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Post by eor on Nov 9, 2024 20:21:00 GMT
You have published no end of links to articles critical of the budget recently. I heard a non-UK economist on the radio the other day, who said it was the kind of budget the UK desperately needed because it was the first in years that was actually interested in growth and investment and noted the calm reaction of the markets to it in contrast to what he regarded as the bizarre relentless negativity of the UK media - but that of course was him not understanding that the UK media has a massive right-wing bias. So just for a little balance, here is the LSE giving it a cautious thumbs-up. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/reeves-budget-is-right-on-strategy-and-objectives/ Agree, the cold hard facts are that Labour needed to raise a lot of money and taxes had in reality to be part of that Reeves managed to raise that money and massively increase spending on public services that desperately needed it (following the 14 tory years of neglect) without spooking the markets She managed to achieve that and so passed the first big hurdle Yes people and businesses don't like paying taxes, but someone has to. I don't disagree with either of you per se - but I think the problem is the way Reeves has squared the circle between the manifesto commitment and the need for easy and unavoidable revenue. As I've said before, I have no issue with her Employer NI rise in terms of the manifesto pledge - the problem for me is how deeply regressive she's made it. The majority of the cost comes not from raising the rate from 13.8% to 15% but from slashing the starting threshold. So the more low-paid people (and especially part-time workers) a business has, the higher the proportional impact of this change. And it's been done in tandem with restating the remit of the Low Pay Commission to ensure a much bigger Minimum Wage increase than had been expected. Personally I think both the restatement of the remit and the increase in NMW are good things. But the impact of this varies dramatically between businesses and particularly between sectors, with the companies and sectors most affected also being the ones that are taking the biggest proportional hit from the NI increase. Put the two measures together and Goldman Sachs are probably being asked for about an extra 2% of their salary bill. Whereas companies in hospitality, care, retail, logistics and so on are probably looking at an extra 6-7%. If your financial year runs January-December that's a massive levy against a budget that will already have been set. The dominant firms and their employees will be fine - Tesco, Next, Amazon, Wetherspoons, they'll still offer a competitive pay increase for 2025 and just make very slightly less profit as a result. But it's not an exaggeration to say that companies who are struggling to make a profit will seriously struggle to find that much money, and the result will be redundancies (which will likely fall on people who are low-paid and disproportionately female), and quite possibly cause Wilkinsons-sized collapses. I wouldn't be surprised if the scrutiny continues to increase and we end up with some kind of backtrack to rebalance the impact. |
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Post by colin on Nov 10, 2024 9:28:44 GMT
The dominant firms and their employees will be fine - Tesco, Next, Amazon, Wetherspoons, they'll still offer a competitive pay increase for 2025 and just make very slightly less profit as a result. I think you may be a bit off with "slightly".:- NIC increase in 2024 Budget as % last reported pre-tax profit :- JD Wetherspoon-325% Sainsbury-80% BT-41% M&S-36% Tesco-34% ( NIC increase calc by Morgan Stanley) UK Hospitality say its members will need to raise prices by 8% to compensate-or "reconsider investment and drastically cut jobs and reduce hours" But we knew all this-both OBR & BoE said the Budget will be inflationary. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Nov 10, 2024 11:22:50 GMT
For some on the right the current Labour Government is hard left taking us back to the tax and spend Labour Government's of the 1970's indulging in class war against the wealthy
For some on the left they are just red tories indulging in woke issues at the expense of the working class
They can't both be right can they?
