return from some savings account after selling it?
House prices are high because it's pretty much a free market. It's pretty much a free market because there's no low cost state-owned housing as competition nowadays.
Because Thatcher. (And overpopulation.)
Who would buy a £10m property which you've just taken from the previous owner?
Secondly, it's easy
How about a 40% inheritance tax ?
Replacing a private company monopoly with a union monopoly is no guarantee of any improvement.
The current regulated private companies work as well as can be expected I think. And te framework is there to rap them on the knuckles if they abuse their privileges, although usually the government officials receive fat envelopes not to do it.
Because Blair actually He made a fortune out of insider trading on property.
For what purpose, other than to deliberately downgrade the value of what one's children can inherit?
Why should people on the state pension have to rely on means tested benefits? What if they have (modest) savings? Do they have to squander them so they can qualify? Means tested benefits are for "poor" people. Why should people who wouldn't regard themselves as poor have to rely on handouts?
...and because of working women. <g>
To discuss whether 'an enormous technical exercise needing considerable thought' is need to adopt the principle of redistributing half of the top
10%'s wealth; whether any developed country with such a tax has a fairer distribution of wealth than the UK; whether there are unexpected consequences of the attempted redistribution ...
Would your suggested "40%" rule only affect the "top 10%" of the population?
And anyway, what justification could there be for the confiscation of the assets of anyone who has gained them lawfully?
That is open for discussion.
I haven't suggested there is any.
All property is theft. So the government steals it back Normal communism
Yes. Only after his savings were gone was my friend able to qualify for state care. He died on Sunday.
Because the government makes them poor first
The NI contributions are not, and never were as far as I am aware, a personal and individual "savings" plan for retirement. They were and to meet the current liability for pensions.
Student housing, HMOs, flats. A surprising number of homes can be extracted from just one oligarch's mansion/grounds.
Again, though, the detail is complicated. Just commit to the principle and then leave it to the experts.
In the 1960s 100% was mooted. But by then owner occupation had become too embedded. Cries of 'what about my childrens' inheritance' etc.
I'd support 100% inheritance tax in the UK. Inheritance is set to be the single largest cause of inequality in the UK over the next 30 years.
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