Surely we must pay more taxes!?

LizzieDrip

Hear hear MaizieD.

BevSec you do realise that being able to buy any pharmaceutical you want without a prescription is highly dangerous, don’t you.

It’s nothing to be celebrated!

Its everything to be celebrated. They say its on their own heads. I got some badly needed sleeping tablets yesterday after a sleepless night. Feel like a different person today. I would have be3n desperate otherwise. How is that so wrong?

'.... relatively small amounts

To revert to the question of taxation.

MOnica is constantly asking for a definition of wealthy. So I went back to Thomas Pikety.

Firstly, it is difficult to put a monetary value on 'wealth' and Pikety doesn't attempt to do that apart from using monetary values to illustrate some of his points. What he does do is to look at wealth in the context of shares of 'national income'.

He defines national income as being similar to GDP, the monetary value of all national outputs, but he modifies it slightly by allowing for depreciation of the capital goods involved in production, e.g plant, machinery,and infrastructure. He then estimates that national income in developed countries equals about 90% of GDP.

It is possible to break the share of national income into labour share and capital share but it's complex because the two overlap in many individuals so, apart from noting that it frequently works out at about a 70/30 labour/capital split it isn't a particularly useful tool for analysis.

He therefore looks at the ratio of capital (wealth) to income in terms of the number of years worth of national income a figure will represent.

e.g. If the per capita net income (i.e share of national income) is £30 - 35,000 and private capital wealth is £150 - 200,000 then private wealth equals 5 or 6 years worth of national income.

This is just an average. Naturally there is a huge variation between individuals. Some will have little or no capital wealth and some will have far in excess of the 'per capita' amount.

Pikety finds that the distribution of wealth between holders of capital wealth is concentrated in the upper percentiles of wealth holders. He found that in the countries whose data he used for analysis the top 10% of capital holders always owned more than 50% of all wealth.

Conversely, distribution isa bit more equal between holders of labour income, where the upper 10% receives 25 -30% of the total labour income and the bottom 50% gets 25 -33%. Whereas the bottom 50% of holders of capital income get only 5%.

Without putting any figures on it this tells us that there is a huge amount of wealth being held in the UK by very few people, wealth which it could be perfectly proper and equitable to tax without having to tax those who hold far, far less.

When we start discussing wealth on this forum it always seems to descend to recitations of personal situations and personal desire to protect what wealth people have. If looked at in terms of wealth distribution in the UK we can see that most of us are paddling in the shallows of the pool of wealth, fighting over amounts that would be considered paltry by extreme wealth holders who are way out into the deep end. But many are not happy with the concept of taxing wealth and defend those who some of us find to be indefensible because, it seems, they themselves fear for those relatively amounts that they hold.

There is, of course, an ethical and ideological dimension to all this in that approval or disapproval of wealth taxation depends very much on individual's view of the function of government and their economic ideology.

P.S Pikety used a wide range of 'developed' countries in his research, including the US, the UK, France, Japan, Canada, Spain, Germany and more..... His findings are not UK centric.

Well, DH nearly died when he picked up an antibiotic resistant infection after heart surgery.

It meant 3 extra operations because pus and muck was being scraped out of him(sorry), 6 extra weeks in hospital and him coming close to dying

As you may imagine I believe that antibiotics should only be available on prescription.

I share Lizzie's and Maizie's concerns about the ability to buy medicines without a prescription.
With Dr Google at hand , many people might be putting themselves in danger and, as others have said, increasing the risk of the development of antibiotic resistant diseases.

Hear hear MaizieD.

BevSec you do realise that being able to buy any pharmaceutical you want without a prescription is highly dangerous, don’t you.

It’s nothing to be celebrated!

Making big businesses pay loads more tax will only make them pull out of our country. Let’s stop paying for second and third wives, and benefits to people who marry their cousins and then claim pip as there children are disabled, stop harebrained schemes, stop borrowing money to give to other countries like Pupae New Guinea which gets over 33 million from us, we are still giving aid to China. What a debacle.

BevSec

How can there be a world with no advantages to being able to afford for something? Money will always make the world go round! I am on holiday in Egypt at the moment. You can walk in to a pharmacy and buy any meds you want without a px! Its choice if you can afford it. I would love that in the UK.

You can walk in to a pharmacy and buy any meds you want without a px!

What a chilling thought. Ignorance will win the day.

For example. With antibiotic resistant bacteria on the increase because of indiscriminate and improper use of antibiotics it will soon reach the stage where illnesses which were once a likely death sentence but which have been easily treated with antibiotics can no longer be cured and they will once again become a death sentence.

The human race really doesn’t deserve to live, it’s destroying its planet and destroying its wellbeing. Earth will be better off without us.

I'm not overly fussed about better food or bedding, though it is known to aid recovery.
Superior medicines, like antibiotics, is a different matter.

It depends what you mean by higher quality service. For example, the same operation and aftercare provided on the same timescale, would give the same outcome. That is equality of access. If people want to pay for linen sheets and cordon bleu meals, it will not impact on the outcome, and I don’t have any objection to them doing that.

Casdon

Equality is about access to essential services regardless of income escaped.

Good point, but aren't they linked?
So the person with the more money would want to pay for a higher quality service, and so inequality starts again?

growstuff

No, in my world people wouldn't be stopped from using private healthcare. I'd rather have a world where there would be no advantage, so it wouldn't be contemplated.

What would happen growstuff you would still have private medecine but it would offer better non-medical facilities than the NHS, better food, more comfortable and luxurious rooms, private day rooms and so on.

