BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴
Comments
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I have always wanted to know the real cost of means testing, ie for each £1-00 paid out, what is it actually costing the tax payer when the bureaucracy costs are added ontop. Only when that is known can you determine if a benefit should be means tested or paid to all.skyblueamateur said:FWIW I agree with raising the retirement age and believe that all benefits should be means tested regardless of age.
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Jezyboy said:
Boomer snowflake?skyblueamateur said:
It's the use of the term that instantly gets my back up.Pross said:Yeah, but boomers!
Late 30's. God knows where that pigeonholes me.
Life was so much easier when the only identity politics I had to worry about was Indie kid/Goth/Townie/Casual etc.0 -
Fair point.Dorset_Boy said:
I have always wanted to know the real cost of means testing, ie for each £1-00 paid out, what is it actually costing the tax payer when the bureaucracy costs are added ontop. Only when that is known can you determine if a benefit should be means tested or paid to all.skyblueamateur said:FWIW I agree with raising the retirement age and believe that all benefits should be means tested regardless of age.
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I did but it seems rather an irrelevance to the what I'm illsutrating The issue isn't the wealth in and of itself - that is a symptom of the problem, right? And even if demographics were a factor, none of you are able (since it's not the case) to show that demographics are the main driver for the generational inequality. That's a falsehood.Dorset_Boy said:It demonstrates that the population is aging, therefore one factor in the shift of wealth is clearly this demographic shift.
Life expectancy in 2022 is c7 years more than it was in 1990.
Did you not bother to read SBA's post?
The wealth issue specifically is deeply linked to the cost of properties, which I posted elsewhere on here:
I suspect a disproportionate amount of that private wealth is tied up in houses (in turn, pricing younger generations out of a market where boomers saw most of their capital gains!).
Anyway, it's at best tangentially related to Brexit.
To answer your original post - just because government policy has massively favoured the old and retired for a long time, and continues to do so, does not mean that there aren't poor old people.
The UK is deeply unequal and has a poverty problem that stretches all generations. But the statistics are quite clear about the vast chasm of generational divide - one that simply was not an issue for previous generations.
That is just factual - all the stats back that up.0 -
We need a hobby horse thread.1
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I get annoyed when the stats are there glaring at people but they don't like it so they ignore it.
Anyone who looks at this for a living and see the issue. They are worth listening to.0 -
Rick - I don't know if the twitter feed you have linked to discusses house price affordability in proper detail, ie taking into account the cost of servicing the mortgage debt, rather than just house prices vs wages.
eg A £100,000 mortgage repayable over 25 years at 15% = £1,281 pm.
A £270,000 mortgage repayable over 25% at 3% = £1,280 pm
There is no denying the UK has an unhealthy obsession with house prices, and it is difficult to save sufficient for a deposit, but there is more to housing afforability than prices / earnings.
And yes, there is a huge wealth divide - the top 10% own 90% of the wealth, which is a bad thing, but far from all that 10% are over 60.
You always make it seem that 'boomers' had it easy, and any generation older than you had it easy, when the reality is quite different, and it would really help if you could see that.3 -
Now if you were to have framed the argument that the wealth disparity was a symptom of a broken housing system then I don't think you would have many disagree.rick_chasey said:
I did but it seems rather an irrelevance to the what I'm illsutrating The issue isn't the wealth in and of itself - that is a symptom of the problem, right? And even if demographics were a factor, none of you are able (since it's not the case) to show that demographics are the main driver for the generational inequality. That's a falsehood.Dorset_Boy said:It demonstrates that the population is aging, therefore one factor in the shift of wealth is clearly this demographic shift.
Life expectancy in 2022 is c7 years more than it was in 1990.
Did you not bother to read SBA's post?
The wealth issue specifically is deeply linked to the cost of properties, which I posted elsewhere on here:
I suspect a disproportionate amount of that private wealth is tied up in houses (in turn, pricing younger generations out of a market where boomers saw most of their capital gains!).
Anyway, it's at best tangentially related to Brexit.
To answer your original post - just because government policy has massively favoured the old and retired for a long time, and continues to do so, does not mean that there aren't poor old people.
The UK is deeply unequal and has a poverty problem that stretches all generations. But the statistics are quite clear about the vast chasm of generational divide - one that simply was not an issue for previous generations.
That is just factual - all the stats back that up.