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Post by jib on Nov 10, 2024 11:47:51 GMT
For some on right the current Labour Government is hard left taking us back to the tax and spend Labour Government's of the 1970's indulging in class war against the wealthy For some on the left they are just red tories indulging in woke issues at the expense of the working class They can't both be right can they? It's likely to be steady as she goes for a few years. If the economy grows, then we can expect to see some progressive policies and real change. The country is broken after 14 years of Blue & Orange austerity, and there is no magic answer for public services that are on their knees. |
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Post by jimjam on Nov 10, 2024 12:36:00 GMT
EOR,
"As I've said before, I have no issue with her Employer NI rise in terms of the manifesto pledge - the problem for me is how deeply regressive she's made it. The majority of the cost comes not from raising the rate from 13.8% to 15% but from slashing the starting threshold. So the more low-paid people (and especially part-time workers) a business has, the higher the proportional impact of this change. "
I was making the same point to some Labour Party colleagues the other day.
£615 is twice the %age of £25K than £50K, simple maths!
I like the macro-economic shape of the budget and don't have a beef with the 1.2% but that threshold change doesn't sit well and I agree it will impact businesses decisions especially around part-time workers.
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Post by jib on Nov 10, 2024 12:52:15 GMT
GOP supporters pretty confident now of a clean sweep. Ironic it's going to be California, which some fool on here was saying was going secede from the USA. Numpty.
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Post by leftieliberal on Nov 10, 2024 13:49:15 GMT
GOP supporters pretty confident now of a clean sweep. Ironic it's going to be California, which some fool on here was saying was going secede from the USA. Numpty. Even California has Republicans; there has to be a majority of them somewhere. It's only Californian seats that will put the Republicans over the top because they are so slow in counting them. When you think that the UK can get a pretty good approximation to the election result around six hours after the polls close and the Americans have the advantage of having voting machines instead of the paper and stubby pencil we use, you have to question the competence of the people running elections there. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 16:46:50 GMT
It would not get the waiting lists down. To pay for that private procedure, the NHS would have to cancel other procedures in house. And since the private sector would charge more, you might end up for every person treated privately, two people not getting treated on the NHS. The NHS can only treat anyone if we give it enough money. handing that money to the private sector which costs more per treatrment isnt going to get more people treated, only add to private medical company profits. Don't agree with that if it's properly done and the £ required is a dedicated contingency that doesn't impact NHS staffing levels. Its always cheaper for the NHS to provide care in house. Claiming you will buy in extra care to deal with backlogs is simplay an excuse to privatise health care. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 16:54:12 GMT
Do I remember Trevor liked to go on about how the Uk needed immigrants to act as barristas in the hospitality sector? So these job losses might actually be for immigrant workers? The leisure industry has been in decline for decades. Pubs have been devastated, but Id imagine the switch away from so much alcohol consumption has masked an overall fall of demand in the food sectors. There were some stats on the US election page about the poorer half of th workforce has seen no wage growth in the last decade. There are similar figures in the UK. Whereas the richer half have seen significant wage growth. The consequence is likely to be half the population can happily afford restaurant prices, whereas the poorer half cannot. Which potentially means half your customers are being priced out. But that isnt about costs in the industry so much as government policy to encourage wealth inequality. It is an example in action of how equal wealth distribution leads to a more efficient economy. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 16:57:04 GMT
Agree, the cold hard facts are that Labour needed to raise a lot of money and taxes had in reality to be part of that Except the budget didnt really raise much money... |
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Post by colin on Nov 10, 2024 17:02:42 GMT
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Post by colin on Nov 10, 2024 17:06:05 GMT
Agree, the cold hard facts are that Labour needed to raise a lot of money and taxes had in reality to be part of that Except the budget didnt really raise much money... "UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves raises taxes by most since 1993 in first Labour budget" Reuters headline "Business and wealthy bear brunt of £40bn tax increases in UK Budget" FT headline |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 17:07:58 GMT
So the more low-paid people (and especially part-time workers) a business has, the higher the proportional impact of this change. Seems likely we need to discourage part time and multiple job employment. Full time is a likely more efficient use of our workforce. The Uk has for a long time had a strategy of importing cheap labour to enable marginal activities to be profitable. Any party which insists on continuing that is going to lose to Farage in the future. Its part and parcel of the deliberate strategy of cutting wages for the poorest hafl of the population while increasing those of the richest. Widening the wage gap, abolishing well paid manual jobs. Nationla startgey has to be to switch to high returns on labour input. Because they rely upon chep labour now, and its going to get less cheap? But surely this is the sort of activity which has to go? The remaining companies will then be able to better afford higher wages. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 17:12:55 GMT
For some on the right the current Labour Government is hard left taking us back to the tax and spend Labour Government's of the 1970's indulging in class war against the wealthy For some on the left they are just red tories indulging in woke issues at the expense of the working class They can't both be right can they? They can both be wrong. Its true however that there are two groups , the rich and the poor, both seeking a larger share of national income. As such they are always in competition, one wins the other loses. For 50 years the rich have been winning. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 10, 2024 17:13:12 GMT
I see there appears to be a daft prick on here who thinks that a State that voted democrat by a 20% margin is now republican because there are some republican areas and voters there.
