After 100s of pages about tax rises or not, I've yet to have an answer ( and I've asked it a few times in different ways) on which groups if any, should pay a bit more, and if the answer is none, which groups should suffer as a result of the inevitable cuts to public services and benefits.
For the record, I'm happy to pay a couple of p extra on income tax ( well, not happy but you know what I mean), VAT on private medical insurance, prescriptions till I reach state retirement age(presently free at 60-why?).
Neoliberalism hasn't worked. It's been 45 years of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
The original thinking was give huge tax cuts to the wealthy, they spend their money, and the wealth filters down.
The opposite has happened. The rich have spent their money on assets, and their increasing wealth has been used to outbid rising numbers of ordinary people from asset ownership.
Until that it is accepted by the majority of people, which will be very difficult to achieve because those that benefit from neolibral policies own the legacy media, social media, right wing politicians with their donations, and the think tanks that produce the bullshit analysis of statistics the politicians they own repeat in public, nothing is going to change. They basically control what people think.
The thing is, as soon as anyone says we have to tax wealth, the stock reply is 'why do you want to punish the rich?' Of course, that's going to be the response from those that own the media and the people they pay to support their position.
I would say the rich have been punishing the poor for centuries, and what we have enjoyed with the benefits of the welfare state over the last 80 years or so, which has always been opposed by the wealthy, isn't normal.
Living in abject poverty has been the norm for most people, and we are descending back into that with current fiscal policies.
Tax wealth. We did it between 1945 until the late 70's, when we had governments that provided services that worked.
