Comments by "" (@lonevoice) on "PoliticsJOE" channel.

@nunyabidness3075 I think that you may have misinterpreted my use of the word "inefficient". If too much money is being sucked out of the real economy of jobs, and business etc, i.e. the engine room of the economy, then that in my view is inefficient. The problem with the affluent is that they are already spending more or less all that they want to and regularly have an excess which they invest into assets such as property, shares etc. If the affluent are then given a greater share of the country's wealth then that will increase asset prices as the affluent are left with even more money to invest. So the extra wealth finds its way into asset prices rather than the real economy. This has a dampening effect on the real economy which is why I say this inequality is inefficient. We are seeing increasing asset prices, wealth inequality and real hardship in certain sectors of society and that is likely to continue. The affluent will have ownership of automation and with its continual development including robotics, more and more physical jobs will be replaced by machine. We are already seeing this on a regular basis everywhere. The solution is not to discourage wealth creation and capitalism but to recycle some of the wealth that is created through taxation and back into society and the real economy probably through something like UBI. The Wealth Tax Commission (https://www.ukwealth.tax) estimated that a one-off 1% wealth tax charge on a couple's net assets over one million could bring in £260 billion spread over 5 years. The affluent are often capable of achieving better rates of return on their investments than most people, consequently a 1% charge may hardly even be noticed by them.
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@SmileyEmoji42 I wasn't referring to GDP I was referring to the damaging effect of wealth inequality in the UK. An interesting new book by Paul Collier has just been released on this subject called "The Left Behind" which is discussed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f51urcvWmsM.
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@SmileyEmoji42 Yes. Life then was very unequal and dire. Average life expectancy was about 40 years.
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The public continue to be squeezed by the wealthy through their control of the media and government influence. We've had austerity, we've had Brexit, now it's the dismantling of the NHS. The tax burden is at a 40 year high but who is paying that tax? It isn't the wealthy. Osborne slashed corporation and took 5% off the top rate of income tax. The UK tax burden is around 37% of GDP but this is still lower than Germany at 42% and France at 47%, but of course the US is much lower at 25%. This is where the wealthy now have their sights and that requires the privatisation of the NHS.
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Ask an average male to fight for his country and risk his life and he will. Ask a rich man to give up even a small amount of his wealth for his country and he will scream blue murder. Fortunately for him, the wealthy have control over the media misinformation network so any suggestion along those lines is quickly suppressed.
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Not a great start by Reeves and doesn't bode well for the future. In a recent interview she was asked if she would create money as the US had done for investment. Her reply was that unlike the US, UK Sterling was not a Reserve Currency and so couldn't. Strangely, the IMF regards Sterling as one of 8 world reserve currencies.
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abhi739 I think that is income tax. It is an incredible statement of the sheer size and extent of the skewed income distribution within the UK particularly when you bear in mind that the top rate of income tax is only 45%, and as we know a lot of these people don't pay anywhere near that rate. Sunak for example had a tax rate of around 22% on his vast income. The problem with the extremely high earners and owners of wealth is that they are unable to spend enough. They are always able to spend as much as they can possibly want and will always are left with a surplus each year. Thos surpluses, rather than being spent in our economy, get invested into the purchase of assets such as shares and property. The consequence of this is that asset prices increase which is detrimental to the rest of society but it is also a drain on the working economy of business, jobs and services as an ever increasing amount gets channeled out from the economy into asset prices. It is a growing problem.
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@lampshadesneeded They still think it is enough of a problem to have their navy escort their cargo ships through the Red Sea.
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Presumably he got this money as a result of the Brexit damage that he created. He needs to pay this, as a part payment, into government to compensate for his damage, but we need many billions more so he needs to get out there and bring much more money in.
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Also, Hunt spoke about the halving of inflation target having been met according to the CPI index, yet on Channel 4 he denied that the target was based CPI but on core inflation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbUZFssO-ZE&t=231s. Doesn't anyone want to pick up on and comment on these discrepancies? What's going on?
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On the subject of critical thinking: Why do students have loans but the over 60s don't have healthcare loans? I have yet to see this properly articulated. A huge amount of NHS come from the over 60s and will increase as treatments become more sophisticated and they live longer. If they paid for their own healthcare through a loan, it could be settled from their estate upon death or be written off at that stage.
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@piccalillipit9211 I haven't heard Labour discuss this.