Mind you brexitanians were never good with reality.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 17:19:58 GMT
It's likely to be steady as she goes for a few years. If the economy grows, then we can expect to see some progressive policies and real change. The country is broken after 14 years of Blue & Orange austerity, and there is no magic answer for public services that are on their knees. The biggest growing sector is health care, where the public, which is to say mostly pensioners, are demanding more and more expenditure. The choices then are: tax more to pay for these services. Or, refuse to expand these sectors. What has in reality happened, is other sectors have been cut to free more money to pay for care. We have suffered added costs because of privatisations of water, electricity, energy, telecoms, rail. To correct these we need to levy more taxes, whereas before the state benefitted from the profits made by these companies. All western nations have seen tax take slowly rising because centralised services are more efficient. We are behind the curve. An interesting discussion I heard today reported how this change to slashing taxes awas the hallmark of the Thatcher government, But even by Major this had started to be reversed. The same happened with Reagan, who came in slashing taxes then had to raise them. The last conservative government presided over some record tax rises in the name of, er cutting the size of the state. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 17:36:58 GMT
Page has no stats whatever? I know exactly how to improve efficiency in the hospitality sector. Close 50% of all businesses. The remainder will have ample capacity to cater for all the current customers, will employ fewer staff overall and make much more (taxable) profit. They will be able to afford living wages for all their staff. The freed up staff can be used in other industries in place of immigrant labour. A win-win for the employees and the state. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 10, 2024 17:42:24 GMT
Except the budget didnt really raise much money... "UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves raises taxes by most since 1993 in first Labour budget" Reuters headline "Business and wealthy bear brunt of £40bn tax increases in UK Budget" FT headline Uk government budget £1.3 billion. So 3%. Not much. The fact this is considered a lot in one go says something about how badly income has been allowed to fall behind spending. The last government massively over borrowed on various pretexts when instead it needed to have balanced the budget, either by slashing services much more (politically unacceptable), or increasing taxes (politically unacceptable). Instead it chose to increase borrowing, ultimately leading to financial ruin but not until after it left office. |
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Post by colin on Nov 10, 2024 18:03:23 GMT
Page has no stats whatever? I know exactly how to improve efficiency in the hospitality sector. Close 50% of all businesses. The remainder will have ample capacity to cater for all the current customers, will employ fewer staff overall and make much more (taxable) profit. They will be able to afford living wages for all their staff. The freed up staff can be used in other industries in place of immigrant labour. A win-win for the employees and the state. You do talk some rubbish don't you ! |
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Post by jib on Nov 10, 2024 18:05:42 GMT
I see there appears to be a daft prick on here who thinks that a State that voted democrat by a 20% margin is now republican because there are some republican areas and voters there. Mind you brexitanians were never good with reality. Still sore you made such an a**e of yourself with your virtue signalling garbage during the campaign. What a daft tool you are. N.B. Brexit is your reality, my reality. Really pleased with it or not, tine to wake up to it. |
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Post by colin on Nov 10, 2024 18:08:10 GMT
income has been allowed to fall behind revenue. "income" is the same thing as "revenue". |
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Post by jimjam on Nov 10, 2024 21:18:50 GMT
Lucid Poll,
Clare Hannah having positive impact on SDLP in short term at least and is most popular leader.
