Separate Moan Thread About The Election

I remember when I was a kid they brought in a rule regarding how much money you could take out of the country when you went on holiday.
I think it was something like £50 at the time.

 

No, other way round, I think the unions will settle for what they get offered.

To my way of thinking its the big unions way of holding a government to ransom, went on all the time in the 70s.
Unions have always played politics.

 

I agree that recent levels of economic inequality are a big problem @Dovefromabove (I remember reading The Spirit Level just over a decade ago and thinking about the issue a lot) but it seems to me that solving it is much harder than the vast majority of people imagine!

 

But how much of the dividends gets reinvested in anything? The country's infrastructure gets improved with what's left once the shareholders have trousered their loot.

 

Reform have just reached 60,000 members today, membership doubled in a month, I've never known a party to achieve such rapid growth. That's about 7,000 more than the Greens and they were founded in 1990, 34 years ago!

 

How long is a piece of string, with my few shares I always invested the dividend and took it as more shares as at the time I didn't need the money.
The real winners are those that buy and sell, but that is how the system works.

If you just trouser the money it won't make you more.

 

Not at all. Money being free of borders has created massive opportunities for the wealthy to duck and dive and avoid paying tax. Let's just close the loophole so earnings generated to one country contribute towards the tax system in that place instead of being siphoned out. Tax havens are a terrible idea for almost everyone.

Nothing will improve unless we try to come up with ways to do things differently.

A couple of good books - Taxtopia (The Rebel Accountant, 2023), Rentier Capitalism (Christopher Brett, 2022) and The Growth Delusion (David Billing, 2018). An older, but still pertinent, read is 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (Ha-Jong Chang, 2011).

 

Oh, it's hard to do, no question. But mostly the situation has got to this level of imbalance because the wealthy have power over the rules. That is intrinsically unjust. One person, one vote, no undue influence - that is what we need.

 

Twice as many Britons want tax rises as want cuts, survey finds

 

So much of it is invested in property which just pushes up the price of houses and business premises, increasing mortgages and rents and the costs of goods and services until everything will be unaffordable by almost anyone.

 

We've finally received a Conservative party leaflet through the door today.
Now we have all five - I can shred them and put them in the compost bin.
I'll be blowed if words of such 'quality' should end up in the recycling box, and returned to the council.
These are destined to be put to good use, and help bulk out my supply of compost next year!!

 

It's not so much as wanting them, but rather recognising this country needs them, in order to pay for so many things that are required to mend this society.

 

While we do need tax rises, they need to be targetted at those (individuals and business) who could and should be paying more, by closing loopholes as much as possible before taxing the ordinary people more. I wouldn't mind paying more income tax if I knew that thesystem was fair across the board. What I do think should be done is stop the freeze on the personal tax allowance (ideally put it to where it would have been if it hadn't been frozen but realisticalyy that's not going to happen). That would benefit the lowest-income taxpayers the most while having less benefit the more you earn and no benefit for those who already earn so much that their tax allowance is zero.