Avocado economics....
National Insurance increases to fund social care and to a large extent the NHS, are a tax on those in work, pensioners don’t pay NI if they have retired. The money raised will be given to wealthy pensioners many with millions in housing equity, because they want to leave that money to their children.
It is therefore a tax on the the young and the poor, who can least afford it. The money being given to those who benefitted from final salary pensions, mortgage tax breaks, student grants and ever rising house prices.
I have met these people while reporting on this issue many times and any sense that they did well and they should pay some tax were always met with howls of protest. My favourite bit is when they always claim that they should not be punished for wisely “investing in property”.
If you ask them to recommend some shares because apparently every single person with a house is an investment genius, you are met with looks of incomprehension. Likewise if you point out that if they had put the money in shares they would at least pay capital gains tax, and since their home was also an “investment” they should pay that, they get quite angry.
Inheritance tax is now a joke, the allowances and loop holes mean hardly anyone pays it. Wealthy pensioners vote and they are being bribed to vote Tory with tax payers money.
They might at least have the grace to admit it and stop complaining that the youth of today can’t get on the housing ladder because they fritter the money away on avocados.
But even that is apparently too much to ask.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.