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Who should pay for social care ?

palacefan said:
As part of the NHS hospitals had geriatric wards which no longer exist. Politicians!

I am open to correction but I do not believe that Scotland imposes a house sale to pay for elderly care.
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IIRC one of the reason given for the Scots Gov increasing the income tax here for higher pay was to get more for the NHS. IIRC2 the Scots Gov isn't allowed 'borrow' or 'print' money in the ways Westminster can.
 
ks.234 said:
Are we not falling into a government trap by even answering the question of ‘who pays’?

If there are magic money trees for wars, why not for public services?
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Good points given that we now won't be spending so much in the 'stan for example.

Personally, I'd cancel the 'Trident replacement' and spend that on other ways to employ people - e.g. boost social care provision. The trident replacement is a total boondoggle anyway. Just political willie-waving.
 
So, doesn't deal with the problem, but does offer something to Tory voters and penalise non-Tory voters. Not really unexpected.

And neither is the Labour response. The joke is that Labour have well-developed, well-costed plans for systematic reform, plans that apart from anything else could be very popular and bring their fractured voter base together. But they don't suit the right of the party so they're in the shredder, and what we're getting from them instead is the usual nitpicking and cack-handed attempts to outflank the Tories from the right: "The Tories can never again claim to be the party of low tax"! Thanks Keir, brilliant.

Here's a statement from the Women's Budget Group, in the absence off any parliamentary opposition:

https://wbg.org.uk/media/wbg-media-statement-for-government-social-care-announcement/
 
Bob McC said:
A charge is put on assets by the local authority if the have assets over the threshold.
There is a myth about auntie Nelly having to sell her house for her care.
She won’t.
A charge is put on it by the local authority and on her death the executors have to pay the bill from her assets.
If that means sale of a house then so be it.
This can happen quite often if someone has to go in care, loses capacity and has not set up power of attorney.
The house cannot be sold by them because they don’t have mental capacity to do so.
See deferral of costs here

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/informatio...me/do-i-have-to-sell-my-home-to-pay-for-care/
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thanks BT , this is to pay for domicilary care at home i.e visiting carers so they have to pay the full cost each month . and its 140 quid a week for just 7 30 minute calls . so it soon adds up
 
hifinutt said:
thanks BT , this is to pay for domicilary care at home i.e visiting carers so they have to pay the full cost each month . and its 140 quid a week for just 7 30 minute calls . so it soon adds up
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Is this in England?
 
laughingboy said:
Yes, one doesn't have to subscribe to every tenet of Modern Monetary Theory to appreciate this. Keynes understood this in the 1940s. In 'How much does Finance Matter', a BBC broadcast from 1942, he wrote:

"Anything we can actually do, we can afford."

We only need to be mindful of the pace with which we try to do things, he said: "neither so slow as to cause unemployment nor so rapid as to cause inflation."

The whole broadcast is excellent, and available to read here.
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Yes indeed. when I was at university among my tutors Keynes was still considered common sense, under attack from blockhead (neo)monetarists. He understood money and experienced several instances of the suspension of the gold standard; the one in wartime allowing the kind of expenditure the world hasn't seen since. His was also a time when he used a word like 'inflation' to describe the general enrichment of society rather than as a pejorative synonym for 'eve of collapse'. Even then his well-known 'How To Pay For The War' is full of obsolete ideas which don't reflect the facts of the economy now.
I'm not willing to say, as some have, that MMT is just recycled Keynes; if that was the case it would have been evident a long time ago. Keynes didn't speak clearly about the nature of government debt issued as a reserve drain in the banking sector or having no cause/effect relationship on a government's capacity to fund its requirements. And that doesn't benefit anyone apart from market gamblers by providing a security base for their portfolios. Then again Keynes was one of these.

Debt issuance now is just something that was repurposed by the monetarists as a mechanism for limiting deficits: i.e. match the 'debt' issued to the same level of a proposed liquidity injection (deficit). It was supposed to make everyone feel bad and concerned about spending. Knowing this and what 'public debt' actually is, should put the public's mind to rest that expanding a deficit is nothing to do with a 'public debt' increase, which is an ideological decision. And also one with little meaning since the 'debt' is in the govt's currency and could be settled at any time...but believe me the people who hold bonds - including all the politicians who waffle about 'debt' - love them and the 5% interest they get on them; and therefore love 'public debt'. They would be the first to protest if it was eliminated.