Just like hotels you could go to an NHS hospital, the equivalent of hotels with 1-3*. Private hospitals would be the equivalent of paying extra for 4-5* facilities.

One other advantage that private hospitals that aids the NHS. I had treatment for carpal tunnel problems a few months ago. The doctor was using a brand new development. A machine that undertook the treatment by using a very fine probe to cut the csrpal tendon. It meant cheaper treatment because I ha dno sedation, so an anaethetist was not needed and after the procedure, I was on my way home within half an hour.

The private hospital was trialing the equipment with the intention of the specialists encouraging the local NHS hospital to buy it as it would save the NHS time and money undertaking a frequently performed procedure.

I have since read that these machines are going to be acquired across the NHS over the next couple of years because the trials run by the private hospitals, of which I was part have been so successful.

Equality is about access to essential services regardless of income escaped.

I don't see how there can ever be a more equal society?
For example, if two people on GN are given, say £100 today, by next week one will have made £1,000, one will have nothing to show for it.

Always interested in what you explain about the financial stuff, MaizieD.
I assume the prices charged to the private medical companies are also higher than those billed to the NHS. For example, when the bill is itemised, I often wonder how it can be around £600 for some blood tests? And a private prescription can be about three times the price than if you buy it over the counter. As more and more people are paying for private medical insurance, one in eight I believe, you'd expect the prices to come down, not soar!
(As an aside, the cost of medicines at the vets is exorbitant too).

BevSec

Casdon

Many people are public spirited BevSec, and care about others who are in less fortunate circumstances. Many also have ideological objections to private medicine for that reason, because they don’t believe in queue jumping.

The NHS still picks up the complex cases, and those who are treated privately initially when things go wrong too, so it’s a fallacy to suggest that private medicine saves pressures on the NHS. If consultants who work in both the NHS and privately could not work privately they would automatically have full time NHS contracts, thus increasing NHs capacity.

We are all public spirited as taxpayers, giving to foodbanks and charity shops, all of which I do, as well as the Lifeboats and Salvation Army. We all have social consciences. That is not the same issue as some on here wishing to “redistribute’ wealth, usually someone elses!

I have no ideological objections whatsoever to private medicine, just grateful for that choice . I used to work in the NHS.

It still comes across as the politics of envy imo.

People who earn above the threshold have no choice but to be taxpayers BevSec, it has absolutely nothing to do with them being public spirited. Not everybody has a social conscience, and small donations to organisations you support, whilst worthwhile, doesn’t amount to a social conscience either - that is about wanting a more equal society and being prepared to access services in the same way as everybody else so queueing to wait your turn.
It’s nothing to do with money in my case, I could afford private healthcare - I just don’t agree with the principle of it. As an ex NHS employee it would be selling my soul to use it, knowing it detracts from core services. The only exceptions I would make are for services that aren’t available on the NHS, like dental implants, because dentistry is now almost all private and paying for ‘frills’ is the only way of getting working teeth.

How can there be a world with no advantages to being able to afford for something? Money will always make the world go round! I am on holiday in Egypt at the moment. You can walk in to a pharmacy and buy any meds you want without a px! Its choice if you can afford it. I would love that in the UK.

Don't make assumptions!

No, in my world people wouldn't be stopped from using private healthcare. I'd rather have a world where there would be no advantage, so it wouldn't be contemplated.

I don't have a closed mind, but I do have principles. I just don't do envy - it's a harmful emotion and I'd rather live the life I have to its full potential.

growstuff

PS. I know people who have no social consciences, so I don't know where the "we" comes from.

Its not name calling, I would never do that to a fellow poster. If you have a closed mind its difficult to listen to reasonable discussion of issues. For example consultants give back to the NHS for their years of training as well as their private
Practice. They could just go privately. In your world this would be stopped and they would all be forced just to work for the NHS. Its why its so important to allow free choice.

PS. I know people who have no social consciences, so I don't know where the "we" comes from.

Call it whatever you wish! I'm immune to name-calling.

Casdon

Many people are public spirited BevSec, and care about others who are in less fortunate circumstances. Many also have ideological objections to private medicine for that reason, because they don’t believe in queue jumping.

The NHS still picks up the complex cases, and those who are treated privately initially when things go wrong too, so it’s a fallacy to suggest that private medicine saves pressures on the NHS. If consultants who work in both the NHS and privately could not work privately they would automatically have full time NHS contracts, thus increasing NHs capacity.

We are all public spirited as taxpayers, giving to foodbanks and charity shops, all of which I do, as well as the Lifeboats and Salvation Army. We all have social consciences. That is not the same issue as some on here wishing to “redistribute’ wealth, usually someone elses!

I have no ideological objections whatsoever to private medicine, just grateful for that choice . I used to work in the NHS.

It still comes across as the politics of envy imo.

The NHS must find it equally as difficult as private companies to keep up with the ever increasing cost of modern medicine. That's why private health care fees keep rising inordinately too

The increasing cost of modern medicine is not such a huge concern for the NHS as it is for a private healthcare business because it doesn’t have to make a profit. Nor does it have to ‘earn’ anything before it can invest in new equipment. Every pound that the state spends into the NHS is reckoned to generate about £4 worth of economic activity. That is money circulating and recirculating in the economy and being gradually taxed back as it circulates.

While some of the profit made by a private healthcare business paid out as dividend, ‘may’ trickle down into the domestic economy it is less likely to as most of the shareholders are those wealthy people who have a ‘marginal propensity to spend’, or the money could leave the UK economy completely by way of foreign shareholders or owners of the company.

Private healthcare, good as it is for those who can pay for it, ultimately leaches money out of the domestic economy.