SF: 29% (-1)
DUP: 19% (+1)
APNI: 13% (-2)
TUV: 11% (+2)
UUP: 10% (-2)
SDLP: 10% (+2)
GRN: 2% (=)
PBP: 2 (+1)
AON: 1% (=)
IND/Others: 3% (-1)
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Post by eor on Nov 10, 2024 23:20:04 GMT
The dominant firms and their employees will be fine - Tesco, Next, Amazon, Wetherspoons, they'll still offer a competitive pay increase for 2025 and just make very slightly less profit as a result. I think you may be a bit off with "slightly".:- NIC increase in 2024 Budget as % last reported pre-tax profit :- JD Wetherspoon-325% Sainsbury-80% BT-41% M&S-36% Tesco-34% ( NIC increase calc by Morgan Stanley) UK Hospitality say its members will need to raise prices by 8% to compensate-or "reconsider investment and drastically cut jobs and reduce hours" But we knew all this-both OBR & BoE said the Budget will be inflationary. Something is seriously wrong with those numbers - Tesco make £2.5-3bn profit and have about 310k employees, there is no way this measure can cost them 34% of that, that'd be nearly a billion pounds, or over £3k per employee. www.tescoplc.com/preliminary-results-202324/Likewise Wetherspoons made about £70m profit last year with about 43k employees, so for the NI increase to cost them 325% of that would be about £5.5k per employee, which will be more than their entire Employer NI bill! www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/wetherspoons-reinstates-dividend-after-profit-30068168I appreciate there are many different definitions of "profit" but the numbers for those two at least are wrong by an order of magnitude. |
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Post by eor on Nov 10, 2024 23:33:35 GMT
So the more low-paid people (and especially part-time workers) a business has, the higher the proportional impact of this change. Seems likely we need to discourage part time and multiple job employment. Full time is a likely more efficient use of our workforce. The Uk has for a long time had a strategy of importing cheap labour to enable marginal activities to be profitable. Any party which insists on continuing that is going to lose to Farage in the future. Its part and parcel of the deliberate strategy of cutting wages for the poorest hafl of the population while increasing those of the richest. Widening the wage gap, abolishing well paid manual jobs. Nationla startgey has to be to switch to high returns on labour input. Because they rely upon chep labour now, and its going to get less cheap? But surely this is the sort of activity which has to go? The remaining companies will then be able to better afford higher wages. I know you enjoy being provocative but seriously. We don't need to discourage part-time work, we need to actively encourage it - the more rigid the demands of the workplace the higher the number of capable and effective people that will get shut out of roles they could excel at. The rest of your reply is just bizarre - hospitality, care, retail and logistics just "have to go"? How thereafter do we get our food, clothes and so on in your more theoretically efficient economy? |
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Post by eor on Nov 11, 2024 0:15:36 GMT
GOP supporters pretty confident now of a clean sweep. Ironic it's going to be California, which some fool on here was saying was going secede from the USA. Numpty. Even California has Republicans; there has to be a majority of them somewhere. It's only Californian seats that will put the Republicans over the top because they are so slow in counting them. When you think that the UK can get a pretty good approximation to the election result around six hours after the polls close and the Americans have the advantage of having voting machines instead of the paper and stubby pencil we use, you have to question the competence of the people running elections there. I've been quite snarky about California, and to get a final result in a freakishly close race there *will* take them a while as they have a law that says any mail-in ballot postmarked by Election Day has to be counted, so if there were say a few dozen votes in it then they're obliged to wait to be sure. But that doesn't get near explaining why they're so glacially slow across the board, and can still have 20, 30, 40% of votes yet to be counted in some seats nearly a week after the election. It's mad. |
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Post by pete on Nov 11, 2024 0:17:12 GMT
GOP supporters pretty confident now of a clean sweep. Ironic it's going to be California, which some fool on here was saying was going secede from the USA. Numpty. That aimed at me? It was a thought I posted and you couldn't even get it right, idiot. |
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Post by eor on Nov 11, 2024 1:27:37 GMT
pete nah it'll be his perpetual feud with steveSomehow even a US election is *really* about Brexit and the previous generation of LibDems.