I would imagine most 'Boomers' only own the house they live in? So when they pass away it will be the next generation that will benefit from the increases in the housing market?
Ultimately, if you want to solve this issue then you should be redistributing these proceeds?0 -
'You always make it seem that 'boomers' had it easy, and any generation older than you had it easy, when the reality is quite different, and it would really help if you could see that. '
This in a nutshell. It boils my p1ss as much as the 'kids nowadays don't know their born' argument.0 -
You'll have to get over that as that's not what I'm saying.skyblueamateur said:'You always make it seem that 'boomers' had it easy, and any generation older than you had it easy, when the reality is quite different, and it would really help if you could see that. '
This in a nutshell. It boils my p1ss as much as the 'kids nowadays don't know their born' argument.0 -
So what’s your point?rick_chasey said:I get annoyed when the stats are there glaring at people but they don't like it so they ignore it.
Anyone who looks at this for a living and see the issue. They are worth listening to.
What are you suggesting happens?
I think I’ve been quite consistent in agreeing that wealth distribution is a massive issue whilst being mightily frustrated by your simplistic binary, old is easy mantra.
What’s you end game in all of this apart from guilting old people in giving their wealth away?
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Can't see RC agreeing to kicking Boomers out of their homes so big, huge smacking inheritance taxes are the other option.morstar said:
So what’s your point?rick_chasey said:I get annoyed when the stats are there glaring at people but they don't like it so they ignore it.
Anyone who looks at this for a living and see the issue. They are worth listening to.
What are you suggesting happens?
I think I’ve been quite consistent in agreeing that wealth distribution is a massive issue whilst being mightily frustrated by your simplistic binary, old is easy mantra.
What’s you end game in all of this apart from guilting old people in giving their wealth away?
Personally I'd favour big tax bills for second properties rather then hammering hard-working 'Boomers' who have the temerity to own their own house. Talk about getting above their station.0 -
I'm wondering if we'll all still be on here when RC's kids have grown up, he's paid off his mortgage, looking forward to retirement and is in the higher percentile of wealth.
I predict a slow change in attitude.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.1 -
Sort the housing system out - easy to say, hard to do.morstar said:
So what’s your point?rick_chasey said:I get annoyed when the stats are there glaring at people but they don't like it so they ignore it.
Anyone who looks at this for a living and see the issue. They are worth listening to.
What are you suggesting happens?
I think I’ve been quite consistent in agreeing that wealth distribution is a massive issue whilst being mightily frustrated by your simplistic binary, old is easy mantra.
What’s you end game in all of this apart from guilting old people in giving their wealth away?
I would loosen up rules to prevent nimby objections for housing developments. I'd put stricture rules on land developers holding onto land without developing - make it punitive to own but not build, for example. I don't have direct experience with the market so no doubt I won't understand some of the nuances, but the broader issue should be to massively increase the supply of houses. Incentivise building, de-incentivise not-building.
That would include a big splurge of state money on building and running council houses.
I'd stop this nonsense of subsidising mortgages, help to buy, that kind of thing.
Ramp up the cost of second home ownership substantially - double up the council tax, and I would also add a landlord tax too, which would be designed to put all but the largest and most efficient landlords out of business - there is no reason to have non-professional landlords. Retail buy-to-rent mortgages would get zero pick up as it would just not make sense for anyone.
There's something to be said for sticking capital gains taxes on home profits - though there would be some structuring to be done there to avoid smacking people who have always lived in the same house until they're 85 with a gigantic tax bill. Maybe capital gains on all properties bought after 2022 etc (ideally, capital gains on properites made after 2022 but that is too difficult to implement)
I'd ramp up inheritance tax - but then of course, you run into that 80-20 issue, which is there's gonna be what, 5 trillion transferred from boomers to gen x and millenials over the next 30 years, so you end up taking a lot of wealth out of that transfer, but I guess if the gov't spends it properly (it can help fund all those houses to be built).
I would also even out benefits, so that people don't start earning more money when they reach retirement age than when they are on dole money. Universal credit has battered working age people and yet the state pension is untouched. If you're gonna have benefit cuts, everyone should feel pain (which might make them think twice about doing it!)
I'd also stop child benefit being means tested - or at least, ramp up the threshold and add the cost of nursery for under 5s to child benefit.
If it's not too expensive to be worth the bother i'd start means testing the state pension too - plenty of well off people who don't even notice the state pension, so why do they get it?
