The Budget

I think so, Urmstongran but many people seem to have a problem with the concept of it being unconditional.

Presumably it is added to income and therefore many people will pay much of it back in tax - which is fair so it is sort of income related.

One idea is that you would no longer get personal tax allowance - it would be replaced by the UBI. This would mean a greater tax take. There have been quite a lot of ideas when it comes to the details but there are some basics.

1. Periodic—It is paid at regular intervals (for example every month), not as a one-off grant.

2. Cash payment—It is paid in an appropriate medium of exchange, allowing those who receive it to decide what they spend it on. It is not, therefore, paid either in kind (such as food or services) or in vouchers dedicated to a specific use.

3. Individual—It is paid on an individual basis—and not, for instance, to households.

4. Universal—It is paid to all, without means test.

5. Unconditional—It is paid without a requirement to work or to demonstrate willingness-to-work.

basicincome.org/about-basic-income/

Casdon

PippaZ I just don’t get it with your aversion to raising the contactless limit. It costs £60 to fill up the car, if there’s more than one of you it costs over £50 to pay for your supermarket shop - it’s not a sign of extravagance. If you prefer to use cash that’s fine, but please don’t try to justify your views by saying the rest of us are profligate, that’s just silly.

The choice isn't between cash and contactless. A card with a PIN can still be used in the cash machine.

Urmstongran

I’ve learnt not to think in that way any more (thanks to your teachings) but I can’t get my head around ‘we can do whatever we like’. It just seems so strange. Why not create Utopia? Why don’t all countries just do it if there are no reasons why not? And if austerity was never needed, why didn’t Labour call out on George Osborne for implementing it?

If the money supply were increased without limit, there would indeed be inflation eventually. However, almost all money in a country like the UK returns to the Treasury at some point. If it looks likely that there will be inflation and if the economy is healthy, the Treasury can then choose to tax and effectively destroy the money it collects. Taxing when the economy is in trouble through lack of supply is asking for trouble. Of course, the government has a choice whom it chooses to tax. Its priority seems to be let the rich keep their money and tax those on lower incomes either directly through freezing tax thresholds or indirectly by, for example, forcing councils to raise council tax and cut services. We're also beginning to see people being forced to pay for the education and healthcare they've come to expect. There was nothing in today's budget for either. There was nothing for the promised reforms to social care either.

Casdon

PippaZ I just don’t get it with your aversion to raising the contactless limit. It costs £60 to fill up the car, if there’s more than one of you it costs over £50 to pay for your supermarket shop - it’s not a sign of extravagance. If you prefer to use cash that’s fine, but please don’t try to justify your views by saying the rest of us are profligate, that’s just silly.

Well, this has made me think. I just don't spend money in shops! My car won't help either as it costs £35 at most to fill and that will last five or six weeks. I do pay by card so I don't have to go to the petrol station shop.

I actually went to Aldi today and spent £9 (with my card) but this was the first time in months and I only went because they didn't have any lactose free milk in my click and collect - heaven knows who drank it all . I did buy a couple of other staples too, hence the £9. Some of my food comes from specialist online suppliers and there are no local businesses doing the same thing.

I have bought a great deal of what I needed for my new flat online in the last year too and things like the bathroom, kitchen and new sofa cover and decorator were all online bank transfer payments. I hadn't realised I have amost stopped shopping in shops at all.

How about paying the hairdresser £80+, or buying some plants and compost from the garden centre £60+ for example? A visit to the chiropractor or dentist. Not overly extravagant. It's an issue of convenience. That's why I'm pleased the limit was raised.

Welshwife

You can still use your card for purchases more than the current limit but just need to put your code in. I am not a great fan of contactless payment because of the security risk if it goes missing.

Funny you should say that Welshwife.
I’ve been doing that for a while now and I find it less worrying that my card is only available for large amounts if I put my code in.
I know it might be easier to tap and pay when I fill my car up or do my once a week large shop, but I can manage to put my code in twice a week if it means greater peace of mind.
Even though the bank will in most cases cover illegal expenditure if I report the loss promptly, I’d prefer a lower limit. I wonder if we could have a choice.

There is a choice though Mollygo, you can manually enter the code for every transaction, even if it’s only £10 if you want to now, they aren’t proposing to change that, this just gives you the option to pay contactless for a larger sum if you choose to.

