Can government check savings?

atush

MikeR71 wrote: »

Yes, you are right, this discussion doesn't belong here.

But let me just say, I never said there is a utopia. I said the most effective system to eradicate poverty is free market capitalism. The welfare system as we know too well is unsustainable in the long term. Look at the facts and figures. Welfare actually harms the very people it claims to help.

Innovate:

It always takes very little for someone to bring this sort of conversation to so low as you just did:

The day I can unilaterally opt out of paying tax is the day I stop claiming benefits, ok?

Do you understand what I am getting at? In the kind of system I am in favour of, you pay a low flat rate of tax and do away with most benefits. But as long as I live in a system that takes my money by force and leaves me out of pocket, only to offer it back in benefits the way IT sees fit, don't expect me to opt out of benefits. It should work both ways. Capiche?

Personally I think all CB should be abolished. And the UK should do what most govts do and give a seperate (much smaller) tax allowance for any child that his parents can use against their income so tax paid is reduced.

The reason it was set up as a cash payment all has to do with many years ago when men got paid in cash and went to the pub/bookie/brothel on the way home and spent the lot.

innovate

atush wrote: »

Personally I think all CB should be abolished. And the UK should do what most govts do and give a seperate (much smaller) tax allowance for any child that his parents can use against their income so tax paid is reduced.

The end result would not be dissimilar to what's in place now. Why change something that works? Mind you, since CB depends on income now, then linking it to income tax would make a certain amount of sense. But all change costs money, and the UK seems to have more serious problems right now than tidying up the HMRC IT systems.

atush wrote: »

The reason it was set up as a cash payment all has to do with many years ago when men got paid in cash and went to the pub/bookie/brothel on the way home and spent the lot.

True but no benefits have been paid in cash in many years now. Have you not seen the moans from people who say they can't get benefits because they can't get a bank account? (ignoring the fact that for them, there is a Post Office account anybody can open).

MikeR71

Voyager,
You mention the USA before 1970s. I would say look at the USA from about 1ate 19th to the early 20th century. Millions of people from Europe emigrated there, not because of government interference, benefits and handouts, not because the government set up an office of "fair trading" to ensure so called equality. They flooded the USA because the government stayed out of private business and let people be free to work hard, trade as they wished. This was the most prosperous period of time the history of that country. Sure, not everyone made it, but people went there for the dream, the economic opportunity that it offered. You would think if it was bad then people would stop going. The country was built into what it is today.

Then what happened? More and more government interference and regulation, interference and spending.

JohnRo

MikeR71 wrote: »

Then what happened? More and more government interference and regulation, interference and spending.

You could perhaps also argue that the one gave rise to the other, I'm inclined to agree with your free market sentiment but the role of government is very important to add checks and balances to a capitalist system which ultimately relies on exploitation for profit and that would otherwise end with cartels, monopolies and crushing poverty, which some might argue we already have.

michaels

Slobby wrote: »

I personally think that the means testing of liquid (cash) savings is rather unfair on two levels:

1) This penalises the person who has been prudent and saved up compared to the spendthrift who wasted their cash. One gets a handout, the other doesn't

2) You can own a million pound house outright, but have no cash savings and get a handout. If you have 16000 which you're saving for a house, you're told 'no handout' and have to spend your savings which reduces your chance of getting a house again.

There are all sorts of anomalies in the system.

I think #2 is the biggie - that those with a house potentialy with lots of equity will still get tax credits but those saving for a mortgage will lose out. This seems to me to go against exactly what the Tories claim is one of their key roles in rewarding the ambitious.

MikeR71

JohnRo wrote: »

You could perhaps also argue that the one gave rise to the other, I'm inclined to agree with your free market sentiment but the role of government is very important to add checks and balances to a capitalist system which ultimately relies on exploitation for profit and that would otherwise end with cartels, monopolies and crushing poverty, which some might argue we already have.

Let's take this to the thread on discussion time.

But quickly regarding monopolies, it's those government checks and balances that so often give rise to monopolies.