U turn on winter fuel payments- is it a good move?

MMT supports government borrowing / creation of money improve GDP not to increase social spending, which is pretty much the policy of this government. They have stated that borrowing will not increase to pay for day to day spending. The risk of spending for social giveaways is that financial markets loose confidence and the currency devalues. So far the market accepts the plans without reaction either way.

The spending that Reeves announced were along those lines, however it is going to take time for the benefits to be seen, in the meantime I am expecting taxes to rise and spending to be restricted.

Allira

^I honestly can’t remember- we married in 1980, so well within the timescale. I’d be very surprised if I willingly handed over my salary or tax allowance, but I knew about the allowance before I looked it up.^

We married in 1967 and I don't remember a time when I wasn't taxed separately even though I don't remember electing for either.

Perhaps working in the public services meant you were automatically taxed separately?

No. My husband wasn’t in the public sector. Nor was I in those days, now I think about it. We weren’t taxed separately. As I said, I can’t remember the detail for us personally, but the link I provided shows that the vague memory I have about a married man’s allowance was correct, and my husband thinks that his tax code was adjusted on marriage, along with all married men, but mine wasn’t. As he remembers it, it was a perk for married men, not an adjustment between couples. Neither of us can be certain, but the link does corroborate what we thought was the case, which is that marriage had tax advantages for men.

It’s not important in the context of the WFA anyway- I only mentioned it as an illustration of how differential treatment of married people would be unfair.

MaizieD knows what she is talking about. (Allira)

MaizieD is certainly an advocate of MMT and presents a positive view of the theory. Suporters believe it provides a clear understanding of sovereign currency-issuing governments' capacity to fund public programs without the risk of default, as long as inflation is controlled. It shifts the focus from deficits being inherently bad to managing inflation and resource use.

However, there is another view. Critics are concerned that MMT underestimates inflation risks and the potential for fiscal irresponsibility. They worry that promoting extensive government spending could lead to runaway inflation or undermine fiscal discipline. Some economists also argue that MMT's assumptions about the capacity of central banks and government spending are overly optimistic or lack sufficient empirical support.

MMT is a provocative approach that challenges conventional thinking. Currently it remains outside the mainstream of economic thought.

MaizieD certainly does not offer an unbiased view.

PoliticsNerd

Pension adequacy is not just about the amount of the pension. Pension levels and benefits vary significantly across Europe due to differing economic conditions, social welfare policies, and cost of living.

To argue that it is the lowest State Pension in Europe you would need to look at far more than just the pension amount.

To argue that it is the lowest State Pension in Europe you would need to look at far more than just the pension amount.

I didn't though argue that is was the lowest in Europe, I said it was inadequate. I'm aware of why pensions and benefits vary across Europe.

The point of my post was to highlight the divisive nature of one group / demographic blaming another for its economic ills. Something that governments, in varying degrees, appear to encourage, or ignore.

gillsterry

The damage has been done to the party and they know it was the wrong thing to do , you do not kick people in the teeth and expect them to for get how you treated them , If they want to claw back money wasted why did they all accept the huge pay rise that they were given

Because they’re doing an important job and expenses are being more closely monitored now.

The damage has been done to the party and they know it was the wrong thing to do , you do not kick people in the teeth and expect them to for get how you treated them , If they want to claw back money wasted why did they all accept the huge pay rise that they were given

I honestly can’t remember- we married in 1980, so well within the timescale. I’d be very surprised if I willingly handed over my salary or tax allowance, but I knew about the allowance before I looked it up.

We married in 1967 and I don't remember a time when I wasn't taxed separately even though I don't remember electing for either.

Perhaps working in the public services meant you were automatically taxed separately?

FranP

Martin Lewis is warning that there are already scams out there asking people to apply. You do NOT need to. Please make your own elders aware. www.facebook.com/ThisMorning/videos/691191247222473

Thank you.

We are the elders

PoliticsNerd

MaizieD

Allira

Doodledog

I agree that young people should get help too - I think CB should be universal, for instance. I would also like to see more free childcare, and am pleased about the rise to the minimum wage.

It shouldn’t be a race to the bottom. I’m not bothered about the WFA personally- it will make little difference to me- but I will not start telling other people what they ‘need’, as I have no idea of others’ circumstances, and object to that as a way of allocating public money. It drags everyone down.

The Government can find/create any money it needs.

Quite right, Allira. It certainly can create any money it likes and all this posturing about there not being enough money is just perpetuating an untruth.

