Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 1:59 pm "When Christian charity nursed and educated the masses", i.e. when it was someone else's job.Over a century ago.
Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 2:18 pm She's not quite saying that, I don't think.I think the main thing she's saying is that yer average Torygraph reader in his (his, absolutely) seventies is not completely out of touch and the kidz agree with all of their nasty prejudices.
Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 2:38 pm I'm 75 and I certainly can't remember a time when 'Christian Charity' educated and nursed the masses...1834 New Poor Law
I reckon I would have to be at least 160 to remember that.
RedSparrows wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 2:48 pm Are they banging on about Rowntree and co?Yeah, I think that this might be it.
i.e. people they'd call 'fucking woke do gooders' now?
i.e. the people whose work contributed, as did Dickens and war and Tory ineptitude and expansion of the franchise etc etc, to a desire for reform, and so 1945 and all that (even as, yes, the whole country was NOT on board...)?
i.e. a history totally different from the nostalgia-witch brew the Torygraph quaffs each morning?
davidjay wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:30 pm Forgetting, of course, the identity of the most famous refugee family in history.The Millibands?
Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 5:06 pmJoseph, Mary and their little lad.davidjay wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:30 pm Forgetting, of course, the identity of the most famous refugee family in history.The Millibands?
The Von Trapps?
Fly into Britain through Heathrow, and one of the first things you’ll see on getting off the plane is a helpful sign pointing the way to baggage reclaim. Looking ahead to the Budget, it might be worth adding a second, larger sign: “Abandon all hope, ye who pay tax here”.
Ahead of the Budget, the only element that appears to be in doubt is just how much Chancellor Rachel Reeves intends to raise taxes by. The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinks we’re in for £25bn in tax rises; the Bank of America, £35bn.
That taxes will rise, however, is taken as read by everyone. And it’s this part, rather than anything in particular that the Government is doing, that worries me.
The most frightening chart in British politics can be found on page 4 of the drily named “Fiscal Risks and Sustainability” report published by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Over the next 50 years, government policy is expected to maintain revenue at around 40pc of GDP. Spending, meanwhile, is poised to cross the 60pc threshold last reached in 1944-1945, when German foreign policy led to unusually strong spending pressures.
It’s worth thinking about what this looks like in practice. In 2020-2021 – when the economy was shut down, the NHS was running at maximum capacity, money was pouring into test-and-trace and a quarter of the country’s employees went on furlough at one point or another – government spending reached 53pc of GDP.
So even the pandemic state at its most interventionist looks relatively slim compared to the relatively near future. What the report is projecting is a level of state command and control essentially unprecedented outside of three years at the height of the Second World War, funded by borrowing equal to a fifth of national income, every single year.
This is absurd, and unsustainable, and the OBR says as much. The problem for the beleaguered youth of Britain is that the way out isn’t particularly palatable either: one way or another, we appear to be due for a dramatic change in the structure of the state.
It looks suspiciously as if the change in spending will come after the rise in taxes, when today’s workers are closer to the end of their careers than their start. After all, the real fiscal bite isn’t when we’re paying in, but when it comes to our turn to take out
Until that point, there’s a good stretch of high but not impossible spending to get through, which we’ll be expected to fund. And thanks to our population structure, it doesn’t really matter which party is in office: with the over-55s quite possibly already accounting for a majority of votes cast, the weight of demography is on the side of draining the taxpayer further.
The NHS, the state pension system, and state-funded elderly care are all but untouchable – turkeys don’t vote for Christmas – and those nearing retirement don’t vote to reduce their own entitlements when there’s any other option available. Unfortunately, spending on these three items also accounts for an additional 10.5pc of GDP by the mid 2070s. Add on the interest on our expanding debts, and that’s effectively all fiscal wriggle room erased.
Taxes and borrowing will rise until they can rise no further, and somebody will be left standing when the music stops.
Back in the present day, Reeves isn’t going to stand at the despatch box, lay all this out to the public, and then seek a mandate to reshape the state entirely to avert a crisis in the future. Then again, neither was Jeremy Hunt. Last time I looked, the Conservative offering for young people was corvee labour in care homes and the delight of funding a quadruple lock.
On this issue, the parties are united: kick the can down the road, and hope like hell the job of sorting it out lands with someone else.
It was partly these pressures that led the Conservative Party to turn to mass migration on an unprecedented scale, bringing in everyone from doctors and nurses to teachers and care workers in an attempt to hold down the cost of government services, and flooding the economy with cheap labour in an attempt to stimulate activity.
The long run effect of this sugar rush, however, may well be to make Britain even less attractive to home-grown talent. The OBR believes each low-wage worker will cost Britain £151,000 by state pension age, £500,000 by 80 and £1m by 100. In other words, the “migration” strategy simply shunts the costs of today’s retirees into the future – and into the period where state spending is already unsustainable.
Better still, in the present day, it puts further pressure on a housing market where home-ownership is out of reach for many young people in what used to be considered good jobs, and unpleasantly expensive for those who can afford it.
As economists are fond of pointing out, migration responds to both pull factors and push factors. The UK’s abysmal growth record – which has left us with per capita incomes closer to Poland than the United States – gives rise to the pull. Housing, and rising taxes, the push.
This is particularly true for high earners, given that the Labour Party appears to have settled on combining a laissez-faire approach to mass migration with a special antipathy towards the successful, attempting to load as much of the rising cost of public services as possible on to those with the “broadest shoulders”.
With 1pc of the population already paying 29pc of the income tax, however, this strategy is starting to run into diminishing returns. This is particularly true when we consider the behaviour the state incentivises: parents who cross the £100k threshold will be left worse off thanks to the withdrawal of childcare support. As absurd as it sounds, they’re better off earning £99,000 than £134,000.
Add to their tax bill further by raising employer National Insurance contributions – a tax that is charged to companies, but is effectively paid by workers – or by targeting their investments, and an increasing number with aspirations to be in this group may just give up on the whole enterprise.
The UK is already expected to experience the largest outflow of millionaires of any country other than communist China this year. As the Government continues in its effort to create a hostile environment for the young and ambitious, the lure of friendlier jurisdictions will become harder to resist for those with less wealth, but equally marketable talents.
Rather than worrying about American businesses asset-stripping British companies, we should be more concerned that they’ll cotton on to Samo Burja’s idea that Britain is an underdeveloped English-speaking country where you can get talent dirt cheap, and start poaching our high earners.
Increasingly, those who can leave may find it better to do so.
- By davidjay
- By kreuzberger