I saw a video on Rachel Reeves (Chancellor of the Exchequer) yesterday and it's around 35 minutes long. It was pretty painful watching and called out not only her qualifications for the job but also the plagiarism ( his words not mine :-) ) and it was actually quite concerning that what we have here is an ideologically based financial blueprint that appears as if it based on a US Treasury approach under Biden that was muted at Davos and so we have something that would, with the might of the US Dollar and the size of that country struggle to work copied on tracing paper and attempted to be implemented here.
The obvious and glaring problem being that we are no longer a power house (only in our minds) and we have politicians who cannot think strategically (or for themselves) and have no idea how to coalesce this into a whole state wide, fit into the world economy system. From the explanations of the various parts of the budget it's pained us all into a corner and burdened as we are with the highest taxes since the end of WW2 we are probably going to be asked for more and more but if we are no longer able to work and get paid more then we will not have the money to pay for these horrendous impositions on us.
When you then start to look at these taxes and strategies you quickly see that there is indeed no real incentive to employ people, set up a business, carry on your business, go out and find work or cooperate in society that has been built that way. Bit by bit we see people losing their jobs or natural wastage of people in business not being replaced. Costs imposed are passed on to the workers and consumers alike. The Government heaps pay rises onto public sector workers who have gold plated pensions and excellent working conditions and tells the rest of us to pay up for those pay rises. The Public Sector may be necessary albeit in a much smaller way than now but what does it do in terms of bringing money into the country?
Fiscal drag makes us all poorer and will start to pull pensioners into its grasp later this year (probably next financial year) and personal allowances are not going to change until 2028. What's the incentive to work if personal allowances don't even keep up with published let alone real inflation? Fuel or should I say energy prices have tripled since just before foot shooting Covid and it's ridiculous lock-downs, such harmful financial and physical nonsense. Inflation is probably running at 8% I'd guess. So each year your finances take an 8% hit plus all your bills have gone up by that much and in the case of energy three times or more. It isn't sustainable and you are trapped if you aren't getting more than 8% on your savings (net) or getting that sort of pay rise per year. This is over simplifying the problem. The main thing is that it's a trap and an unpleasant one.
Now, as a pensioner, I'm pretty much trapped as I get a regular income after having paid into the system for 50 years. Every 4 weeks it drops into my bank and I do think next year it will attract tax! My savings, of course if I use those, they'll be taxed (and they are). If I spend any money on the house I've to pay 20% VAT and on and on it goes. There's taxes on taxes even (look in depth at fuel duty where they tax the tax) and on and on it goes.
If you invest in something a bit riskier you get taxed if it comes off and makes you money (sure you can offset your losses but if you choose well you can't) If I do well in business they want a lump of that in corporation tax and any money I take out as a reward for setting it up and running it.
There is no real incentive to work, there is no real incentive to get better and to grow the overall wealth of the country. The government, far from their mantra of economic growth, appear to have done everything possible to stifle that growth and in fact reverse it. I see people are seriously curtailing spending and the High Street and as I understand it online stores report a slow down in post Christmas sales. People are hunkering down, they are not sure what is coming next, they can see fragility in the work place, redundancies are incoming and there are many mobile people leaving to go to Dubai and Singapore etc. Those who can will leave and it's generally the high net worth people who do taking their Tax £s away with them. Why should you stay here and work hard for someone to take it away from you. If it was a fair system, if we all benefited and you could see something for your money and it was good value for money, then you'd probably stay. Gone are the days of good public services, half the staff are down the beach or answering phone calls whilst on holiday or sat in their homes. Society has become two tier with preference given to non natives over the populace who's taxes pay for these things.
It is a Huge Rip Off and is hypocritically shoved in your face by the politicians who I am certain loath and hate us and by sections of the people who live here who feel that their "rights" trump all of ours. That's a two tier society and no one has the balls to tackle the very divisive society we've become or to treat us with some respect. We, after all, pay for this shower of sh1t to do our bidding, which they don't do. I do hope that they just keep digging themselves into a bigger and bigger hole and cannot work out how to get out of it. A pox on their houses.
No comments:
Post a Comment