Dawlish Discussion

from The Guardian:

"The surprise decision to scrap income tax breaks for the over-65s will leave Britain's pensioners worse off by more than £1bn a year by 2015.

Citing the need to simplify pensions, Osborne also plans to save £5bn by freezing age-related allowances for half Britain's pensioners, affecting 5 million people by the end of the parliament. The Treasury stressed that no pensioner will be worse off in cash terms.

The loss for existing pensioners will be £63 a year and £197 for new pensioners. Higher figures were produced by independent pension advisers. In his speech Osborne made little of the announcement, and will realise that he is going to be criticised by pensioners' groups. The Treasury argued that overall pensioners have been relatively well protected since the coalition came to power". "

To say, as the article above does, that Osborne "will realise that he is going to be criticised by pensioners' groups" seems now to have been a bit of an understatement given yesterday's media coverage of this part of the budget.

Wonder how many e-mails and letters all those south-west Tory and Lib Dem MPs are getting about this issue?

This is from today's Telegraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/how-budget-affect-me/9160632/A-slap-in-the-face-for-decent-people.html

We've already seen from the "Child Benefit" thread that some people here are of the view "why give couples with children preferential treatment?". So I guess in thier eyes Osborne is at least being consistent - i.e "why give the elderly preferential treatment?" And for complete consistency we ought to ask the question about those least in need - "why give the wealthy preferential treatment?"

Just because someone has an opinion about one section of society, does not mean that you can assume that that person has the same opinion about other sections!!! What a ridiculous assumption to make! In my opinion. Do not put words into other people's mouths neilh.

Is neilh assuming what you are claiming he is Nelson? I read his posting as referring to consistency of argument (or possible lack of).

Neilh is trying to put word into other people's mouths. Quote So I guess in their eyes...unquote You guess wrong neilh.

Okay, so like I said I'd do on another thread (the Child Benefit one I believe it was), I'm going to start another thread on "Should those of state pension age get preferential treatment?" .

This pension business being of relevance of course but there are also other aspects like ......well, I cover them in my first posting.

OK it's a fair cop!! I'll withdraw the "in their eyes" assumption!!!

Let's just ask the question direct.

Do you believe in not giving the elderly preferential treatment?

Do you believe in giving the wealthy preferential treatment?

I'd be interested to hear your arguments about why the more/most needy in society shouldn't be given support whilst the least needy (i.e. the wealthy) should be given preferential treatment.

I read somewhere that the average tax kick-back to the average "wealthy" person will be £17,500 per year. That would actually pay for a couple of youngsters to get into work at age-related minimum wage rates. That's the sort of thing we need in Dawlish.

And just to add to the calculation, I think it's about 1% of working population who are in this tax bracket (haven't checked so please correct me someone). If that's the case, that's about 200,000 people. So if we didn't give this tax kick-back to those people we could create about 400,000 jobs instead throughout the country - or about 90 jobs in a town the size of Dawlish. That would help to clear up the beaches, the Starnd, the roads etc etc!!

am not understanding the maths here @neilh. can you explain please!! or am i just being thick?? (which is quite possible!)

OK here goes:

1. Assume working population of 20 million

2. Assume 1% are earning more than £150,000 a year (i.e. the 50% tax bracket)

3. So this gives 200,000 in that tax bracket

4. Assume average tax kick-back for this group is £17,500

5. This is roughly equivalent to two people on minimum wage (i.e. £17,500 + JSA or income support for 2 people which state wouldn't have to pay (say £7000) = £24,500 after tax, or £27,000 say before tax and NI). So salary available would be £13,500 a year which probably slightly better than minimum wage.

6. So, if we didn't give the tax kick-back to the super-rich we could afford to create 2 jobs for eac person in the tax bracket - i.e. 2 x 200,000 jobs in total, or 400,000 jobs

7. Uk population is, say, 65 million. Dawlish population is around 15,000. So if all those jobs were spread equally across all towns in the country, Dawlish would get:

400,000 x (15,000/65,000,000) which = (6000/65) or roughly 90

There are lots of assumptions here which I believe are fairly accurate but if anyone can provide precise figures then I'm happy to re-do the calculations.

Anyway I notice that no-one has yet given an argument about why it's better to give the rich another £17,500 a year rather than create 90 new jobs in Dawlish!!