Tories lost the 2019 election among working age adults

cheesyboy said:
Ultimately, we're teetering on a birth rate problem, accelerated by Brexit (1st gen immigrants tend to have more kids, younger), and insecure housing situations, or financial pressures of housing, are a major drag on people starting families.

It's a problem that needs tackling, and soon. A forward-looking government would do something. Will a government appointed by the elderly?
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Why do we continually need more people? It can't go on forever. More people means more emissions, pollution, strain on services, overcrowding and impact on the planet. Why can't we adapt to a lower birth rate and adjust our economic expectations downward to help that?

Continually wanting more people (whether that is by natural birth or importing people) is simply expecting your own kids to deal with an even greater problem tomorrow. It's not fair to expect them to do that.
 
Hades said:
That's making an assumption that taxing inheritance is morally correct. I disagree that it is. My views were the same when I was younger as they are now. But I find it morally wrong to tax inheritance which has already been taxed on the deceased during their lifetime via income tax. Double taxation is wrong in my opinion.

It sounds like you diasagree with older voters because, in general, their views don't agree with yours.
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In addition it assumes that giving the government loads more money is effective when they will probably **** it up against a wall on some pet project as against several heirs who are likely to put it back into the economy by buying stuff for their families etc. Governments have a very bad track record on spending taxpayers hard earned. I am not talking about the rare multi million settlements but the few tens or hundred thousand estates most people leave.
 
mid_gen said:
Because there isn't a magic money tree to pay for the pension triple lock.
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They are two separate issues:

1) There isn't a magic money tree. That's correct. So let's be prudent and only spend within the countries means (which is a right leaning approach).
2) Triple pension lock. Personally I'm not a fan of the triple lock. But I can see why it's popular. If you're still in working age then you can improve your financial position by changing jobs. But if you're retired that's hard to do.

Strangely a triple pension lock, which is really just distributing someone elses money to a specificic demographic, is quite a left wing approach. Yet it is the Tories who promote and benefit from it and it's hated by Labour. Very odd.
 
Hades said:
They are two separate issues:

1) There isn't a magic money tree. That's correct. So let's be prudent and only spend within the countries means (which is a right leaning approach).
2) Triple pension lock. Personally I'm not a fan of the triple lock. But I can see why it's popular. If you're still in working age then you can improve your financial position by changing jobs. But if you're retired that's hard to do.

Strangely a triple pension lock, which is really just distributing someone elses money to a specificic demographic, is quite a left wing approach. Yet it is the Tories who promote and benefit from it and it's hated by Labour. Very odd.
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Two options to fund the increasingly expensive pension bill as people live longer in retirement :

1) Working people need to pay more tax each

or

2) We increase the number of working people and pay for it that way

For decades politicians have weighed these two options and decided that option 2) is more palatable to the electorate. That is why the tories never reduce immigration.
 
Hades said:
Strangely a triple pension lock, which is really just distributing someone elses money to a specificic demographic, is quite a left wing approach. Yet it is the Tories who promote and benefit from it and it's hated by Labour. Very odd.
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Strangely again in Mrs May's 2018 election manifesto she wanted to scrap the triple lock , Mr Corbyn said that that was wrong and promised to keep it.
 
mid_gen said:
Two options to fund the increasingly expensive pension bill as people live longer in retirement :

1) Working people need to pay more tax each

or

2) We increase the number of working people and pay for it that way

For decades politicians have weighed these two options and decided that option 2) is more palatable to the electorate. That is why the tories never reduce immigration.
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Or...

3) Encourage people to invest into a private pension during their working life.
4) Spend less money on other things, either by simply diverting it or by more efficient spending.
5) Probably other options too if I thought about it longer.

There are no easy solutions. Hard decisions have to be made. But continually increasing the size of the population just makes the same problem bigger for our children. There will come a time when we can't keep increasing the population. It's just a matter of when, and who has to deal with it.
 
cheesyboy said:
With housing costs being a major problem, and a growing one, the idea of cutting off the knees of the landlord industry shouldn't be off the table.

Ultimately, we're teetering on a birth rate problem, accelerated by Brexit (1st gen immigrants tend to have more kids, younger), and insecure housing situations, or financial pressures of housing, are a major drag on people starting families.

It's a problem that needs tackling, and soon. A forward-looking government would do something. Will a government appointed by the elderly?
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Will a party filled with the well off (or indeed the rich!), most of whom are landlords themselves and voted against a law requiring rental properties to have minimum standards to make them ‘fit for human habitation’ ever vote for such a thing or allow such a law to pass if it disadvantages them personally? I’ll give you a clue. The answer isn’t yes.
 
