Time to increase taxes?

Casdawer

Casdawer

Casdawer

Soldato
Joined
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Hampshire
This is going to divide a lot of people but I'd like to get a see if others agree with myself on this.

I'll be honest and say that I earn a decent wage and have a decent amount of spare cash at the end of the month so an increase in taxes wouldn't hit me particularity hard but I understand that for others, it would make it hard to make ends meet.

But, I honestly believe an increase in taxes is needed to prevent our NHS, Social Care, Education, Police, Firemen (pretty much all public sector work) from collapsing.

Budget cuts can only go so far and I understand that a lot of places like the NHS need to 'trim the fat' but I think we're at the stage now where we are starting to cut into the muscle and it's going to impact our services.

An increase in taxes would allow us to properly fund our schools and front line services and I think the value you get out of that is much better than that extra £10-20 you might lose from extra taxes.

An example is school breakfast / dinners. If we paid more taxes and more money went into education, we could ensure every child has a good healthy breakfast and lunch everyday which would take the burden off the parents and save the parents money, as I'm pretty sure schools can get meals far cheaper than parents can due to 'bulk buying'.

People are happy to throw 10's of millions at charity but aren't willing to pay a bit more tax every month. In an ideal world, we shouldn't need local charities because the Government would be properly funded to do everything it needs to do (Cancer research, homelessness, child safety etc.)

I could go on but I won't as I'd be here all day! :D

So, what's GDs opinion?
 
Time to improve efficiency before upping taxes, I was in hospital on Monday and was amazed yet again to see some of the practices and inefficiency in the NHS. Doctors wandering around waiting areas rifling through various unorganised stacks of paper records looking for things. I mean it is a world away from the modern business work environment.
 
I say privatise everything then people can choose what they pay for. I wouldnt need to be paying for other peoples kids to go to school and have a healthy dinner when all their parents feed them is pizza and chips. Im not interested in the police either, i dont think they do a particularly good job. Fire service i would pay for. :D
 
Nope. What needs to be done is the taxes need to spent properly. I'm confident that the country could run so much better on the tax that is paid, if the taxes were spent efficiently.
 
All public sector spending needs an efficiency review before any taxes are increased.

Government are so wasteless it's not even funny.
 
The problem here is efficiency means outsourcing, Which is only efficient for the first term of the contract. Then the outsourcing needs to be efficient as all the gravy has been siphoned off at the top and we end up less services, less well paid staff, grumpy staff and a crap service.

The NHS would be more efficient if banned private hospitals and private healthcare in the first place.
 
MookJong said:
Time to improve efficiency before upping taxes.
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This.

SPG said:
The problem here is efficiency means outsourcing, Which is only efficient for the first term of the contract. Then the outsourcing needs to be efficient as all the gravy has been siphoned off at the top and we end up less services, less well paid staff, grumpy staff and a crap service.

The NHS would be more efficient if banned private hospitals and private healthcare in the first place.
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Sorting out the appointment system and notification would be a starter - if things are running late then you'd save a lot of resource if you were able to let people know.

Also the use of letters instead of e-mail is archaic.
 
I was talking to a guy yesterday about someone he knows who is working for the MOD refurbing things, apparently he's been told to slow it down else he'll do it too quickly and under budget so they won't get the same budget next year.

The railways are a joke, people 'working' 4 hours and getting paid for 12.

Britain’s privatised railways have been getting around £5 billion on average in government support over the last five years. In the last five years of the 1980s—the earliest period we have figures for before privatisation—it was an average of £1.6 billion in today’s money.
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Funny really, because that free money you have that you say could be used as taxes, will be spent and therefore part of it ends up as taxes anyway.

I agree with the others, effeciency needs to be thought of first
 
If it was easy to make the public sector more efficient it would have been done by now. The inefficiencies vary wildly from area to area, sometimes like in education is it severe central management failures generating excessive pointless work, other times the sheer size like the NHS makes widespread change / standards hard to implement effectively and other times it's just the politics finding it easier to pretend all is fine rather than actually deal with tough issues.