The problem, aside from the obvious economic incoherence of monetarist economists or those trapped in that mindset, is a political one. The incoherence of the notion of 'tax' makes politicians choose their policy pronouncements not based upon an analysis of a particular economy's requirements, but on how popular it will make them or how likely it will work as a policy to put them into power. It's the wrong approach.

A fellow at the WigWam (now inexplicably banned) was a student of Joan Robinson, a Keynes protegée, and he also felt extremely at home in MMT. It's a pity we don't have his brain to pluck.
 
Of course the easy way to answer the "How can we possibly afford this without a tax rise?" is simply to cancel Brexit and use the extra money to pay for it.
 
Some right wing bile deleted, sorry if your post got zapped in the clean up.

Anymore and the author can expect a holiday from pfm.
 
Amazing to think that they'll raises taxes to cover £36 bn over three years whilst their HS2 vanity project is costing 3 times that (and probably some more), meanwhile Brexit didn't bring in £350m a week for the NHS, the Tories have killed 150k British people (so far) and yet despite all this they're still leading in the polls and with an 80 seat majority. Mind boggling.
 
matthewr said:
Just to be clear, Brexit didn't just not generate £350 a week it's actively costing us more than the cost of this social care change.
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A Brexiteer who recruits for the City I know says Brexit has created many more jobs for Brits. Your opinion ?
 
farfromthesun said:
Amazing to think that they'll raises taxes to cover £36 bn over three years whilst their HS2 vanity project is costing 3 times that (and probably some more), meanwhile Brexit didn't bring in £350m a week for the NHS, the Tories have killed 150k British people (so far) and yet despite all this they're still leading in the polls and with an 80 seat majority. Mind boggling.
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HS2 further underlines the point that government does not need to raise tax to fund projects. There was no need to raise tax to fund a vanity railway because it suits political objectives of extending credit to reward private enterprises. There is a ‘need’ to raise taxes to fund public services because the political objective is to make it’s recipient pay. Private enterprise is good and should be encouraged, public service is bad and has to be discouraged
 
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wacko said:
A Brexiteer who recruits for the City I know says Brexit has created many more jobs for Brits. Your opinion ?
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I suppose that’s true, problem is, it’s jobs Brits don’t want or can’t do eg waiter/waitresses/hgv drivers. Sigh, and I hear employers saying they can’t recruit because those applying aren’t qualified. They could seek to train them on the job…
 
I'm not a fan of Brexit, but it could actually have been beneficial. Not that Britain actually regained the monetary sovereignty it already had, but as a chance for a government to stop dicking about pandering to the EU brand of neoliberalism and apply policy to enrich the country in every way.
Instead there is recycled nonsense like 'British jobs for British people' and the delusion that somehow the private sector just starts creating thousands of jobs when they can't even have a normal line of credit. The home-grown neoliberals offer the same menu as the evil empire they clam was holding them back.

While Johnson & Co (and Starmer & Co) are waiting for the miraculous, spontaneous rebirth of 'the economy' infrastructure - physical and service-oriented - falls into a shit-heap. They need to start employing people directly. This idea that the only jobs that are available are picking raspberries and serving beer are unconvincing, when we all know that most services are understaffed and things like train stations are looked after by a computer and a broken ticket machine.

And what do the inflation hawks suggest..? A tentative UBI !! You couldn't make it up.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/17/economy.uk1
Gordon Brown hiked NI by 1% point in 2002…..deja vu

i get puzzled by the complaint that younger workers are paying for what pensioners are receiving free of charge
Surely, that is how the system was designed to work?
As a pensioner I paid NI for 45 years to fund my parents’ and grandparents’ pensions and NHS costs
Similarly today’s payers will be supported by their successors

The whole topic of inheritance is a separate one, ripe for discussion; my father’s care costs and having four siblings meant I received almost zilch, but I have always factored that into plans….anything that might come my way would be a bonus
Also the complaint that today’s youth are “ worse off “ than their predecessors……all depends on how one measures that, and in any case who promised that things would always get better?
The old cliche “ the world does not owe anyone a living…..” is apposite here

Simon
 
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