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 11, 2024 6:23:44 GMT
eor I expect so . He seemed to take umbrage with me referencing the statements made by Governor Newsom and insisted on the canard favoured by brexitanians that a narrow victory is somehow a sweeping majority and a 20% margin of victory win in a state for democrats is somehow transposed into a republican victory because they take longer to count the votes than most other states. It's nonsense of course. As it transpires it looks like the vote share in the U.S. election will be incredibly close within 2% and with neither candidate getting 50% of the popular vote, so even closer than the Brexit referendum vote , but those are just facts and obviously don't enter into the alternative realities of overwhelming majorities. Here's another thing for him to get his knickers in a twist over. Lib Dems plan to force vote on replacing Lords with elected upper chamber. The lib dems plan to put forward an amendment to the government bill to ban hereditary peers from the second chamber and move further to make it fully elected to remove the influence of government patronage. Until 2022 this used to be Labour's position as well but in their shift to the right during the election campaign it was dropped there's still significant support among Labour mps. The Lib Dems said they wanted to push their amendment to a vote in the Commons on Tuesday, subject to the Speaker deeming it in scope of the bill. Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson, said: “It is way past time for a proper democratic reform of the House of Lords. Politicians must do all we can to restore public trust in politics after the chaos of the last Conservative government, which had no interest in reforming the Lords and instead left it as the largest second chamber anywhere in the world. “Liberal Democrats have been at the forefront of making this case for decades and we’ll continue to press the government on this. “The government should accept our amendment which will finally get the ball rolling on delivering a proper democratic mandate for the House of Lords.” When the hereditary peers bill was brought forward, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the paymaster general, said: “It is indefensible that, in the 21st century, there are seats in our legislature allocated by an accident of birth. This is a long-overdue reform and a progressive first step on the road of change. “To maintain trust in our democratic institutions it is important our second chamber reflects modern Britain.” I really can't see any grounds for objection, but the compliant speaker will probably let the government off the hook by not selecting the amendment.
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Post by jib on Nov 11, 2024 7:01:46 GMT
peteNo, not you. Getting frothed up too are you? Another true democrat I see. I think you're in the wrong site! You seem to dislike the democratic processes as much as steve and his holographic sidekick Lib Dems - forever tainted. No need for photo reminders this morning.
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Post by colin on Nov 11, 2024 8:18:12 GMT
I think you may be a bit off with "slightly".:- NIC increase in 2024 Budget as % last reported pre-tax profit :- JD Wetherspoon-325% Sainsbury-80% BT-41% M&S-36% Tesco-34% ( NIC increase calc by Morgan Stanley) UK Hospitality say its members will need to raise prices by 8% to compensate-or "reconsider investment and drastically cut jobs and reduce hours" But we knew all this-both OBR & BoE said the Budget will be inflationary. Something is seriously wrong with those numbers - Tesco make £2.5-3bn profit and have about 310k employees, there is no way this measure can cost them 34% of that, that'd be nearly a billion pounds, or over £3k per employee. www.tescoplc.com/preliminary-results-202324/Likewise Wetherspoons made about £70m profit last year with about 43k employees, so for the NI increase to cost them 325% of that would be about £5.5k per employee, which will be more than their entire Employer NI bill! www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/wetherspoons-reinstates-dividend-after-profit-30068168I appreciate there are many different definitions of "profit" but the numbers for those two at least are wrong by an order of magnitude. Yes Tesco's increase is £1bn pa. Divided by their employees is around £300 per head. Will dig the other calcs out later. |
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