For fear of running into a laffer curve debate I'd also whack up taxes on incomes over 2 million in the UK.
If I were dicator I'd shift entirely to a wealth tax model, but I think that's politically too difficult to do.
What was it, a 1% wealth tax on millionaires and millionaire couples yields £260bn (includes pension pot, house price, everything), paid over 5 years? I'd be tempted to do that.
Other things I'd do because I'm petty is I'd stop charitable status for private schools, I'd gather all the legal and political power i had to go after tax avoiders, and beef up the investigative powers and resources to go after them - including removing roadblocks, and smacking the UK tax havens as hard as I possibly could with everything westminster could muster - transparency laws, penalties for setting up shell companies, going after money booked there that obviously is earned in the UK proper. I'd put in a lot of effort and resource to stop people hiding money from the tax man.
That's a starter for 10.
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I really hope you don't mean 'tax avoiders' as that would hit every person saving into a pension or Isa, or BPR scheme, or VCT, or EIS. There are reasons there are tax breaks given to those that allow people to avoid other taxes. I think you actually mean 'tax evaders'.
The number of those in retirement who wouldn't notice a £19,000 hit in their income is miniscule (2 x State Pension under the new system). They've made their 35 years of NI contributions, so why make it means tested so a very small handful don't get it? You have very little grasp of the reality for the vast majority in retirement.
I agree that all that subsidising mortgages does is push up house prices.
I agree that making Child Benefit means tested is not at all cost effective.
I think the level of basic benefits needs to be higher.
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So, I posted some vaguely similar stuff in the vote Tory thread the other day. We’re not millions of miles apart politically.rick_chasey said:
Sort the housing system out - easy to say, hard to do.morstar said:
So what’s your point?rick_chasey said:I get annoyed when the stats are there glaring at people but they don't like it so they ignore it.
Anyone who looks at this for a living and see the issue. They are worth listening to.
What are you suggesting happens?
I think I’ve been quite consistent in agreeing that wealth distribution is a massive issue whilst being mightily frustrated by your simplistic binary, old is easy mantra.
What’s you end game in all of this apart from guilting old people in giving their wealth away?
I would loosen up rules to prevent nimby objections for housing developments. I'd put stricture rules on land developers holding onto land without developing - make it punitive to own but not build, for example. I don't have direct experience with the market so no doubt I won't understand some of the nuances, but the broader issue should be to massively increase the supply of houses. Incentivise building, de-incentivise not-building.
That would include a big splurge of state money on building and running council houses.
I'd stop this nonsense of subsidising mortgages, help to buy, that kind of thing.
Ramp up the cost of second home ownership substantially - double up the council tax, and I would also add a landlord tax too, which would be designed to put all but the largest and most efficient landlords out of business - there is no reason to have non-professional landlords. Retail buy-to-rent mortgages would get zero pick up as it would just not make sense for anyone.
There's something to be said for sticking capital gains taxes on home profits - though there would be some structuring to be done there to avoid smacking people who have always lived in the same house until they're 85 with a gigantic tax bill. Maybe capital gains on all properties bought after 2022 etc (ideally, capital gains on properites made after 2022 but that is too difficult to implement)
I'd ramp up inheritance tax - but then of course, you run into that 80-20 issue, which is there's gonna be what, 5 trillion transferred from boomers to gen x and millenials over the next 30 years, so you end up taking a lot of wealth out of that transfer, but I guess if the gov't spends it properly (it can help fund all those houses to be built).
I would also even out benefits, so that people don't start earning more money when they reach retirement age than when they are on dole money. Universal credit has battered working age people and yet the state pension is untouched. If you're gonna have benefit cuts, everyone should feel pain (which might make them think twice about doing it!)
I'd also stop child benefit being means tested - or at least, ramp up the threshold and add the cost of nursery for under 5s to child benefit.
If it's not too expensive to be worth the bother i'd start means testing the state pension too - plenty of well off people who don't even notice the state pension, so why do they get it?
For fear of running into a laffer curve debate I'd also whack up taxes on incomes over 2 million in the UK.
If I were dicator I'd shift entirely to a wealth tax model, but I think that's politically too difficult to do.
What was it, a 1% wealth tax on millionaires and millionaire couples yields £260bn (includes pension pot, house price, everything), paid over 5 years? I'd be tempted to do that.
