We are all getting robbed at the pumps!, does anyone care?.
Discussion
Limpet said:
stuart313 said:
It took about 2 seconds to knock the lot off the dole scum section. I could have been through the door of no.11 and out again in time to clock on for my second job by 8AM, being the chancellor is overrated.
Hilarious. JSA and DLA come to about £10bn. Even making the (ridiculous) assumption every single person claiming is a scrounger, it's still somewhere between a quarter and an eighth (depending on source) of the cost of tax avoidance by the wealthy in a given period. You have fallen hook, line and sinker for the cynical divide and conquer politics being played by government. Let the middle and working classes tie themselves in knots playing the blame game while those at the top get away with absolute murder.
I consider myself centre right generally, but you have to be pretty clueless to think taking more from society's poorest will fix anything. Quite the opposite in fact.
I do wonder with some of the really rich and companies why they need to pull these tricks, surely at some point, enough is enough in terms of money and material possessions, I think it is actually after a point, all about one upmanship with other big players or the mindset that allowed them to get there, is the same one that ensures they never give anything away that they really dont need to.
The government in this case do need to close more loopholes and clamp down on those who manage to avoid paying their dues, there does seem to be some progress but it is slow going and I am not sure how effective it is.
I sort of sympathise with the task they have managing the country, you cant please all the people all of the time.
Limpet said:
Hilarious. JSA and DLA come to about £10bn. Even making the (ridiculous) assumption every single person claiming is a scrounger, it's still somewhere between a quarter and an eighth (depending on source) of the cost of tax avoidance by the wealthy in a given period.
You have fallen hook, line and sinker for the cynical divide and conquer politics being played by government.
Whilst you appear to have fallen for the class-war blurring of the line between evasion and avoidance.You have fallen hook, line and sinker for the cynical divide and conquer politics being played by government.
Avoidance is legal. If you chose to buy a more economical car instead of a thirstier one, or cycled or walked to the shops instead of driving, then you avoided paying extra fuel duty and VAT. If you didn't have a bottle of wine with your dinner last night, you avoided paying alcohol duty. If you put your savings into an ISA, you avoided paying income tax on the interest. Evil you! Flagellate yourself immediately, then send your entire income to HMRC in penance!
Evasion is illegal. Evasion is taking cash under the table for doing a job for somebody. Evasion is lying on your tax return.
TooMany2cvs said:
Evasion is illegal. Evasion is taking cash under the table for doing a job for somebody. Evasion is lying on your tax return.
I am quite aware of the difference between evasion and avoidance, and that one is legal and one isn't.Just as most people avoiding tax do so legally, so do most people claiming benefits. My point was that the benefit claimants cost the country less than the tax avoiders, and should therefore be a less obvious target for savings.
My objection to the idea that taking money from the "dole scum" is in any way the answer stands.
carl_w said:
Think of the alcohol tax the Revenue gains from this though.
Really? I'm not talking about prohibition, I'm talking about drinking in moderation. Yes, I know we all have a few moments on the drink but usually that's just once when your 17 and usually at someones house party draped over a bucket. Oh god, its all coming back *shivers*
V8forweekends said:
mybrainhurts said:
Johnnytheboy said:
And no fuel protest please, that was a royal PITA last time.
What are you on?The sight of Blair, Brown and Prescott filling their pants with sticky stuff, going white and stuttering like goats was worth every drop of sweat...
No it wasn't. It was mob rule, what Mrs Thatcher used to call "The Enemy Within"
Amazing how many farmers and hauliers who said they were about to starve could afford all the money and time to try and destroy a government none of them voted for.
And before you start, I am no fan or Blair, Brown et al and I didn't vote for them either.
The fuel protest was nothing of the sort. Ordinary people were hurt by fuel duty and VAT and there was no intention to unseat the government.
If this hadn't happened, do you think Osborne would have been so generous with duty this time round? The protest was successful in that it made politicians understand there was a serious problem.
irocfan said:
to be honest over these last few months when the price dropped from 135ish to 108ish I think the government should have stepped in and kept the price @ 125ish. Call it a windfall tax/whatevera cracking way to at least make a little inroad into our mountain of debt
While this may make a degree of economic sense, particularly when prices in general are either falling or at least rising less slowly than general wages, you have to remember that a general election is just around the corner. A such it doesn't matter if it makes all the economic sense in the world - no government would do it as they'd be petrified of losing votes.
