Yes but you are neglecting to mention the other side of this coin: also one of the most expensive countries in the world. Look at purchasing power parity and the UK doesn’t seem rich at all, it’s all on paper only. Housing, fuel, transportation etc are all disproportionately expensive here.
Politicians on both sides keep banging on about mobility but the real problem is inequality.
By that logic the government should simply increase spending 10x on disability and everything will be great!
Everything has an ROI, everything has an efficiency.
Canada and Germany both went through massive austerity in the 1990's to re-tool their economies from massive debt overhang - and it worked. Both Canada and Germany emerged on reasonable footing.
I think arguments should be less about spending and more about efficiencies.
No, you've made a logical leap that isn't warranted.
There is nothing wrong with running a balanced and cautious budget, and I didn't say there was. But cutting spending on a service unnecessarily, when doing so raises the total long-term spending on that service is categorically inefficient. It's a classic example of short-termism – government ends up simultaneously forking over more money, and achieving less!
Everything has an ROI, everything has an efficiency.
Yes, I agree. That's why UK government austerity should focus less on inefficient spending cuts to essential services, and more on restructuring the economy.
Increased spending on disability won't reduce future spending; whilst selling off children's playground, say, is likely to be detrimental later.
AFAIK, for Germany that was mostly consequences of reunification. Economic growth slowed in the early 2000s and the centre left instituted the Harz benefit reforms etc. They certainly didn't pay down goverment debt in the 1990s: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/government-debt-to-gdp
There are two parts to England: London and not London. All the money is centered in the capital and the rest of the country is neglected. House prices in London are driven up to insane levels due to the money laundering through real estate transactions for empty housing.
The majority of the working class people in England live in poverty.
We still need to get the money from somewhere, so instead of fairly increasing progressive taxes, we get lots of little (often unfair) hidden tax rises and huge cuts in public spending.
The weird part is, the british public go along with this. The Conservatives are actively talking about more corporation tax cuts at a time where we still have a large defecit and huge problems with underspending in the public sector.
I don't think they're 'going along with it' - you're making it sound like they don't know what they want.
UK society doesn't have much of an anti-government movement like in the US, but low taxation and leaner governance is a pretty common, mainstream preference here. I think if you speak to a diverse group of voters in the UK you will find a lot of support for austerity and low taxation.
It's not even a Conservative thing! See my sibling comment for an example.
The NHS is a strong outlier in people's preference for extra funding. Child education is another. But for social security? I think the appetite in the UK is less than you think it is.
Personally I didn't mention Social security, I know the attitude to people claiming benefits from those not on them in the UK
I was thinking of the problems in local gov. spending where the central grant has radically decreased, the problems in police spending with far fewer front line officers, the problem in the courts system which is having major impacts there.
The bit about "going along with it" was primarily about the corporation tax cuts.
Those cut revenue and don't directly help citizens (unless you believe in trickle down economics!). A more rational approach would be to want lower personal taxes surely?
They think this can be achieved be being more efficient (all the newspaper articles about NHS wastage and middle managers), and spending less money on things they don't want (overseas aid is a common example.) So the two things aren't necessarily at odds.
> unless you believe in trickle down economics!
I think a lot of people do.
> A more rational approach would be to want lower personal taxes surely?
I think a lot of British people see a large successful business as a virtuous success story, and so want them 'punished' less with less taxes.
(I'm not saying any of this is my opinion, but it's definitely what a lot of people here think.)
I'd say that kind of attitude is common in the US, but less so in the UK.
Albeit I'm seeing things from a Scottish rather than English perspective, but I've not seen an appetite for lower company taxes..
My guess for continued support of this kind of policy is that people think other things are more important (e.g. brexit) + tribalism in voting habits (we've always voted that way round here) + of course the terminally broken FPTP voting system.
the only close example I can think of in the UK is the higher rate income tax band bit and that turned out to be clever accountants banking on the fact that a change in gov. would lower the rate so they time shifted income into the period where it was lower...
We would be better off moving that tax back to dividends, capital gains and property which are much harder to avoid.
Well, I say never; never is a long time, but as long as they keep trying to win my favour by cutting my taxes, they can get bent. I'm not some kind of Pavlovian econo-rational robot, and I object to them treating me as one. These days I tend to vote for the most crazy left-wing party on the ballot, but if there isn't one (there's usually one in local elections, isn't one in nationals), not bother.
I will pay hundreds of pounds less tax in the next tax year. It seems like an absolutely pointless tax cut. It will make essentially no difference to my quality of life. In the meantime, local services that I use are deteriorating – let alone the ones that people in much more need than I use – and the police force and health service are continuing to head towards an absolute meltdown. There are thousands of people in my local council area relying on charity-run food banks. It's a baffling state of affairs.
This myth that gets rolled out that any increase in tax will cause higher rate payers to flee the country in droves is really harmful, I'm happy to pay tax if it improves the services provided by the country.
For instance if you don't need a few hundred pounds per year, why not buy a friend private health insurance.
The doctors are mostly trained in the NHS system. When a surgery happens there's a reasonable chance that it's in the private floor of an NHS hospital, using a private doctor but the rest of the team is NHS. You'll get a private room. But if anything goes wrong, or if you need more after care, you'll be back in the NHS system.
In the UK private health care is at best queue-jumping, but at worst it's poor quality care from doctors who couldn't keep a job in the NHS.
I'd prefer my money went to a central budget and was used effectively at a country level :)
I don't want charities having to rescue people from defunded services that were defunded to give money to people who will never notice it; I want the government to come up with better policies than "let's just cut some more taxes for people who don't need it and won't even notice".
The Inland Revenue does accept overpayments. You could give yourself a tax rise and be the change you wish to see in the world. If you don't then it seems like you're not being entirely straight-laced.
The UK is one of the richest countries in the world. Part of the reason for that is a long period of generally pro-business, economically conservative government. That's good in many ways, because in a modern economy, business and investment is needed to drive improvements in individual living standards.
But doing that relies on a sensible long-term strategy that can be used to achieve social goals. There is no point in cutting healthcare spending for preventative services, for example, if those cuts result in higher long-term costs. Cutting spending on disability benefits doesn't magically save money – it just transfers the cost of disability support to charities and carers, while in many cases destroying the lives of people who have worked and contributed for many years.
The thing is, when you say "a little belt tightening", this actually means that people in the UK with the lowest incomes start to suffer and in some cases die. I struggle to believe that it is good long-term economic policy to have a large share of the population struggling to afford basic essentials, while the richest demographics continue to increase their wealth.
In the most recent UK budget, I received a large tax cut despite being a relatively high earner. Indeed, UK policy seems to be continuing to shift in that direction, and the only possible reason I can see for that is a deliberate, ideological attempt to enact a policy of minimal public spending.
The UK has many economic and structural problems which could be dealt with, but it's hard to see how continuing to redistribute wealth to the richest parts of the country is going to do that. And of course we now have an entire government that will be paralysed by the economic and political aspects of Brexit for the next decade, so I guess there's no immediate chance of salvation.