What you see as a truth is the foolishness of extremes to others - think Liz Truss.

Yes, the government can, should they be foolish enough to do so, print as much money money as they want. Printing more money without supporting economic growth or productivity can cause inflation, reduce the currency's value, and create economic instability. Most governments have recognised that responsible monetary policy aims to balance money supply with economic output to maintain stable prices.

I think we are aware of the risk of inflation.

MaizieD knows what she is talking about.

I've asked my husband and he thinks his tax code was altered automatically to a married man's one, but he doesn't think it impacted on mine. So if we'd both been on the same salary he would have taken home more than me. He also said he wouldn't swear to that in court, though, as it was 45 years ago .

Oreo

A lot of older people no longer work so have less money coming in yet have the same everyday needs as anyone else.
They often have various health issues, aren’t all very mobile and feel the cold more.
I think old people are a special case.

Some older people no longer work and have less pension coming in for all the years they did work, but still need to buy at today’s prices.
Who cares?

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with borrowing money for growth, it’s what most businesses do, they have not ruled out borrowing for growth, there should be no need for QE. Although the spending is headlined as £1 Trillion that is spread over up to 10 yrs which makes it much more plausible, Labour certainly can’t be accused of making short term decisions,
Money for social spending needs to come from taxation, despite the U turn on WFA we can expect the tax increases next budget. We will have to wait until then to see how it all balances out.

I honestly can’t remember- we married in 1980, so well within the timescale. I’d be very surprised if I willingly handed over my salary or tax allowance, but I knew about the allowance before I looked it up. I’ll ask my husband if he remembers.

We have only ever had PAYE, and no accountants or similar advising about minimising tax, so will probably have just done whatever was usual (ie not opted in or out of anything). And we were in our early 20s then, so early career and not high earners either.

Anyway what we did or didn’t do isn’t the point, which is that marriage was (or could be) a factor in how people were taxed and how much NI they paid. Now it isn’t, so it makes sense to treat people as individuals rather than households, IMO.

Silverbrooks Thank you for confirming that I'm not suffering from some kind of false memory syndrome - or lying. Neither my DH or I had any unearned income, so that wouldn't have affected us.

You are absolutely right. My late DH and I also elected to be taxed separately before 1990.

In 1971 an election for separate taxation of a wife's earnings was introduced. Couples could elect to have their earned income assessed separately for tax, and a wife's earned income was taxed as if she were a single person.

This election had to be made jointly, and any unearned income enjoyed by a wife continued to be aggregated with her husband's when assessed for tax.

Although the wife claimed her own single person’s allowance, neither spouse could claim either of the married allowances.

Election for separate assessment was only attractive for couples with relatively high incomes, where the wife had significant earned income.

Couples only benefited if the saving they made in higher rate tax, from the disaggregation of the wife's earned income, outweighed the loss of personal allowances (the gap between the single and married allowances).

By 1989-90 spouses had to have a joint income of £30,511, of which the wife's earned income had to be at least £7,026, before the election would be beneficial

Doodledog

growstuff

Doodledog I can't remember when the option to pay a married woman's "stamp" was phased out, but I don't think many women under 70 are affected. I'm also not sure when a married woman's tax affairs were separated from her husband's but I know that I have always paid my own income tax. That meant for a time that we didn't receive the married couple's supplement (or whatever it was called) but I'm fairly sure that was phased out.

Yes it was phased out, but not until about 1990, I think. Here it is:
Before 1990, the income of a married couple was added together for tax purposes and treated as if it were the income of the husband. A married man had a personal allowance, which was just over one and half times the single person’s allowance. A married woman who was at work had her own allowance – Wife’s Earned Income Allowance (WEIA) – which was the same as the single person’s allowance, but all the allowances including the WEIA were in law given against the husband’s income which included his wife’s income. The system had its roots in the social legal concepts of the early nineteenth century.

www.taxandthefamily.org/history-article

I got married in 1986, but we were never taxed as a couple. We opted to be taxed separately. My husband did not receive a married man's personal allowance. If we had not opted to be taxed separately, our combined income would have pushed us into a higher tax bracket.

So, yes, it was possible to be taxed as a couple, but it was also possible to opt out of the system. Any couple in the same situation as my husband and I would have been stupid not to opt out. It was very easy to tick the right boxes on a form. My income was never counted as part of my husband's income.

Can someone please explain why what I said above suggests that I am saying something that contradicts MMT? I didn’t have economics in mind at all.

