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Your taxes
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
What would you prefer? Higher taxes so we can support a better social security/NHS/police/fire service/teaching network or lower taxes so people get to choose what they want to spend their money on?
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Income taxes should be replaced with small regressive taxes.
if someone on benefits spends it all down the pub thats fine with me ...the money is circulating around the petrol stations the pubs the shops etc ...better it circulate than be stashed under the bed ...
What have i got to show for it? An education system that is falling apart, a health service that is falling apart, and a bunch of civil serveants who waste our money deciding on how best to remove the Queen.
What I love best is that each year good old Tony says "We will improve public services, but you need to pay more taxes".
What he'd be better saying, especially if he wants to win the next election "raising taxes won't help, but cutting the vast wages and many jobs of unimportant beuracrats in Whitehall I will save enough to make a great country again"
this labour party are far from being labour as we knew it but ...they are actualy facing and trying to resolve these issuses as opposed to mrs hatchets theory that there was no such thing as society only self ...so her whole ideology became business business business ...fuck the people ...fuck the infrastrucure ...sell everything in sight to fellow tory business men ...trains for fucks sake ...insanity. she even sold britains black gold ...north sea oil to foriegn companies where the dutch decided to pore there new found oil wealth into benefits, health, education etc.
the second bit i agree with totaly ...to many fucking nobodies getting big fat pay checks for jobs that aren't needed or jobs that exist in duplicate or even triplicate1
Beauracracy: I don't know that much about it but I know most of it is unneccessary and could be spent elsewhere.
Politicians should take a pay-cut and we can pump there money into the education system that they say is so wonderful, when it is in a mess. And use the money they would use in a private hospital so Cherie can have her botox done professionally and pump it into the NHS.
Erm...why?
Why should someone who is successful have to support the people who won't work?
What motivation is that for people to aim for better lives?
What would you class as rich?
Nah Thatcher and co took them away
All they've done is raise taxes with none of the results. What they ought to do is give themselves a pay cut and bring their wages in line with what their jobs actually entail.
They should scrap the stupid posts that we've all been hearing about, and a whole host of other things that will save money.
I mean, they're even wanting to change the name of the CPS to the PPS, WHAT THE FUCK. Why? So people can't call it the "criminal protection service" anymore? It's A WASTE OF MY FUCKING MONEY.
But of course noone listens to us, they want change for the sake of it, doesn't matter how much it costs.
I think he means the rich have a greater ability to pay since they simply have more money.:)
Because it all boils down to that. Taxes ARE needed to provide a free health service, free education, a functioning and comprehensive public transport (and anyone who complains about Britain's should visit that cornerstone of capitalism the US and have a look at their transport), pensions and yes, help to those who needed. There might be a question of how to manage taxes more efficiently, but taxes are indeed needed. And those who can afford it (people with 6-figure salaries for instance) should pay more- without a doubt.
Go compare the quality of life of an average working person from any given northern EU country against the quality of life of another from the USA. People in northern Europe pay taxes that are considered obscene in the US. Yet they had a socially advanced and caring system, namely infrastructure, health, pensions, transport and many others, that the average American couldn't imagine in his wildest dreams.
What are you using as a basis for this declaration, what was your baseline, what are your indicators of change and how are you comparing "now" with "then"?
No, theft is making huge profits for yourself off the back of hard work by others.
Taxation benefits all, to some extent...
You could try the Office of National Statistics J, they are responsible for compiling and issuing census data and the like.
We need taxes and I think everyone will agree they're pretty high at the moment, which is fine, as long as it's being well spent.
But is it? I would love to be able to get to work without my life being disrupted by a piss poor train service.
What's the point in encouraging people to use trains that are shit?
And once the trains were renationalised they would require real investment from the government. Usually this shouldn't mean higher taxes but the problem in this country is that the railways have been under-invested for nearly 4 decades. Poorer countries such as Spain are 100% state owned and financed, but simply by keeping the funding steady no cash injections are needed and the network is one of the most modern in the world.
For this country, I am afraid that an awful lot of money would be needed to compensate for 30+ years of under investment. So in the short and mid term it would have to mean higher taxes (or severe cuts in other areas). But in 15 years or so we could have a railway system as good as France's or Spain's without the need of further cash injections or tax hikes.
Sorry, but you missed my point.
We all gripe about our services and complain that they haven't improved. But the question is, how do you "know" that they haven't improved? What are you using to "define" an improvement?
To use your train analogy, the trains are better and newer. In that sense things have improved. I'm not sure about how close to running on time they are - because I don't use them myself - but is that an indicator in itself, or should we look at the percentage that arrive on time, or how close to arriving on time they are... For example, if 50% arrived on time before and now it's 51% then is that an improvement, or if all trains arrived within 10 minutes of time but now all arrive with 5 mins is that an improvement? Even if all arrive more than 1 minute late... Define "late"...
Gut feeling isn't enough to make such judgements because feelings change over time...
Same applies to my area of NHS improvements. If asked, most people would say that the NHS is getting worse. Yet facts would tell you the opposite...
Theft is (in a simplistic sense) taking something that doesn'tt belong to you!
My money is MINE, not the state's!!
If governmental spending is reduced to 5-15% of GDP then there would probably be NO NEED for an income tax!:cool:
I do agree with you Aladdin, but i think it's trifling unfair that the amount of taxes seems to have gone up vastly, but the government keep saying they need more.
If they invested it properly without wasting it on pointless equality jobs, name changes and any one of a myriad other things that we don't want or need then things would be peachy.
In Spain they give people community jobs, some of these are so simple as holding up a sign post. At least people dont live off the state then.
I beleive that Labour needs to show where it's improved over the past couple of years, because taxes continue to rise. The bus service someone mentioned
I think in any job you get paid an amount, equivelent to the work you do. In this respect, I think politicians are vastly overpaid. Also, tax evasion officers all over the country; there are so many of them! So a nice portion of your tax is being paid to people to make other people pay tax!
Council tax has seen so many rises over recent years; I don't get it. In Leicester there are rises and services are being cut. So where is the money going?
On the othewr hand: last year my college became a specialist language college. We received a grant of £50,000 from the government which were used to build a new Modern Foreign Languages Computer Suite; there's a big projecter screen and about 30 computers with XP on 2 levels! To go with this we now have an intranet, so if you want to do revision you just click the right things and it brings you links to GCSE Bitesize and a load of other revision pages, along with revision resources made by our school. There are several new language assistants who are actually from France; admittedly their English isn't perfect but we speak to them in French lessons! Just last week we received web conferencing hardware to communicate with schools in France, Germany and Spain.
So there are some changes occuring I can say (except I think school meals should be nationalised because they suck and are overpriced