What extra taxes would you volunteer to pay?

lisyloo

I would be willing to pay more income tax for the NHS, social/elderly care and more road tax to sort out potholes (I'd prefer road tax on fuel for fairness). However like most people I'd like it to be earmarked (not just go into a big pot) and I'd want to see real results on the front line not just (for example) higher salaries for already highly paid NHS managers.

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

Would it actually bring in any money? If you make food 20% more expensive, lots of people will take that 20% from somewhere else, and thus not pay any VAT on whatever luxury items they can no longer afford. You'd also really hurt local economies as you'll produce a noticable drop in non-vital spending.

Not many people are as limited as you think.

It is also a odd tax.
Go to subway and you pay no tax
Go to McDonalds and you pay 20% tax.
Why should subway get thus huge tax advantage?

Buy a bar of chocolate and pay 20% tax. Buy a small cake and pay 0% why should cake manufacturers have this advantage?

Buy a frozen pizza and pay 0% buy a cooked one and its 20%

Either VAT should be on all food or on none and since we are a deficits nation it should be on all foods.

Its also not going to be a huge tax. As a estimate its going to be about 40p a day per person.
For the poorer families its going to be an even smaller tax. A 20% tax on a £2 cake = 40p while a 20% tax on the equivalent amount if sugar flour eggs etc to make a cake will be closer to 4p so in many ways it is a tax on processed foods. Raw ingredients are extremely cheap. Flour at 30p a kilo is very very cheap if it goes to 36p a kilo with VAT it is still extremely cheap

GreatApe

lisyloo wrote: »

I would be willing to pay more income tax for the NHS, social/elderly care and more road tax to sort out potholes (I'd prefer road tax on fuel for fairness). However like most people I'd like it to be earmarked (not just go into a big pot) and I'd want to see real results on the front line not just (for example) higher salaries for already highly paid NHS managers.

This is a really silly argument
Healthcare can never be fully funded never
The reason is we are mortal for every ill we solve it just kicks the can down the road for more expensive healthcare and arguably there are diminishing returns on quality if life extended.

Healthcare should be funded at an affordable acceptable level not more.
Maybe there should be an agreed fixed limit to get the politics out of it
9% of GDP on healthcare then its using that as best as possible not seeking more.

Would have to be a running % of GDP so as and booms do not impact the service too much in one year.

lisyloo

Healthcare should be funded at an affordable acceptable level not more.

I totally agree with your point, but I don't think it's at an acceptable level now.
Do you think it's ok as it is?

My MIL (90) is in a nursing home with very low quality of life and FIL is in hospital also with very little quality of life (89). What do you suggest we do with them?
If we withdraw care from FIL he would probably die (and he may well choose that route) but if you withdraw it from MIL then she'll fall and end up in more expensive hospital care (nusing home is £670, hospital is about £3K per week). I agree with your point toally about kicking the can down the road, but what is the practical suggestion?

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

Not many people are as limited as you think.

The spike in foodbank use disagrees with that.
Apparently, 1-in-6 adults will struggle with an extra £50/month in cost increase: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/oct/18/uk-adults-financially-vulnerable-fca-interest-rate-rise

It is also a odd tax.

I agree it could do with being rationalized a bit, to make all convenience food VAT qualifying and all basic food VAT free.

GreatApe

lisyloo wrote: »

I totally agree with your point, but I don't think it's at an acceptable level now.
Do you think it's ok as it is?

My MIL (90) is in a nursing home with very low quality of life and FIL is in hospital also with very little quality of life (89). What do you suggest we do with them?
If we withdraw care from FIL he would probably die (and he may well choose that route) but if you withdraw it from MIL then she'll fall and end up in more expensive hospital care (nusing home is £670, hospital is about £3K per week). I agree with your point toally about kicking the can down the road, but what is the practical suggestion?

At every point someone can make an argument for more healthcare spending

I think we probably spend about the right amount. Maybe fix it at 9% of GDP and then if we need more healthcare we can achieve it via more productive service. For instance we have an almost unlimited seats to study photography or media at universities when we don't even have 1/5th as many jobs for them. On the other hand we train too few doctors so we have to import some. Why not over train doctors there are 3x as many A students as there are medical university places. Train more doctors and the NHS can afford to pay less for doctors. Over a longer time frame you may have 20% more doctors each earning 20% less.

Also technology will change healthcare a lot over the next 20 years
I think within 20 years we will probably have robots that can take care of a persons and homes needs. So instead of paying someone £30k a year to look after an elderly person in a home you could have a robot that costs £3k a year and cleans cooks and tends to the needs of a home and its occupants. Or have these robots in care homes and care homes become very cheap. 10 robots + 1 human manager looking after 50 elderly.

Computer vision is still crap once that is fully solved a lot of automation opportunities will arise.
We don't need human AI for that we only need about rat level AI and vision.

Thus is why I like the Americans so much. They fundamentally try to solve problems they don't continually seek to fix things with more tax and spend.

Having just spent a couple of hours in the hospital with my mother most of it waiting in line for a blood test I don't see why it would be so hard to invent an automatic blood taking machine. Surely it would do it more accurately and safely than an old nurse doing it. I've even had a dumb nurse once stab herself with the needle she used to take blood from me. A hazard to herself and me.

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

The spike in foodbank use disagrees with that.
Apparently, 1-in-6 adults will struggle with an extra £50/month in cost increase.

Food bank use tells us almost nothing about poverty and it tells us even less about food poverty

The problem the poor have in the UK is obesity much more so than malnourishment

Food banks should stop giving away biscuits crisps and cola and just give out bread butter milk eggs and baked beans. But do you really think this is a problem in the UK. A loaf of bread in a supermarket cost 50p and a loaf of bread is 2000 calories which is the needs of one person per day. 50p a day to feed yourself. Very cheap. Eggs cost 10p milk £1 for 4 pints. People who don't have that are extremely dysfunctional eg drug addicts.

Of course the biggest users of food banks are people who like getting free food and spending their dosh on other things. Why not. My mother still sometimes shops at charity shops although she certainly doesn't need to. Her going to charity shops is no indication of her wealth levels. Food bank use is ni indication of food poverty.

Herzlos

This has come up before, but you seem entirely mistaken regarding who can use food banks or why. You can't just stroll in, get free food and then spend your dole money on fags instead.

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

This has come up before, but you seem entirely mistaken regarding who can use food banks or why. You can't just stroll in, get free food and then spend your dole money on fags instead.

In theory only the poor get benefits too but in practise there are possibly millions claiming falsely

In theory British necks are as strong or as weak as necks in most the rest of Europe but if you look at our claims for whiplash you'd have to conclude the British are a separate species with a different neck biology

In theory an obease single mother woman with two big dogs and a fake pretend nail artist businesses would be in jail but in practise she gets to go onto question time and not only plead poverty but abject food poverty and then gets hired (probably at zero pay so she can still work the system) as a regional head of momentum

Once you wake up and look at the real world rather than the fantasy world you will see things are not half as bad as the lefties would have you believe.

Are there problems, sure but the vast majority are a direct result if dysfunctional people and their families. Not the government not the economic system but gambling alcohol drug violence addictions

Herzlos

I think you need to go and spend some time in the real world.

Sure, there is some benefits fraud in whatever capacity, but your notion of scale is wildly out. It's likely to cost us peanuts compared to, say, tax evasion.

Most people on benefits have barely anything, have little room for leeway, or want to be there. Almost none are living the high-life you think they are.

But I think we've covered all of this elsewhere, since you seem to think poverty is purely the fault of the poor due to some sort of disfunction.