UK Politics
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!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
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We found billions and billions for daft tax cuts and juicy contracts to Tory donors for dodgy services and contacts. No one asks "how can we afford this?" when it's tax cuts for corporations or selling off profitable public owned assets. I think we can afford to spend a little more on helping people survive. The money spent on welfare also doesn't just disappear, it goes straight back into the economy. The very poorest people can't afford to have savings, it all gets spent on essentials.
Growing the economy is very difficult when people don't have any money to spend. It's a giant weight around the economy's neck. If the Tories hadn't been burning the country down for the last 14 years we wouldn't have as many people struggling in poverty and wouldn't have to spend as much. Unfortunately they have so we do.
How about we raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and reinvest that money into supporting the people of the nation and trying to grow the economy?
It's also not one third of the NHS budget. The total "cost of harm" to the NHS Inc legal costs was £6.6bn in 2022-2023, the total budget was £180bn. That's around 3.5%. Just use some common sense and think about what one third of the budget would imply. Is one third of the NHS made up of lawyers? Do you know just as many NHS lawyers as you do nurses and doctors? Double check "facts" that sound unbelievable and via outrageous before spewing them out for others to be misled by.
Fair point that I should have checked the 1/3 claim before posting. It was a figure I'd heard before. I think there is some debate over the cumulative figure though, for example this article suggests that the total cost of outstanding claims could total £83 billion - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51180944
In terms of general government funding I disagree that it is something we can tax our way out of. The current tax burden is the highest it has been for over 50 years (https://obr.uk/box/the-uks-tax-burden-in-historical-and-international-context/) and at a certain point you get diminishing returns from raising taxes due to the laffer curve.
Again that figure is the "total outstanding" amount and isn't the yearly cost. If a mistake during childbirth causes permanent disabilities for that child over the course of their life then the compensation will be a decent sum paid out over a long time. There are other better targets for saving budget or raising tax revenues.
We need to grow the economy from the bottom up. Trickle down has been proven to be bullshit. There's plenty of scope to raise taxes on corporations and via asset/investment returns marginally to offset investment in growing the economy and helping the worst off. The report you linked says that the UK has a lower total tax burden than many other developed nations. We don't need to go crazy, but at the moment the tax burden is too heavy on big workers and too light on capital.
Rather than ask "how can we afford this?" try asking "how can we not?" The country is in a dire state. Cutting taxes on the wealthy and cutting services and benefits haven't worked, trying it again is daft.