UK Economy Emerges From Six-Year Downturn

[Osem]

It's also profits which get taxed which and provide the revenue for the services we require and the growth within the economy. Mind you I'm not surprised the likes of Arthur demand services, benefits, pay rises etc. whilst at the same time decrying the private sector profits from which they are derived.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Nearest economic thread I could find.

Let's talk about this magnificent economy for a moment?



Funny, I'm sure I read that unemployment was way down and growth was back in spades. Anyone would think that would've led to more taxes being paid and the deficit and welfare bills going down.

Unless of course the employment figures are a pile of pap as most are low/no paid self-employed or low hour, bad pay jobs, growth is largely dependent on asset bubbles and borrowing, and real wages in general are stagnant or dropping while any productivity increases are skimmed off by shareholders and senior management.

I could be totally wrong of course, I was just under the impression that the coalition was formed to tackle the deficit and they appear to have increased it by nearly a third in the first three months of this financial year relative to last.

This is what happens when you have the economy run for political reasons to try and stay in power rather than, you know, for sound economic reasons. As I said years ago we should have had a fast, nasty clear out of the economy. Instead for purely political reasons Gideon has chosen the more politically expedient path and stored up yet more debt for our kids and more problems for the future. It was said that whoever won the last election would have no chance of winning the next one - they reckoned without the cynical mismanagement of the economy that Gideon had planned.

Given the fuss that's made whenever the government try to cut back benefits it's not surprising the deficit is not coming down as expected .Personally i'm doing better than i have for quite a few years ,plenty of work and the monies not too bad either

[heero_yuy]

Originally Posted by martyh

Given the fuss that's made whenever the government try to cut back benefits it's not surprising the deficit is not coming down as expected .Personally i'm doing better than i have for quite a few years ,plenty of work and the monies not too bad either

Likewise, business is brisk at the moment, all my usual clients are seeing an up turn and are investing in future projects. New clients are making enquireys Whilst I would prefer to do major work over the Winter period one does not turn work down.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

Likewise, business is brisk at the moment, all my usual clients are seeing an up turn and are investing in future projects. New clients are making enquireys Whilst I would prefer to do major work over the Winter period one does not turn work down.

Good for you.

[heero_yuy]

Originally Posted by Osem

Good for you.

Thank you. It's bizarre: As a 57 year old engineer I'd never get a perminent post but on-line with the independents network, linked in, etc, my reputation gets me more work than I can shake a stick at.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Osem

It's also profits which get taxed which and provide the revenue for the services we require and the growth within the economy. Mind you I'm not surprised the likes of Arthur demand services, benefits, pay rises etc. whilst at the same time decrying the private sector profits from which they are derived.

Given how positive everything seems perhaps you could, in the context of the above message, explain the poor tax receipts and the resultant increasing deficit?

---------- Post added at 19:41 ---------- Previous post was at 19:37 ----------

I should mention I am pleased some people are doing so well.

My salary if I'm honest hasn't budged in 2 years and prior to that I took an overall compensation cut. My fiancee is earning less than she was a few years ago for a couple of reasons, joys of the public sector.

Going by the figures I'm evidently not alone. Are people really doing well or doing well compared with a horrible past few years?

The government appear to have done an awesome job of deskilling our economy, and to be honest for all the political bluster I would far rather we'd been spending £100+ billion a year as much as possible on building infrastructure and investment, paying people to do this and drawing tax from them, than topping up poor wages.

Alternatively if we were to have had austerity we should have had austerity. Nasty, evil, vicious austerity alongside allowing bad businesses to fail and bad households to go bankrupt.

What we got instead was austerity for the poorest, welfare for the richest, and more house price and other asset inflation. Household debt is back on the up, the country as a whole never deleveraged, and 2/3rds of the austerity has been put off until after the election.

Essentially running the economy for political reasons and taking credit for a cyclical bounce - even George Osborne as crap as he is couldn't keep the economy flatlining for too long.

[denphone]

Sadly for some of our family there is no rosy outlook at the moment as my sister had to leave her job as her salary was being reduced for the same hours while her rent was going up while my brother was made redundant several months ago so its far from positive in our family.

[heero_yuy]

I can only comment from my point of view on the economy. The electronics and instrumentation sectors are powering ahead. It is unfortunate that there are other sectors that are stagnating.

If we need skills as we clearly do then the schools are failing big time. Even the Sun is pushing the coding focus. We must get our youngsters to get the IT skills or their doomed to the scrapheap.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

I can only comment from my point of view on the economy. The electronics and instrumentation sectors are powering ahead. It is unfortunate that there are other sectors that are stagnating.

