The way I see it there are three realistic choices a country can make.
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Raise the pension age. Not very popular with the public as illustrated by protests everywhere this has been mentioned.
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Increased migration. Not very popular with the public as seen by the rise of far right parties in both Europe and outside.
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Lowered living standards. Not very popular because who wants to pay the same taxes but get less out of it?
This isn’t a UK problem. It’s the entire western world. And no, the populist idea of “just have more kids” doesn’t solve it.
Any ideas?
- Tax billionaires and companies the same way you tax the working class. Somehow not a very popular idea with the elite
UK billionaires have total a net worth of about £170 billion. Would it be nice to have some of that? Sure, but it’s less than two years of pension spending (£120 billion, and going up by the minuite).
We can tax the millionaires too, but eventually you get to the upper-middle class who are already paying a 45% marginal tax rate.
A dose or two of socialism might get us from 71 to 69 (nice), but honestly I think we’re all going to have to suffer from the economic mistakes made over the last 14+ years.
Upper middle class is a made-up term to make those in the working class who earn the most think they’re not in the same boat as “the poors”. If everything comes crumbling down, they’ll be waiting in the food lines like the rest of us. Millionaires and billionaires will not have the same problems.
We’ve seen from things like the Panama Papers that the rich are far richer than they’d have you believe. I’m sure they’ll be just fine being taxed a bit more.
Also, £120 billion of pension money is likely to wind up straight back in the pockets of the same billionaires anyway as they own the major companies that pensioners are going to be buying everything from anyway.
Spreading doom and gloom that we’ll just all have to suck it up and suffer the consequences of past decisions is a shite position. Don’t repeat past mistakes of letting the rich off with it, eat the rich, enjoy retirement at a reasonable age, spread socialism.
Ok, then what do you call a professional wage-labourer (“working class”, in the marxist definition) who is nonetheless a millionaire? A high-paid professional on 100k can quite easily become a millionaire in their lifetime. If they are mere workers, same as the rest of us, that just strengthens my argument because a socialist regime would have to tax them less.
On the Panama Papres: double it, triple it. Doesn’t stop eating the rich from not being a panacea, that’s all I’m saying. At the risk of “englightend centrism” there’s a middle-ground between rothbardian economics and utopian thinking.
That is… not how money works. In order to tax the Billionaire wealth (which primarily is the companies they own) you are either forcing them to sell (by taxing them x% of wealth, leaving them without liquid assets to pay the tax) or seizing assets and re-selling. You can’t tax the rich and expect them to stay rich forever by virtue of taxing them.
There is one more choice that could easily improve everyone’s standard of living. Tax the rich. Which isn’t realistic because politicians across all large parties are in the rich people’s pockets and, on top of that, the rich own the media, so they can manipulate public opinion. Not that they would have to do much manipulating, this is a western world problem, everyone has been fed trickle down bullshit propaganda for decades.
this is a western world problem
Not really. Do you think media and politicians aren’t owned by the rich and powerful in other parts of the world?
The trickle down propaganda is a western world problem, because that’s where the ideology of trickle down originated from and therefore has been most prevalent.
Maybe in that particular form but the more general idea that rich and powerful people got there because they deserve to be rich and powerful and if we prevented them from getting rich and powerful it would negatively impact all of society is certainly not an exclusively western idea.
In other news, UK’s so called experts have completely lost their collective minds.
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There is no reason to discuss pensions as long as the super-rich don’t pay taxes. The pension funds and every other social fund could be filled to the brim with even slightly higher taxes and they wouldn’t even notice anything missing. They would stay bloody rich.
We have been getting older and having fewer children since we came down from the trees, and we have always been able to raise standards anyway. The only thing that doesn’t work is 1% of the people taking it all and putting it on a pile and sitting on it like a dragon.
I am tired of the same old discussions, get the money from the people who have more than enough! Don’t let them drag you into discussions like this to point fingers away from themselves towards everyone else. Young vs old is not the fight we need to fight, poor vs fantastillion rich is the fight.
Isn’t it amazing how we’re supposedly so much richer than we were as a society in the 1950s, when they didn’t have computers, they didn’t have cellphones, they didn’t have jet airplanes or genetic engineering and yet:
- we could afford healthcare for everyone
- we could afford housing for everyone
- we could afford defined benefits pension plans for everyone?
How did 70 years of supposed progress leave us unable to afford the basic necessities of life?
Rich be like: 🖕
1950s, the time of plenty… if you ignore the rationing you mean? Life expectancy of 69 (12 years less). Infant mortality was almost 10 times higher, 30 infants died per 1,000 births vs 3.25 per 1,000.
Healthcare has grown from 3.5% gdp to 9%, more stuff gets treated.
There are double owner occupier housing now. 1953 was about 30%. 1956 is when protected rents ended and rents started to increase massively.
Defined pensions were taxed to death by Brown. They do still exist though (I have one, along with a SIPP). More people contribute to pensions than ever before and the age people stop work is starting to decline.
“experts”