R.P.L said:
My point is that there's one person who definitely ends up with nothing however much you tax it, and that's the dead person. At the risk of stating the obvious, the person who pays the tax is the heir. The way you worded it made it sound like it was free money because the person being taxed was dead.
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IHT is a tax that creates no losers.

As an inheritee, you're getting a windfall you never worked for. I like the principle of a meritocratic society, and I feel like any reasonable person probably does too, and inheritance is absolutely counter to that.

I acknowledge that a true meritocracy is not possible, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't cut down obviously anti-meritocratic systems where we can do so.

Dis86 said:
But it's not free as income tax has (ordinarily) already been paid on that money.
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And the benefit of the money has already been consumed, all the way to the grave. So put it back into society.

We double pay tax on nearly everything anyway. PAYE/NIC as you earn it, then VAT, or whatever else, as you spend it.
 
I work very hard (usually 12 to 15 hours a day) to build a stable life for my wife and children. If much of that is taken away, including significantly reducing the benefit to my children when I die, then I can't see the point in working as hard. It would be more attractive to have a poorly paying, less stressful, life and let someone else pick up the bill for everything instead. The more the government takes away from me then the more I want someone else to pay for me. The more they leave me alone then the harder I will work and that money will eventually flow into the economy.

High inheritence tax doesn't increase the total tax intake. It simply moves the payment of that tax earlier (when the person dies vs when their children spend it) and is a big disincentive for people to work hard.
 
Hades said:
work very hard (usually 12 to 15 hours a day) to build a stable life for my wife and children
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How do you have a life if you are working so much? 12-15 hours a day.... leaves little time for anything bar sleeping. That is no life IMO.
 
cheesyboy said:
And the benefit of the money has already been consumed, all the way to the grave. So put it back into society.

We double pay tax on nearly everything anyway. PAYE/NIC as you earn it, then VAT, or whatever else, as you spend it.
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But that's not necessarily true. That money could have just sat in a bank account without the opportunity to spend it.
 
200sols said:
How do you have a life if you are working so much? 12-15 hours a day.... leaves little time for anything bar sleeping. That is no life IMO.
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Unfortunately that's correct at the moment. After finishing work I help my kids with homework, help teach my daughter to drive, eat, shower and get a few hours sleep before starting again. I do intend to reduce the hours I work at some point as it's starting to really affect my health.
 
Hades said:
Unfortunately that's correct at the moment. After finishing work I help my kids with homework, help teach my daughter to drive, eat, shower and get a few hours sleep before starting again. I do intend to reduce the hours I work at some point as it's starting to really affect my health.
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You might want to consider actually enjoying the time you have to spend with your family, rather than killing yourself to leave them an inheritance they'll only appreciate when you're dead.
 
mid_gen said:
You might want to consider actually enjoying the time you have to spend with your family, rather than killing yourself to leave them an inheritance they'll only appreciate when you're dead.
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Yes I've come to a similar conclusion.
 
Jean-F said:
Maybe my ancient brain has misinterpreted your post, but it sounds like you’d like legislation introduced that would prevent older people from spending their pension lump sum and/or savings to provide themselves with an income in their old age, where did that come from, Mao’s little red book?
Naturally, if I’ve got that wrong, and I’m way off base, then I’ll apologise right off.
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Given the housing crisis, and the significant contribution that buy to let landlords have had in systematically reducing housing stock, driving up house prices, and then driving up rental costs - yes, I think folk who are taking lump sums to invest in a burning problem should be heavily regulated.
 
cheesyboy said:
IHT is a tax that creates no losers.

As an inheritee, you're getting a windfall you never worked for. I like the principle of a meritocratic society, and I feel like any reasonable person probably does too, and inheritance is absolutely counter to that.

I acknowledge that a true meritocracy is not possible, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't cut down obviously anti-meritocratic systems where we can do so.
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It depends whether you think people should have the right to pass on their wealth to their descendants. A certain amount of inheritance tax is reasonable, but as I do think that people should have the right to pass on their wealth as they see fit I certainly wouldn't go as far as your first sentence.
 
Hades said:
Why do we continually need more people? It can't go on forever. More people means more emissions, pollution, strain on services, overcrowding and impact on the planet. Why can't we adapt to a lower birth rate and adjust our economic expectations downward to help that?

Continually wanting more people (whether that is by natural birth or importing people) is simply expecting your own kids to deal with an even greater problem tomorrow. It's not fair to expect them to do that.
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It's not a bigger problem for tomorrow if we maintain a sensible birth rate.

The problem is, we have a massive generation whose older years have not been prepared for by the country (systems are set for the smaller preceeding generation, among many other challenges). And that generation's child rearing years saw a huge contraction in birth rates down to well below replacement numbers.

That should have been discouraged by government : increase child benefit, subsidise childcare, whatever. Didn't happen.

We shouldn't continue to make those mistakes.
 
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