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I've seen that argument about taxing people's houses too but it doesn't really stack up. The idea that people's houses have increased in value, therefore they have more money is bonkers. I bought my house in 2000 for £89k. It's now worth £270k. But if I want to move to another similar house, that'd cost £270k. Where has my extra taxable £180k gone? By all means look at taxing property that's not the main residence, but that doesn't seem to be the idea.
Maybe. But 3 of the top 4 imports are gas and oil which must be making those figures artificially higher. Also interesting to see we're exporting £29 billion of crude oil and importing £32 billion, exporting £19 billion of refined and importing £31 billion. How much of that is just moving stuff around to add on profits (thus increasing "trade value"). And your link is broken.
Fixed link : https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers/uk-trade-in-numbers-web-version
This looks like good news...
"The value of UK total trade, in the 12 months to the end of January 2023, was £1,724.6 billion (that's £1.7 TRILLION) - up 26.4% on the previous 12 months."
Indeed, with the effects of C19 abating, even with the tories in power, you'd expect considerable improvement.
On the down side, of course, it's a lot less than it would have been had Truss not tanked the economy.
Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati ...
right-click to open in new tab, or click on tweet below
https://twitter.com/kentonagbone/status/1636010771955032064?s=20
I've seen that argument about taxing people's houses too but it doesn't really stack up. The idea that people's houses have increased in value, therefore they have more money is bonkers. I bought my house in 2000 for £89k. It's now worth £270k. But if I want to move to another similar house, that'd cost £270k. Where has my extra taxable £180k gone? By all means look at taxing property that's not the main residence, but that doesn't seem to be the idea.
Quoting myself here. Thought a bit more about this, and it does feel like the only way it'd work is to force people to sell their houses. Which feeds rather unpleasantly into the Great Reset conspiracy theory.
force people to sell their houses
I don't think I've heard this - if/when you move, you will be paying stamp duty of course. Plus, houses themselves have council tax, even though the bands are never kept up to date, and I believe that single people should pay half price.
Loads of old people are hogging 3-4 bed houses (my Mum included!) - this can't be right, surely? If we were to re-invent the system, then any more than +1 guest bedroom is a luxury that society cannot afford, surely? So what's wrong with downsizing - loads of people do this by choice when the kids leave home.
But to force people to downsize seems a bit much - I suppose that's when you tax the empty bedrooms. Which again seems extreme, especially if you've lived there for 50 years. Ideally, society should be able to offer a local, well-insulated 1-2 bed property (on 1 floor?) to all the old folks who need one, to free up all the large houses for families. This way, you've got a carrot and a stick.
Second homes have been an issue for decades, especially in tourist areas, and in the last few years, AirBnB has made this problem much worse. OK if you're just renting out a spare bedroom, but not when the whole place was purchased just as an investment. I think there needs to be a massive tax on all second homes that don't have longterm tenants.
Tax empty properties (and unused land) highly too - to prevent people sitting on them for the value increase. Crazy that businesses are allowed to do this. So many properties are owned by millionaires from Russia and the Middle East, that are seeing their assets increase in value each year, but only visit for a week each summer.
Obviously there are always extremists, but I don't think anyone associated with the major parties has seriously suggested taxing first homes (with the possible exception of those valued well over a million).
Second and otherwise unoccupied homes and land are another matter.
And they should really do something to stop it being worthwhile for people to sit on building land and do nothing with it. There is a large plot I sometimes pass that could be used to build six good sized dwellings and has been derelict for over thirty years!"
Yeah, it wasn't a political party's idea. Guardian or Independent reporter IIRC. Something like a <5% tax on property value per year and then use that money to help people onto the property ladder. I'm just not sure where people would get that 5% from each year without selling the house, putting more people into renting. Not sure I could find another grand a month just to keep living in the house I'd bought. And then the increase in costs for the property owner you're now renting from simply passing that on to the renter. Yes, hypothetical, but it does extend from that tweet about the number of "empty" bedrooms there are (our spare bedroom is the office as we WFH 3 days a week).
Right, so of the big EU economies, we are doing better than Germany, but worse than France, Italy, and Spain.
Er, so what?
Our big problem was that when there were shortages, the Europeans found it easier to sell to other EU members who didn't have brexit red tape, and hence we had to bear the brunt of those shortages.
Brexit isn't responsible for all the woes in the world, and pointing that out is really just a very dumb straw man argument.
Yes - we've mentioned this before - Germany being dependent on Russian oil & gas has badly affected their economy.
Plus there's unfettered capitalism and profiteering. I'm old enough to remember when VAT was added to hot takeaway foods, when the chippies added more than necessary.
Also, prices rarely come down in the same way that they go up, so many of the increases will become the new normal. It is weird though how you can quickly reset your ideas when it comes to pricing and value. Take toothpaste for instance - if it went up to £5 per large tube for whatever (genuine) reason, we'd soon adjust to the higher price.
Somebody posted this ... good grief, is this typical ?? (And iirc, the BATTS brand is perfectly decent).