If we need skills as we clearly do then the schools are failing big time. Even the Sun is pushing the coding focus. We must get our youngsters to get the IT skills or their doomed to the scrapheap.

Given things such as the cost of higher education and the cost of housing, along with the starting salaries for IT positions it's not a huge shock that there are issues with recruiting there.

Add to that that Michael Gove has done his utmost to destroy education and you're not in a good place.

The schools themselves are doing what they always have, and in many ways prior to Gove's obsession with 'rigour' were better than they ever have been, regardless of his digging up dodgy statistics to justify his policies.

I am pointing to one specific issue within the economy, the tax take is down, the deficit is up, more people are taking in-work welfare than ever before. Government policy appears to be for people to get self-employed and claim their working tax credits so that they get off the unemployment statistics.

I am noticing more recruiters contacting me, sadly as ever they aren't offering anything I'm interested in on any level.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Given how positive everything seems perhaps you could, in the context of the above message, explain the poor tax receipts and the resultant increasing deficit.

Everything certainly isn't positive, not by a long chalk, and I don't recall ever claiming it was. In fact I believe I recently referred to our 'choices' at the next election being down to the least worst option. None of that alters the fact however that profits are what pay for the things we need whether on a personal or national level. The extent to which current and previous governments have failed to adequately tax profits and prevent dubious accounting methods being used to turn big profits into little profits is debatable but it's a global problem and not something any one government can act on in isolation.

Originally Posted by Osem

Everything certainly isn't positive, not by a long chalk, and I don't recall ever claiming it was. In fact I believe I recently referred to our choices at the next election being down to the least worst option. None of that alters the fact however that profits are what pay for the things we need whether on a personal or national level.

But are the profits actually making their way to where they do the most good?Or are they all stashed off shore where they do not actually do the UK any good at all?

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Maggy J

But are the profits actually making their way to where they do the most good?Or are they all stashed off shore where they do not actually do the UK any good at all?

The extent to which current and previous governments have failed to adequately tax profits and prevent dubious accounting methods being used to turn big profits into little profits is debatable but it's a global problem and not something any one government can act on in isolation.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Osem

Everything certainly isn't positive, not by a long chalk, and I don't recall ever claiming it was. In fact I believe I recently referred to our 'choices' at the next election being down to the least worst option. None of that alters the fact however that profits are what pay for the things we need whether on a personal or national level. The extent to which current and previous governments have failed to adequately tax profits and prevent dubious accounting methods being used to turn big profits into little profits is debatable but it's a global problem and not something any one government can act on in isolation.

I didn't say that you were saying everything looked positive, I was referring to the comments previous and asking why with that level of positivity our coffers aren't overflowing with the taxes on profits.

You might get a kick out of https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...gg-stats-1.pdf in that case.

Doesn't look like profits are what pay for the things we need to me. Corporation tax is paying considerably less than 10% of the tax bill.

It's actually dropped at a proportion between 2008/9 and now. It was £43,085 million of £439,103 million in 2008/9 and £39,452 million of £469,777 million in 2012/13.

The slack appears to have been taken up by mugs like us paying 25% more in VAT.

Profits have a lot of functions and are absolutely essential for incentivising private enterprise; giving back to the state that provides them the educated work force, the stable environment and infrastructure to help them do business doesn't appear to be one of them.

Of course, a number of firms are on their last legs and living on debt, George has done his utmost to ensure they continue to do that, and others have plenty of losses they can offset against tax and are doing, doesn't change that across the onshore and offshore corporation taxes they were virtually identical in 2010/11 and 2011/12 but have dropped considerably in 2012/13. Be interesting to see if they dropped some more in 2013/14, certainly payroll taxes have stagnated.

[Osem]

Profits from companies are of course one thing but I include in the total the tax taken from the profits of our labour by way of VAT and income tax etc. Like many millions of people, I'm self employed and what tax I pay is a function of my profits. If I don't make a profit there's no tax to pay on it and no contribution to UK PLC. So no I'm not just talking about corporation taxes because they are only a part of the whole and yes I would very much like to see an end to the sort of jiggery pokery employed by large corporations in particular to avoid paying their dues. As I've already stated however, there needs to be global action on that for it to be effective.

[Ignitionnet]

I wonder if this is part of the problems with the economy as far as the mismatch between deficit, tax receipts, employment, and 'growth' figures go.

Obviously the inflation figure, it goes without saying but may as well mention, is total massaged bollocks.