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.
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.