The Budget

     So having asked the question of whether the Conservative government is attempting to ruin the country, and giving my own humble opinion on it, the latest budget was released this past week. So where was the cuts to the NHS? The decreased taxes for the 1%? The decreases in minimum wage? Non-existent. Yet people still found time to complain.

     During the general election campaign earlier in the year the NHS director claimed the NHS required £8 billion in order to maintain standards. So Lib-Dems came out and said they would ensure the NHS received the required money, the Torys did the same. In fact only Labour didn't promise the full £8 billion, instead promising £1.2 billion. So where did this myth that Conservatives wanted to privatise the NHS come from? Admittedly the Coalition had privatised 2% of it, but that increased it to 7% private. So who privatised the initial 5%? You guessed it. Labour. Yet it was Labour who made a large part of their campaign about how they would save the NHS and the Torys would destroy it. Do the facts not point to the reverse?  Especially now in the budget Torys have started the increase in NHS funding to reach £8 billion by 2020?

     Student finance has been discussed a lot in the past 5/6 years as the increased tuition fees and the change in how loans are repaid has come into play. Now Torys want people to pay back loans rather than have the government pay for them. Is this really such a terrible thing? Why should you, purely because your parents have a lower income, be entitled to not pay back loans? The way loans are repaid now, you only start repaying a loan when you have a high income. For me, student loans aren't about parental income, but about your future income. So if you anticipate a high earning job in the future, which if you attend university you should, why shouldn't you repay a loan? Put simply, if you qualify for a maximum loan (rather than grants), unless you have a high earning job yourself, the loan is wiped off after 30 years. Whether the whole system is flawed because so few will fully repay their loan is another matter.

    Claims that the Torys are only for the richest 1% (although clearly flawed based on 37% voting for them) cannot now be maintained, in this one man's opinion. Raising the living wage to £9, and giving everyone an extra £400 tax free each year is further pointing towards a government working for the working people. A lowered benefit cap is further indication of this. Sure, we'll have people claiming they no longer receive enough to live on, but it isn't our job as tax payers to subsidise people who can't, or refuse to work. The fact is if a working person is receiving £20,000 a year (the new cap) they have to pay tax, pay national insurance, pay council tax and then when it comes down to decisions such as whether they can afford a third child, have to make that decision based on their income. Why do people living on benefits think it is their right to have children they can't support themselves, and expect the state to provide for them? Why do people on benefits think it is their right to have a bigger house, bigger income, bigger family than a working person? It isn't their right, and we should put a stop to it!

     The fact does remain Torys have helped the middle class by increasing the 40p tax rate and getting rid of inheritance tax for all but the richest. But can anyone argue with this? Can we complain that this is a tax cut when its cutting taxes that the people  on lower than £42,000 and estates worth over £350,000 don't pay anyway? Is it not more fair if we all pay the same taxes rather than the richest have added taxes to pay?

Rather than a pretty picture I thought I'd leave this analogy here as something to think about:

Everyday ten men go out for beer after work and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

 So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. What about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I got" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.