We want those entitlements, we want low taxes, we want extravagant public services. We want cake and to have eaten that cake. We can’t afford our government but we will pretend we can.
£42k per household per year! That's chilling. Can't help wondering what the effect would be if government said "here's your household £10k for health and schools: spend it on the providers you choose".
Everyone is aware of the need for growth, nobody knows how to generate it. The most important problem in British politics, in the sense that it undergirds every other problem that voters care about.
Benefits for all, as opposed to benefits as a safety net for the minority, was always going to end in tears.
There are probably plenty of people like me for whom the State pension, when I get to 67, is a financial irrelevance. Yet any suggestion that this should become a needs base benefit as opposed to an entitlement one has earned will provoke howls of well to do middle class fury.
As you say, something has to break eventually as this can’t carry on.
Even with an older and larger population, the fact that the tax burden hasn't been this high since 1950 astounds...
Back then the government was running large amounts of nationalised industry, maintaining a vastly larger military, various colonies (all of which except Malaya were loss making), all without computers which should in reduce the amount of man hours spent in low level administration.
£42k per household per year! That's chilling. Can't help wondering what the effect would be if government said "here's your household £10k for health and schools: spend it on the providers you choose".
Everyone is aware of the need for growth, nobody knows how to generate it. The most important problem in British politics, in the sense that it undergirds every other problem that voters care about.
How..... did you manage to do even worse than us Yankees?
Benefits for all, as opposed to benefits as a safety net for the minority, was always going to end in tears.
There are probably plenty of people like me for whom the State pension, when I get to 67, is a financial irrelevance. Yet any suggestion that this should become a needs base benefit as opposed to an entitlement one has earned will provoke howls of well to do middle class fury.
As you say, something has to break eventually as this can’t carry on.
The is excellent. Thank you.
Even with an older and larger population, the fact that the tax burden hasn't been this high since 1950 astounds...
Back then the government was running large amounts of nationalised industry, maintaining a vastly larger military, various colonies (all of which except Malaya were loss making), all without computers which should in reduce the amount of man hours spent in low level administration.
At some point, it will all end in tears. I know, there is much ruin in a nation, but can we get this over with?