TooMany2cvs said:
thatdude said:
I like to think the government is making hay while the sun shines, topping up the treasury after the terrible financial downturn.
They aren't, yet. There's still a large deficit - nearly £100bn/year - so the Gov't is still spending a big chunk more than it receives.shakotan said:
Erm, if the Government was spending more than it receives, the deficit would be getting larger, not smaller, surely?
The deficit is the amount the debt is increasing by every year, rather than the debt itself. Bringing the deficit down is about reducing the amount extra we have to borrow every year.Currently the national debt is at about 80% of GDP, so imagine you have an unsecured loan of 80% of you salary, and then you're borrowing another 6% of your salary every year on top of that...
Edited by RizzoTheRat on Thursday 5th March 15:49
shakotan said:
Erm, if the Government was spending more than it receives, the deficit would be getting larger, not smaller, surely?
The deficit is the difference between what the Gov't spends and what it receives.The total amount owed - which gets larger when there's a deficit and smaller when there's a surplus - is the debt.
Total Gov't expenditure is about £740bn/yr, income about £650bn/yr, so deficit is about £90bn/yr - about 5% of GDP.
Total Gov't debt is about £1.5trillion, about 90% of annual GDP.
If there was a surplus instead of a deficit, there'd still be a humongous debt, but it'd be getting smaller not bigger.
TooMany2cvs said:
shakotan said:
Erm, if the Government was spending more than it receives, the deficit would be getting larger, not smaller, surely?
The deficit is the difference between what the Gov't spends and what it receives.The total amount owed - which gets larger when there's a deficit and smaller when there's a surplus - is the debt.
Total Gov't expenditure is about £740bn/yr, income about £650bn/yr, so deficit is about £90bn/yr - about 5% of GDP.
Total Gov't debt is about £1.5trillion, about 90% of annual GDP.
If there was a surplus instead of a deficit, there'd still be a humongous debt, but it'd be getting smaller not bigger.
Nobody seems to understand (or care ?) their actions as having any impact on this, hence why the country is going further and further into debt.
J4CKO said:
at this level it is no more complicated than your own finances, i.e. income vs expenditure, you either have to earn more (tax), or spend less (Defence, health, education, welfare, pensions etc).
Nobody seems to understand (or care ?) their actions as having any impact on this, hence why the country is going further and further into debt.
Is all "debt" a bad thing?Nobody seems to understand (or care ?) their actions as having any impact on this, hence why the country is going further and further into debt.
If somebody has debt of half their annual income, is that bad?
If somebody has debt of three times their annual income, that must be worse, surely?
But what if that first debt is credit card bills for shopaholic tat, whilst that second debt is a mortgage?
Some countries have very low levels of national debt. North Korea's debt is virtually zero. If you look at the list of debt-to-GDP, virtually every country with national debt below about 50% of GDP is in the developing world - because they don't trade much internationally. The average for the world as a whole is about 64%. The nearest country to that average figure is Bhutan... The UK's figure is about typical of western European economies. The US is a bit lower, Japan is a LOT higher.
That person with the mortgage has very low net debt - debt minus assets, because the house is worth a lot. Net debt is often very different - Norway has a huge oil wealth fund, so massively negative net debt, but still has debt. Think about companies buying stuff - they don't pay on the nail, they pay 30 days later, so there's debt for 30 days.
Deficit is obviously bad, because it means you're spending more than you're earning - but can you just chop expenditure without harming income at least as badly? No, of course not. If you chop the education budget, you do serious long-term harm to the economy, f'rinstance.
And I don't even begin to understand market theory or macroeconomics or monetary policy or...
All of which is why anybody who thinks they could solve the economic issues of one of the world's biggest and most complex economies in half an hour on their first day in No 11 is clearly an idiot with absolutely zero comprehension of the subject they profess to be an expert in.
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