Martin Lewis is warning that there are already scams out there asking people to apply. You do NOT need to. Please make your own elders aware. www.facebook.com/ThisMorning/videos/691191247222473

MaizieD

Allira

Doodledog

I agree that young people should get help too - I think CB should be universal, for instance. I would also like to see more free childcare, and am pleased about the rise to the minimum wage.

It shouldn’t be a race to the bottom. I’m not bothered about the WFA personally- it will make little difference to me- but I will not start telling other people what they ‘need’, as I have no idea of others’ circumstances, and object to that as a way of allocating public money. It drags everyone down.

The Government can find/create any money it needs.

Quite right, Allira. It certainly can create any money it likes and all this posturing about there not being enough money is just perpetuating an untruth.

What you see as a truth is the foolishness of extremes to others - think Liz Truss.

Yes, the government can, should they be foolish enough to do so, print as much money money as they want. Printing more money without supporting economic growth or productivity can cause inflation, reduce the currency's value, and create economic instability. Most governments have recognised that responsible monetary policy aims to balance money supply with economic output to maintain stable prices.

You can buy a one bedromed apartment here for about £150,000 (not shared ownership or retirement.) Put that amount of cash in the bank and you would earn about £7,000 a year in interest say about £600 pwr month. Instead, buy that flat and rent it out and you can charge £1,200 per month in rent and you prevent a FTB from buying it. That’s sheer greed to me. As soon as the developers have finished a new apartment block, the outside is plastered with To Let signs. I have lost count of the number of people I meet who are now engaged in this racket. Former council houses now owned by private landlords rented out for three or four times social rent. It makes my blood boil

Well said Silverbrooks👏👏👏

growstuff the squabbling about thresholds and who should get what is petty

Arguing over such a piddly amount is petty. WFP had become little more than a token when one thinks of it in weekly or even daily terms - 55p a day because, after all, we use fuel every day. As I have said repeatedly, 55p would buy 2 kWh of electricity a day, enough to switch on the oven for 30 minutes to warm up a pie.

At one extreme there is an argument to be made that no pensioner should need it as no pensioner should have an income of less than £227.10 a week - the single rate for Pension Credit. Over than and you would have been shut out of WFP until this change but you could have claimed Housing Benefit (if you rent) and Council Tax Benefit.

Is 55p a day or £3.85 a week going to make that much difference? But we come back to the fact that an estimated 700,000 households are still not claiming Pension Credit so they are living on less than £227.10 pw.

This has all been about them, a stick to get people to claim PC. And they haven’t. How do we solve that? £1.5 billion in PC going unclaimed each year.

At the other extreme, the biggest issue for younger people is the cost of housing. Untiil we tackle that through building more social housing, putting the brakes on buy to let, introduce rent control, bring the one million empty homes back into regular use and all the other inequities in the system, of course they are going to feel aggrieved.

You can buy a one bedromed apartment here for about £150,000 (not shared ownership or retirement.) Put that amount of cash in the bank and you would earn about £7,000 a year in interest say about £600 pwr month. Instead, buy that flat and rent it out and you can charge £1,200 per month in rent and you prevent a FTB from buying it. That’s sheer greed to me. As soon as the developers have finished a new apartment block, the outside is plastered with To Let signs. I have lost count of the number of people I meet who are now engaged in this racket. Former council houses now owned by private landlords rented out for three or four times social rent. It makes my blood boil.

So, our fuel bills took a huge hike, and that meant the govt got masses more income from fuel tax, so they could afford to give us back a little of what we actually paid in.
Now fuel bills have gone down again a) we can better afford them and b) to govt is getting less tax from us, so they cannot afford to give us back so much.
While I will not mind the money - who does - I am not for getting it at the expense of the national budget or those who really need it.
The warm home discounts are funded from the green levy that is a % of energy income, so it will have to be found somehow.

Oh good, I was hoping you might be along to explain it better than me!!

Allira

Doodledog

I agree that young people should get help too - I think CB should be universal, for instance. I would also like to see more free childcare, and am pleased about the rise to the minimum wage.

It shouldn’t be a race to the bottom. I’m not bothered about the WFA personally- it will make little difference to me- but I will not start telling other people what they ‘need’, as I have no idea of others’ circumstances, and object to that as a way of allocating public money. It drags everyone down.

The Government can find/create any money it needs.

Quite right, Allira. It certainly can create any money it likes and all this posturing about there not being enough money is just perpetuating an untruth.

I don’t think my post suggests otherwise?