Comments by "Michael RCH" (@michaelrch) on "Boris Johnson faces Tory revolt over tax rises for social care" video.

This policy would take money from young, low and middle income earners and give it to wealthy retired people. Classic Tory disgusting bullshit. We need to raise capital gains and create a wealth tax for millionaires. They are ones who will benefit and they are ones that can afford it.
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There about a dozen reasons why using NI is about the most unfair and regressive way to find this change. It a political open goal for Labour. Do you hear the Labour front bench actually articulating any of these arguments though? No, because Starmer and his band of pathetic centrists are as much use when challenging the Tories on anything substantive as a chocolate teapot.
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NI is the same as income tax except the rich pay next to nothing over £50k of income. It's the worst possible tax to use to pay for pay for this policy. Because, the Tories. Obviously. 🤮
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@nickssurplus No, in fact they aren't paying for those who " haven't paid in" (by which you mean people who have been poor or low income most of their lives). People without assets or income are already getting their social care paid for by councils, although the funding is extremely stretched and inadequate. This change is to cover those who have enough assets or income to fail the means test for council-funded care. It's specifically for wealthier old people. And these are also people who have NOT paid the proposed higher rate of NI to fund universal social care. They have already retired. That cost will fall on the young right now. And not only that, by using NI (which drops to just 2% on warnings above £50k) and not income tax, the burden falls far more on low and middle income workers and specifically much less on higher income earners, who are EXACTLY the people most likely to gain from removing the means test for government funded social care. It will also exempt any earnings from dividends, property rental or any other non-work form of income - ie all the forms of income that wealthier people enjoy and low and middle income earners tend not to. It's almost perfectly calculated to be as unfair as possible, and to redistribute wealth UPWARDS.
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@nickssurplus I am absolutely for a fully public social care system that is free at the point of use. What I am against is using regressive taxes that hit those who can least afford them as a way to pay for it. We should be raising higher rate income tax, raising capital gains tax and implementing a wealth tax on millionaires. Those would all raise more money and they would do so from people who can afford to pay and who will be the people who most benefit from the change to a universal system.
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@nickssurplus So you think that the right thing to do to pay for care for the well off is to take food and healthcare from literally the poorest and most desperate people in the world? I can't comment on your next door neighbour but most people on benefits are struggling to make ends meet which is why there is a record number of people using food banks. The answer is surely not to take the money required from those who have least, but to take it from those who have the most and can afford it the easiest.
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@nickssurplus How do I want you to pay more? Are you a millionaire? Are you making loads of money on the sale of assets? Do you know how much income support and universal credit pay? If you think it's enough to pay for housing and food and buy a brand new car, you are on cloud cuckoo land. Immigrants make up a tiny portion of the population while food banks are serving literally millions of people. Stop looking at working class people for the source of the country's problems. They are powerless. The problems are caused by those making the decisions at the top, those who actually do have all the power and the money. And note, they also have the incentive to make you think that the problems are with "benefits scroungers and lazy immigrants" because it's stops you questioning why it is that the rich keep getting richer while the rest of the country suffers.
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@nickssurplus You seem to think that all immigrants are benefits scroungers. The opposite is true. The claim less benefits, they work more and they pay more tax on average than British-born U.K. residents. We don't pay for them. They are paying for us.
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@nickssurplus Please cite that study. The main and obvious reason why public services are suffering is that the Tories imposed 10 years of austerity in public spending while cutting taxes on the rich and corporations. Besides, why are we talking about immigration? That has nothing to do with the Tories deciding to tax young working people on low and middle incomes to fund the social care for old pensioners with money... you seem to want to avoid taking about the obvious injustice of that.
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@nickssurplus What do you mean - no one will have or be able to afford a house? Why is that going to happen? The main reasons for high house prices are - the failure of the government to build houses - the government constantly pouring money into the housing market through schemes like "help to buy". These are both reversible. I am not going to respond to your criticisms of Labour because it's irrelevant to a conversation about changes to social care and it's funding now, and second, because I dont like much of what Blair and Brown did either, though likely for different reasons to yours. Tell me how it's fair that low and middle income earners should pay for social care for relatively well-off pensioners? Especially when the pensioners in question didn't pay this extra NI themselves when they were working. As for how to pay for it fairly, I have said, raise capital gains, higher rate income tax and create a wealth tax to tax millionaires. Btw when it comes to wealth tax, it's nothing new. Anyone with a home pays a tax on their property value. But the rich pay no such tax on their main assets in the form of shares, bonds etc. Again, the tax system favours the wealthy minority at the expense of everyone else.
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@nickssurplus I own and run business. I would pay a wealth tax on millionaires. I did work hard to build up my business from nothing. I have done well from it and I live comfortably. I also recognise that not everyone is as lucky as me. Not everyone gets the opportunities I got and not everyone was born capable of doing what I have done. I spent years poor growing up. No one deserves poverty. I have also spent years unwell through no fault of my own. No one deserves the misery that can bring. I don't want to live in a country where we stand by a let millions live in hardship when we can easily afford to fix it - whether that be poor working families or pensioners living with dementia. I am literally right now in the process of trying to get my mother in law into nursing care and it's a nightmare because there are no funds available and the homes are insanely expensive while also paying their staff next to nothing and providing very patchy care. The reality is that the difference between a tax bill of say, £30k and £31k for a high earner has no appreciable difference on their quality of life. But the a difference of £250 a year in NI for s low paid worker with kids can be the difference between staying afloat and sinking into debt and despair. And such people live in constant stress about money which causes its own serious problems (mental health issues as well as more vulnerability to other chronic diseases). Regardless of the causes of austerity, it was a policy choice. Other countries took a different path and avoided the crash in living standards among working class people that happened in the U.K. And please look into how fiscal policy works at a national scale. It isn't like Thatchers household bookkeeping because a sovereign country can create unlimited money and debt at will. It's way more complicated than just having to always pay your debts. No serious economist thinks about fiscal policy like that anymore. It's a political framing and it's deeply inaccurate and dishonest.
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@nickssurplus I don't understand why you think everyone will suddenly start losing their houses? And no, a small wealth tax won't drive everyone overseas. Other countries have wealth taxes and this hasn't happened. The millionaire's paradise Switzerland has a wealth tax! You can't just say "where does it stop" as a way to avoid ever raising taxes. It's a choice that we reviewed every time we need to. You could make similar statements when proposing tax cuts. It's not a useful position. In this case, we know that there is a pressing need to raise more revenue for social care. That additional money will benefit older people with assets. It's simply not fair to take that money specifically from young working people on lower incomes and likely no assets. It's literally taking money from the poor to give to the (relatively) rich.
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