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@Nickle314 My question was about healthcare rather than state pensions. Admittedly a small amount of NI contributions are supposedly specifically attributable to healthcare but that is minimal.
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@Nickle314 Wrong. Just do a Google search. I have just done a few. The typical result is "National Insurance contributions are a tax on earnings and self-employed profits paid by employees, employers and the self-employed. They can help to build your entitlement to certain benefits depending whether you are employed or self-employed, such as the State Pension and Maternity Allowance." Where is healthcare mentioned? Just think about it. Why do students have to have student loans? They never used to. My understanding is that government were concerned about the escalating costs of tertiary education and the amount of public expenditure on that area. Roll on a few decades and we now have a similar position with healthcare. It is nothing about screwing people.
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@Nickle314 You tell me.
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@PeterPete NI contributions are to pay for state benefits and pensions, not healthcare. Having said that, a very minimal part has been used to fund healthcare particularly recently, but it barely scapes the surface of the massive public expenditure on healthcare.
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@PeterPete They might have all sorts of weird and wonderful notions like this which are nothing to do with the realities of healthcare funding. They have probably even paid their TV licence, but so what? Tertiary education was also free but isn't now. None of this gets at the question about why one is free but the other isn't.
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@PeterPete Where do you get this idea that NI contributions pay for healthcare? NI contributions don't even cover state pension and benefit costs.
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I agree. We need to tax wealth and perhaps reduce the tax on income. At present we have an economy that is slowly seizing up as its life blood lubrication is draining away into the asset pots of the wealthy. The Wealth Tax Commission advocated a wealth tax in 2020 (https://www.wealthandpolicy.com/wp/WealthTaxFinalReport.pdf) but the wealthy, through their media misinformation network, do a fantastic job in suppressing or ridiculing any ideas of this type.
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Good book, worth reading. With its massive control in Parliament Labour has had the opportunity to be transformative but the neoliberal influences on them have made them timid. Such a waste.
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@rickatatastan2695 No-one is saying that they have to. The point is that if they want to, agricultural land should be economically affordable based on their productive use and not a concocted tax shelter one set up for the wealthy.
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Economics on their side? I don't think so. As I see it the starting point is the affluent. The affluent are basically unable to spend enough. They spend as much as they want but always have a surplus then if they get more then their surplus grows. The question then is what do they do with their surplus and the answer is that they use it to buy assets such as shares and property. Over time, increasing amounts are being channelled from the real economy of jobs, business and public services into asset purchases. It acts as a drain on the real economy and will get worse as wealth inequality grows. So no, economics isn't on the side of landlords.
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Great book and well worth reading. If only we could scape this insanity...
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Yes, the growing wealth inequality is slowly draining the life blood out of the real economy and we can see that with poor growth, deteriorating services etc. Sure, the rich are unable to spend enough. They always have a surplus and that surplus is getting ever larger and just gets fed into assets such as shares and property, and the prices of these gets inflated through increasing excess demand. So we end up with a reducing share of national income going to working people then on top of that there is a further drain on the real economy as property rental costs escalate. Is there any realistic solution other than a wealth tax? There are no signs of this on the political horizon and if anything the proposed scrapping or reduction of IHT goes in the opposite direction. I suspect that things will get far far worse before there is even a slightest sign of improvement.
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Was this a serious discussion or just a rant?
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@taffyterrier Please enlighten me.
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@ForburyLion Buy to let was a bad idea. Introduced by John Major and accelerated by Tony Blair, and all coming from Thatcher's deregulation of the banks. Somehow we need to unravel this but it is entrenched and won't be easy. What's worse is that we now have an increasingly inefficient wealth distribution which is damaging the economy.
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@Norfolkandchance886 The dynamics are changing albeit slowly. The younger generation have been screwed big time, not just with property costs but also things like student loans and the increasing burden of an aging population etc.
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@Norfolkandchance886 There is a growing trend of wealth inequality which is economically damaging and will lead to more and more increases in house prices. The ability of the young to buy will diminish further and inheritance will become the default means of ownership. This will lead to a polarisation where tens of millions lead sh*t lies and the rest live in absolute luxury. The other problem of course then is that it inhibits the starting of families so the UK will rely increasingly on immigration. Not a very politically stable scenario.
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@davideyres955 Nice if that happened and released properties to UK residents but reality is different. Take Lord Harmsworth for example. He owns the Daily Mail and is non domiciled in a tax haven yet owns the massive stately home of Ferne House in Wiltshire. People like this like to have property in the UK.
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