How would you get the UK economy moving again?

homelessskilledworker

Forget about trying to hold up unsustainable house prices and those up to their neck in debt, what the UK needs is a medium to long term plan that is radical and might even cause some severe pain to start with.
My first suggestion would be something that probably would not help my cause in buying a cheaper property, devalue the pound overnight by at least 30%. Start ploughing money into science, tech, and engineering, the UK needs to start building things again, we need to take on the far east in manufacturing.

We need to stop crapping all over the young workers, who on the whole work their socks off, we need to stop pampering the baby boomers that have just had too good for to long as they burden their kids with unrealistic demands.

Stuff the city and the obsession we have with finance and bankers, stuff buying and selling each houses as some kind of economic plan, we need to start exporting and the sooner we learn this the better.

What would any of you do to get Britain moving again, I only posted this because of an article I read about the recession getting worse in 2012(I cannot paste it though for some reason).

abaxas

Half all 'benefits' and scrap min wage.

ILW

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

Forget about trying to hold up unsustainable house prices and those up to their neck in debt, what the UK needs is a medium to long term plan that is radical and might even cause some severe pain to start with.
My first suggestion would be something that probably would not help my cause in buying a cheaper property, devalue the pound overnight by at least 30%. Start ploughing money into science, tech, and engineering, the UK needs to start building things again, we need to take on the far east in manufacturing.

We need to stop crapping all over the young workers, who on the whole work their socks off, we need to stop pampering the baby boomers that have just had too good for to long as they burden their kids with unrealistic demands.

Stuff the city and the obsession we have with finance and bankers, stuff buying and selling each houses as some kind of economic plan, we need to start exporting and the sooner we learn this the better.

What would any of you do to get Britain moving again, I only posted this because of an article I read about the recession getting worse in 2012(I cannot paste it though for some reason).

What would you suggest we sell?

Should we drop our labour rates to Far East levels to compete with them?

PasturesNew

Erase the word "entitlement" from the language and ban it.

nollag2006

It's too simplistic to leave home ownership out of the equation

Stamp duty eliminated for property and shares for one year to increase the velocity of money in the economy.
Re-introduce MIRAS for FTBs (capped at £2000 per annum)

Some ideas to finance this:
-£5 charge to visit your doc / hospital – capped at a reasonable level
-20p tax charge on plastic carrier bags
-Restrictions on the use of external contractors & consultants in the public sector
-Remove of the £40k Lettings relief on rental property (As a LL, I think this is over-generous)
-Merge NI and Income tax / apply NI to rental and dividend income

System

Abolish corporation tax
Abolish NI
Cut income tax to standard 20%
Pay £100 per week to every UK citizen. Tax free, no means test, no strings attached.
Abolish all benefits, state pensions, job centres, social security depts, etc.
Close every government dept. handling any of the above
Abolish vehicle licence tax, put the duty on fuel
Close the DVLA
Abolish NMW

the_flying_pig

Hamish's answer:

* Print £50trillion of money;
* Use it to buy lots of property, insisting on paying well over the odds in all cases;
* Knock the houses down once bought.

Prosperidee for all.

Jimmy_31

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

Forget about trying to hold up unsustainable house prices and those up to their neck in debt, what the UK needs is a medium to long term plan that is radical and might even cause some severe pain to start with.
My first suggestion would be something that probably would not help my cause in buying a cheaper property, devalue the pound overnight by at least 30%. Start ploughing money into science, tech, and engineering, the UK needs to start building things again, we need to take on the far east in manufacturing.

We need to stop crapping all over the young workers, who on the whole work their socks off, we need to stop pampering the baby boomers that have just had too good for to long as they burden their kids with unrealistic demands.

Stuff the city and the obsession we have with finance and bankers, stuff buying and selling each houses as some kind of economic plan, we need to start exporting and the sooner we learn this the better.

What would any of you do to get Britain moving again, I only posted this because of an article I read about the recession getting worse in 2012(I cannot paste it though for some reason).

Get rid of the corrupt government and thieving bankers would be a start.

Let house prices collapse and build thousands of new homes.

Dont let the major house building companys build the homes.

Government sets up a house building company that does not add massive profit margins into the mix and the housing market will start moving again, plus thousands of unemployed tradesmen are now back in work and contributing to the economy.

Lets wait and see how much the major house builders will be paying the lads on site to build all these new houses, plus lets see what the asking prices of them are. Im guessing the government will sit back and let their house builder mates make millions in profit.

Cant wait for the strikes:).

Should bring a few quid in i reckon.

drc

The main thing I would do is;

Raise the rate at which income tax is payable. At the same time, cut tax credits.

This would mean lower earners would be able to keep more of their wage. It would encourage people to work as they would no longer be getting tax credits but would have more in their pocket from work. This would also cut down the cost of administration of tax credits which at the moment seems to be -> pay tax on pay -> get tax back through tax credits. Seems ridiculous to take the tax and then give it back. Better just to not tax them so much in the first place and not reward them for not working or working less than they could.

MrRee_2

Simple really.

Instead of printing money and giving it to the Banks to hoard .... give £20,000 to each household this Xmas.

This will be in the form of shopping vouchers, house purchase vouchers, car purchase vouchers - doubled up if the item was made in the UK (exept house, of course!).

No saving of this money - and an expiry date of end March 2012.

Abandon Stamp Duty on house purchases and give FTB's an additional £20,000 for a house purchase only.

You just watch growth take off!!

Mallotum_X

drc wrote: »

The main thing I would do is;

Raise the rate at which income tax is payable. At the same time, cut tax credits.

This would mean lower earners would be able to keep more of their wage. It would encourage people to work as they would no longer be getting tax credits but would have more in their pocket from work. This would also cut down the cost of administration of tax credits which at the moment seems to be -> pay tax on pay -> get tax back through tax credits. Seems ridiculous to take the tax and then give it back. Better just to not tax them so much in the first place and not reward them for not working or working less than they could.

Agree that cutting admin is a good thing, but if they end up with the same money it wont make any difference to how hard low paid people will work.

Making it easier for people on low income to be better off working needs to be worked at. A combination of stricter benefits for non-workers and extra help for low paid will help enourage people to work.

For some they will say whats the point in working 40 hour week if i only get £10 more than benefit - that needs to change.


But without suffient jobs how will things change? We have a large number of people who do not want to work, and find all sorts of reasons to explain why they cant - health and immigrants seem to be the popular themes.

We need to make it easier for companies to set up and generate income in the UK, at the same time I think we should (as a Europe wide initiative) be exporing whether there are some imported goods that we can protect though tariffs - but this would only work EU wide.

Recession tends to be a time when the bad stuff fails and you start to get the new start ups as more people have to try and work for themselves. Unless everything blows up again (banks, EU, credit crunch II) then we should hopefully start to notice some improvements maybe even this year.

Locally to me I have noticed an increase in building work and a reduction in empty shop units, it may be the first initial signs of things starting to get better, perhaps by the end of 2012 we will see more of these signs and we may start to see some recovery.