Finance in the ‘UK’
It is Budget time again, and the intricacies of big finance is way beyond this blog in both knowledge and interest. However, being a baseline blog, never far from the surface of Earth and always – always – with the framework of facts that all aspects of an individual human and a human society can only ultimately be within the overarching facts, that Earth is dependent on the Sun, in both gravity and Light/heat, and that the life zone is dependent on conditions and food and water within the atmosphere, without which none of us would exist.
Within the political zone, many eyes focus onto that entirely man-made and the now even stranger modern construction of big finance, and the two-way flow of money into the government, and out again to the citizens in all the various services and complications of the modern ‘UK’.
Finance now in the ‘UK’ is all about up, and preferably up and up. Those who are fascinated by profit and wealth and high net value and the lifestyle that comes with that are a big feature in the ‘UK’ over last decades, but so also is the equally opposite bottom of the ladder – as seen comparatively – of ‘the poor’, those ‘living in poverty.’ A government in power covers all rungs on that ladder (a ladder as seen by the western Protestant finance societal model but not the societal base for some countries on Earth, and not anywhere existing in the natural world), and Budget time is the focal point of all that, even for laymen like this blog. This blog is written from the wider context.
Over the last 10 years from the observer’s point of view, two major sections of life or society, or opinion, have come fully into being. One is the expanding benefit system, expanding in different benefits and expanding in numbers claiming and which numbers now include people from all over Earth and their family networks from all over Earth with 100s of different cultures, languages, view of society, and view of the ‘UK’.
The other is the prominence of identity to ‘be in poverty’ which from organisations like the Rowntree Foundation is all about a monetary value and how one person or family compares with the average or the top earners, it is probably more specific like that, but this is a general blog and will never misquote or plagiarise, but is often speaking in general terms. The fact is that poverty is clear if complete destitution is obvious, but societal poverty is related to all sorts of things, even apart from the new financial requirements of tech and online games and Netflix and all the various digital medias which require subscriptions, and of course pizza. The takeaway bill for pizza in the ‘UK.’ In the interests of being vaguely specific, a quick Google search just came up with £2.5-3 billion a year spent on takeaway pizza in the ‘UK’. That’s a lot of money.
It is a fact that the current Labour government talk a lot about not only ‘women and girls’ but children ‘in poverty’ and the poverty being a reason for not attaining what politics is promising every young person. The life of a schoolchild deemed to be in poverty has some pretty good aspects to it, one being the amount of holiday activities paid for by Councils and private organisations contracting into Councils to be able to provide the outdoors activities, the psychological activities, the wellbeing and the giving the feeling that the children in poverty are just as loved as those who live in households deemed not to be in poverty.
A radio news programme last weekend quoted the welfare bill in its entirety as spending in two weeks what the Defence budget spends in a year. If the social media wars are to be believed, the ‘UK’ is going to have to muster an army in the near future, so this massive imbalance between x26 spent on societal issues, much of which is illness against x1 of the Defence budget as viewed from an Earth – society equation does not look good. The Chancellor needs to raise money, and raise it fast, yet a large proportion of the citizens in the ‘UK’ do not pay any tax at all, yet consume so much resources in finance, health, education, and Council services.
Ten years ago in a gathering, sort of political, but definitely a discussion event, the economist Richard Murphy was speaking and this blog typer and he had a discussion on tax, and that it would be a good idea for every adult citizen to pay tax, regardless of what the income was, benefits or earnings. It was only those two humans in the room who thought that was a good idea. Everyone else thought it would be very unfair, and not even thinkable. To this blog which is deeply interested in the long history of belief and income to outcome, all under the facts of Earth and Sun and gravity, then how a society not just is governed but how it relates to each other is ultimately a question of survival, even if the comfortable existence in the ‘UK’ these days does not think of actual survival.
This writer has observed since, and still, that alignment of the citizen – money – tax, it could be said to only have become more relevant, because of the new scale of events, and the scale of the problems. Still the question remains, and if in reverse logic the Chancellor turned round the spotlight away from the demarcated sections of society and looked solely at the bottom line of an all inclusive group of citizens of the ‘UK’, with all income as just a monetary income regardless of source, then what better way of levelling up (levelling down) and inclusivity than creating a new financial framework of income – tax. This human said to Richard Murphy what if there was no Personal Allowance? Why is it needed? In 2025, why is the government not consulting the tax philosophers such as Prof Murphy to open the possibility of a rethink of this horrible impasse. If the tax bands applied to every citizen of adult age so those in receipt of small benefits
If tax bands applied from the first £1, say 0.5p in the £1 and rising through the income levels for every single adult citizen, regardless of source of income, how would that change society? Society, this blog believes, has its own identity, or does in a healthy group of humans with more chance of survival than when it is missing. The x26 amount spent on benefits compared to Defence would then soon start to even out, but as important, the frameworks within society would be of citizens, not politically enabled identities. The ‘UK’ would not be seen as such an Eldorado, and those families living entirely on benefits would gain an understanding of how a society works and of how difficult it is to balance a life and governance.
Equal to that, if all Councils ran a holiday programme for pretty much every week of school holidays, and across the devolved governments, that every child is out at activity and education camps regardless of income or the ‘being on benefits means poverty’ mentality, because it can be the reverse meaning those ‘in poverty’ get a distorted view of entitlement and that such wonderful activities are a part of fundamental rights. If each county Council was tasked with activating all children in every holiday, with a few days off for Christmas, doing all sorts of outdoor learning, physically tough regimes and sailing and woodworking, and in the spare time helping the Council with litter picking, painting fences, thinking about making flood defences, learning how to shear a sheep and skin a deer, fish, and make bread, and practice technical drawing, then with all their parents paying tax and all adults on the same page, all children on the same page, how much would that automatically reset this societal collapse happening?
In the offices of government it must be so easy to just adjust a few technical systems, issue a few new documents, send out the new Directive to all Jobcentres and to HMRC, that simply, every pound of income is under the same incremental tax bands. And it would be so simple to bring the young citizens onto the same page, and all have the same opportunity to experience holiday activity. What would the balance of voters be? Many young people would be probably an automatic vote against any party that did that, but how many would feel a sense of relief that society could ease down and onto the same page, all citizens, instead of this strange antagonism of income and tax? It is not too late, and might even be a vote winner if the upcoming Budget introduced something really really simple.
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