Again, is this government fit to govern ?
If you need to ask the question you don’t understand the subject.
I’m just as worried about who might replace them…
Hunt keeps digging. Is he an actual imbecile or something?
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Total knob
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Or something. He is on the spectrum, somewhere between feckless cunt and total cuntbutler.
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brilliant 
Tories in general are a bunch of cunts, I have no words for this lot
Imagine the very worst job you could possibly have. Dealing with the nastiest people, working for the nastiest employer, over the longest hours, in the bleakest conditions, for the lowest pay. The aim is to make benefits worse than that. The only question is how much worse.
VB
And then some I’d say…
Keeping my fingers crossed that Hammond lowers the VAT threshold to £20k. I think he is that stupid.
With the rise of the self employed the Treasury smells a chance to take a slice and yes I think that Hammond is that stupid.
My proposal for a tax and benefits system is as follows:
Everyone, with no means testing, gets given an amount that is enough for basic subsistence including housing in a basic state run hostel. Somewhere between £5k and £10k. It can vary by region to take into account the different costs of housing.
There is an additional payment for those with specific requirements: kids, disabled, study, that kind of thing.
All income is taxed at a flat rate of about 50%.
There is a wealth tax that is broadly banded. Your wealth is defined as home equity, amounts settled into trust, cash deposits over £5k, shares and investments. Up to about £100k no change, £100k to £1m you lose your free payments, above £1m you have a fixed charge of £20-50k per year.
Pensions lose the tax benefit on paying into the fund, but all income made by the fund is not taxed (including a return of the tax credit), possibly up to a cap.
The intention with this is primarily a huge simplification:
- work always just has a simple marginal rate of tax. It’s always worth working, you don’t lose benefits.
- big reduction in means testing.
- slight increase in tax on the rich, but not too onerous.
- get rid of different types of income, it’s all taxed the same.
The key thing is to get the tax rate, which I have assumed to be 50%, to provide the same net tax yield as we currently get. I reckon it’s probably about the right number though.
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Can you drop that in to The Treasury the next time you’re passing please
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How basic (let’s say the two extremes are the workhouse and an estate of council houses) ? What fraction of the population would you plan on taking up this option ? If it’s more than a tiny number how much would all these new buildings cost and would you force people to relocate to (say) The North to avoid the state having to acquire land, planning permission etc in expensive places (The South) ?
Say 40 million people getting £7.5k pa - that’s £300 billion per year (double current welfare spending) that needs to be raised. So I think the tax take has to go up. With a 50% tax rate how hard would people have to work to be able to afford to run a mid-range car or to buy a house ? Would that work/reward trade-off be good enough to incentivise any/some/most of the populace to work ?
VB
The hostels would be few - the intention is only for them to be used by people who are currently homeless or close to it. There should be a role for the state to provide council houses that are a more appropriate option for those that have a more stable life.
The 50% is a guess, but I think it’s reasonable. The vast majority of people pay less than that, and many on benefits have a higher marginal rate of tax, due to lost benefits, than that. It’s these people that we want to get back to work.
Then it will come down to the trade-off between the increased incentive for the poorest to get into work (certainly A Good Thing for those people, but I’m not sure that the head count will end up being enormous) versus the disincentive that a 50% tax rate applies to a lot more people to advance themselves at work. The size of that disincentive is much harder for me to judge, but it wouldn’t have to be very large for it to have a substantial overall impact since so many people would be involved.
So if your £5-£10k is the only benefit then there is essentially no viable option for people who aren’t working. They are going to have to cover their own housing costs and in much of the country those would consume all of the £5-10k leaving nothing for food, clothing, utilities, transport etc.
VB
If you don’t work, at the moment you get about £70 a week and housing benefit about £75 I think. That’s about £7.5k, and you lose loads once you start work.
How about no further investment in weapons of mass destruction?
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