Recent budget cuts have reduced costs significantly but also over stretched services so they are very stressful to work in and the risk of failure creates a climate of fear and resentment e.g. 1% pay cap, very low costs outsourcing etc.

No simple solutions , the real choice if improvements are to be made is who or what to tax. The efficiencies in many cases don't exist or are so costly to obtain they don't make sense. Without an effective profit incentive it is unlikely things will change.
 
Casdawer said:
I'll be honest and say that I earn a decent wage and have a decent amount of spare cash at the end of the month so an increase in taxes wouldn't hit me particularity hard
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The question really is would you think the same if you DIDN'T have any spare money or DIDN'T earn the amount you currently do. No I thought not - Jog on.
 
DarkHorizon472 said:
If it was easy to make the public sector more efficient it would have been done by now. The inefficiencies vary wildly from area to area, sometimes like in education is it severe central management failures generating excessive pointless work, other times the sheer size like the NHS makes widespread change / standards hard to implement effectively and other times it's just the politics finding it easier to pretend all is fine rather than actually deal with tough issues.

Recent budget cuts have reduced costs significantly but also over stretched services so they are very stressful to work in and the risk of failure creates a climate of fear and resentment e.g. 1% pay cap, very low costs outsourcing etc.

No simple solutions , the real choice if improvements are to be made is who or what to tax. The efficiencies in many cases don't exist or are so costly to obtain they don't make sense. Without an effective profit incentive it is unlikely things will change.
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Not so, the issues our often government for a variety of reasons, from idiolegy to having to implement within one govermental term.
the big school changes to grades is actualy an extremely good policy. however due to term of government it is rushed in rather than being phased in, which mean current students are disadvantaged. You also have the issue of Hr and legal teams being gutted at due to lack of money, which is the wrong direction, without those two departments being extremely well trained then the whole companies fails.
change is also not free.
so yes things should and can be made far more efficient but at the same time you need money to do it and you need government to stop being idiots.
 
Casdawer said:
But, I honestly believe an increase in taxes is needed to prevent our NHS, Social Care, Education, Police, Firemen (pretty much all public sector work) from collapsing.
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I think closing loopholes that allow corporations and the rich from paying tax in this country should be undertaken long before the man in the street has more money taken away. Also, austerity is not necessary - efficiency is. The government wastes so much money it's unbelievable.
 
I agreed with the Lib Dem policy of adding a penny to income tax and still do. Having just spent a week in the care of the NHS, I experienced first hand how understaffed they are sadly.
 
Casdawer said:
Time in increase taxes?
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No. Still plenty of waste and inefficiencies to be addresses, and the scope of some public services is a scandal.

Casdawer said:
People are happy to throw 10's of millions at charity but aren't willing to pay a bit more tax every month.
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Casdawer said:
An increase in taxes would allow us to properly fund our schools and front line services and I think the value you get out of that is much better than that extra £10-20 you might lose from extra taxes.
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Remove Gift Aid.

Casdawer said:
An example is school breakfast / dinners. If we paid more taxes and more money went into education, we could ensure every child has a good healthy breakfast and lunch everyday which would take the burden off the parents and save the parents money, as I'm pretty sure schools can get meals far cheaper than parents can due to 'bulk buying'.
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The example you quote would have supporters and would also have a queue of people angry that the better off families are getting free breakfasts when they can afford their own. Then another group will call for means testing for school meals, and then another will say that children are being stigmatised for having free school meals and then another will say that means testing is more expensive than actually providing universal free school meals and then Jamie Oliver will get involved because the taxpayer has demanded value for money in providing all these school meals so the local authority thought they use some nice cheap deep fried steroid turkey from America to save a few pence.

There'll always be a pressure group or interested party for every aspect of life, all arguing just like the above.
 
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