Other things I'd do because I'm petty is I'd stop charitable status for private schools, I'd gather all the legal and political power i had to go after tax avoiders, and beef up the investigative powers and resources to go after them - including removing roadblocks, and smacking the UK tax havens as hard as I possibly could with everything westminster could muster - transparency laws, penalties for setting up shell companies, going after money booked there that obviously is earned in the UK proper. I'd put in a lot of effort and resource to stop people hiding money from the tax man.
That's a starter for 10.
But here’s the thing. We’re both recognising policy shift is the way to balance the root cause of a system that favours retaining wealth at the cost of all else.
The difference is, I see the wealth imbalance as a symptom of policies that facilitate it. The problem I have when you post about Boomers, is you blame them for it.
Their vote only goes as far as anybody else’s. It is the policy makers to blame, not the beneficiaries.1 -
Have you ever considered making your point in non-inflammatory language then instead of going on about boomers etc.? Maybe then people could focus on your actual message instead taking one look and thinking he's off on one about old people again.rick_chasey said:
You'll have to get over that as that's not what I'm saying.skyblueamateur said:'You always make it seem that 'boomers' had it easy, and any generation older than you had it easy, when the reality is quite different, and it would really help if you could see that. '
This in a nutshell. It boils my p1ss as much as the 'kids nowadays don't know their born' argument.0 -
scrap child benefit and pay people based upon need not how many kids they haveDorset_Boy said:I really hope you don't mean 'tax avoiders' as that would hit every person saving into a pension or Isa, or BPR scheme, or VCT, or EIS. There are reasons there are tax breaks given to those that allow people to avoid other taxes. I think you actually mean 'tax evaders'.
The number of those in retirement who wouldn't notice a £19,000 hit in their income is miniscule (2 x State Pension under the new system). They've made their 35 years of NI contributions, so why make it means tested so a very small handful don't get it? You have very little grasp of the reality for the vast majority in retirement.
I agree that all that subsidising mortgages does is push up house prices.
I agree that making Child Benefit means tested is not at all cost effective.
I think the level of basic benefits needs to be higher.
also scrap ISAs0 -
~18% of the population are over 65. 21% under 18,so that leaves roughly 60% of working age. At the very least, distributing wealth so that 1/5 of the population owns 4/5 and 3/5 own 1/5 is going to create some tensions. You might hope there was a steady gradient from 18 to 85, but those figures suggest it's more of an exponential curve.Dorset_Boy said:It demonstrates that the population is aging, therefore one factor in the shift of wealth is clearly this demographic shift.
Life expectancy in 2022 is c7 years more than it was in 1990.
Did you not bother to read SBA's post?
Edit: link removed.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
The 5th line of the bit you've quoted is nonsense.
Plenty of people aged 55 to 65 have net worth well north of £1 million, so 'reaches as high as £1 million' is bollocks.0 -
Agreed. Scrap that. Will try to find some more consistent info. I think the general point stands, though. And if a significant subset of that 18% are scraping by on their state pension then that distribution is even more skewed.Dorset_Boy said:The 5th line of the bit you've quoted is nonsense.
Plenty of people aged 55 to 65 have net worth well north of £1 million, so 'reaches as high as £1 million' is bollocks.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I don't think there is any debate about unfair wealth distribution. It is just getting worse. I am of the opinion that it is not simply due to pensions, you have to look at the source, how the wealthy contribute to those large pensions.
Then you have to look at the other main contribution, houses. That is a messy subject as nobody wants their house to be devalued.
Then there is the other part which has been discussed. The elderly simply have had longer to invest and have less outgoings. That is not going to change.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
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Glad to see the Brexiters so relaxed that the government arrangement makes it easier for EU exporters to the UK than it is for UK exporters to the EU.
That’s real winning right there isn’t it?0 -
Spotted a tweet from Ben Habib claiming we still hadn't left and Johnson had betrayed Brexit.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Ben Habib has been a very vocal voice in the Loyalist protests against the Protocolrjsterry said:Spotted a tweet from Ben Habib claiming we still hadn't left and Johnson had betrayed Brexit.
Most recently declaring the Good Friday Agreement dead“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
But I thought that Brexit was 'done'. Surely we can't still be negotiating the implementation if it's done?
Replies to Wrecker Frost's tweets are fun.0 -
My MP - can we get the environmental protection as strong as we used to have? PM - you want to rejoin the EU.
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Was it my imagination or did Grant Shapps roll his eyes when he gave that response?0