I think that it’s an excellent Budget, and not what was expected of them, it didn’t leave poor old Labour with much to say? many people thought austerity was back on the menu, but no! It will be spending to kick start the economy for a couple of years at least. Furlough extended until September and help for the self employed.Just the sort of Budget the country needs after Covid, well done Rishi.

Furlough extended until September
I'm wondering whether they are sceptical about the travel industry getting back before September. There must be a large number of tour operators and airline/airport workers etc on furlough.

Ellianne

A full tank of petrol or a supermarket shop for a family is hardly "flinging their money around" PippaZ.

This made me laugh Elliane ...I do like your dry sense of humour.
I may go and fling some money around at the Co-op tomorrow as I have run out of teabags.

^This made me laughElliane...I do like your dry sense of humour.
I may go and fling some money around at the Co-op tomorrow as I have run out of teabags.^
If you're going past the chiller section, look out for these fling salads.

?Ah, but would buying bags of salad be a bit profligate of me?

lemongrove

I think that it’s an excellent Budget, and not what was expected of them, it didn’t leave poor old Labour with much to say? many people thought austerity was back on the menu, but no! It will be spending to kick start the economy for a couple of years at least. Furlough extended until September and help for the self employed.Just the sort of Budget the country needs after Covid, well done Rishi.

No, the budget offered hardly help for the self-employed. One only has to dig a little below the headline to see that.

It doesn't take a genius to see it didn't do much to kickstart the economy or to see that it did start to reintroduce austerity without calling it that.

But ... hey ho ... who cares about truth these days?

Why would I do that Casdon? I reread my post to check that I hadn’t expressed a desire to add a PIN for amounts above £10.
I’m fine with amounts up to £50. I’d just prefer that my card needs a PIN for amounts up to £100. You don’t think that should be allowed?
If others do want to use theirs for laRger amounts, I’m not criticising them.

lemongrove

I think that it’s an excellent Budget, and not what was expected of them, it didn’t leave poor old Labour with much to say? many people thought austerity was back on the menu, but no! It will be spending to kick start the economy for a couple of years at least. Furlough extended until September and help for the self employed.Just the sort of Budget the country needs after Covid, well done Rishi.

It was a relief to me too, lemongrove, that austerity doesn't seem to be the order of the day. I must admit I had expected the budget to be worse than it was for me and my family.

Just wish members of my family could access some of the support that is available but, alas, three of them seem to have fallen through the cracks once again.

I'm going to request a replacement card without the contactless facility. I always have enough time to enter my pin.

No mention of social care or paying NHS staff more. No mention of the billions lost to the economy by Brexit, and the hit to growth, no all blamed on Covid. Freeports were around before whilst we were in the EU and were a haven for smugglers of people and drugs, so not excited by that. I think Sunak is brighter than the rest of the cabinet ( not hard) but is a bit smarmy and has his eye on the top job. He said “I will be honest with you”, implication that politicians might lie? perish the thought.

It does look as if the usual unravelling of the budget is going to happen today and in the next few days. Much of the non-Covid stuff looks very old-fashioned, out of another era, to me. I do wish they would stop messing with the housing market and simply build low-cost housing. The Conservatives seem wedded to the nudge theory but do it so badly.

Just to add to the aside about UBI, The Economists email this morning had a headline flagging an article in this weeks issue "Might the pandemic pave the way for a universal basic income?" sub-headed "A true UBI seems far off. But more experimentation is likely". Are we at Gransnet ahead on this one ?

I think it's paywalled but if not you can read it here: www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/03/02/might-the-pandemic-pave-the-way-for-a-universal-basic-income?utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2021-03-03&utm_content=article-link-2&etear=nl_today_2

PippaZ They don't want to build social housing because it might affect a major income source for their voters.

GrannyRose "Austerity" has been relabelled "financial responsibility". Sunak's an honest guy - he must be - he told us 8 times that he is.

PS. Look at the details. There was hardly any help for the self-employed.

growstuff

PippaZ They don't want to build social housing because it might affect a major income source for their voters.

I appreciate that growstuff, sad lot that they are, wedded to old fashioned conservatism. The world is changing and the vision of the young and 30s to 40s, who find it hard to pay for rent let alone buy a house even with this incentive into future negative equity may well not be captured by this.

A bit of a strange one I think, £2.5 million set aside to pass a law allowing longterm British ex-pats to now be able to vote in general elections. And yet in 2016 they weren't allowed to vote in the referendum.