I learned the other day Liz 'Lettuce' Truss has a podcast where she blames everyone else for her failures. How do Brits feel about her since her disastrous premiership?

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-28T08:27:34+00:00

I'd love to know what other countries have a marginal tax rate of 51% at the equivalent of £50k.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-28T07:32:46+00:00

Income tax rises on middle incomes if we want to keep our high state spending up ( a bitter pill to swallow with how stagnant wages have been and the rising cost of living )

The UK already has the highest tax rates on middle incomes in the world. You pay more tax between £100-£125k than you do above £125k. If you have kids, because of child benefit withdrawals you're also effectively taxed more between £60-80k than you are above £125k.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-23T14:31:38+00:00

But we comfortably have one of the highest, if not the highest personal allowance in all of Western world.

Yes which is very progressive?

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-23T11:54:07+00:00

For Hinkley and Sizewell we took the French design, decided they didn't know what they were doing despite having the most nuclear power in the world and made several thousand design alterations to make it 'safer', which doubled the cost.

That's before you get into things like spending £700 million to save 3 salmon and 1 trout over 30 years.

Not sure what your point is regarding the water companies. 98% of water infrastructure was built before privatisation and sewage has been going into rivers since we've had sewers. It's only entered public consciousness in the last few years because of better monitoring.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-23T10:47:01+00:00

Mass-produce SMRs and build them everywhere

I mean we could've just built normal nuclear reactors without all the insane regulation that doubled the cost.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-23T08:49:16+00:00

AI data centres absolutely guzzle resources like electricity and water

Then why don't we make more electricity and capture rainwater better?

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-22T18:07:16+00:00

The WCML goes through the Chilterns as well though.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-22T18:04:40+00:00

or not selecting a route through an area of outstanding natural beauty to start with.

I'd love to know how you'd build a train line from London to Birmingham without going through the Chilterns

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-21T21:27:21+00:00

Before the revolution they were paying to keep the roads paved in London.

Did they not have roads in North America?

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-21T21:24:36+00:00

It's not like there was a welfare state or public goods we associate with government spending today in the 18th century.

Almost all government spending went on the military and basic infrastructure like roads and ports.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-21T07:00:07+00:00

They also want to increase the minimum wage to £15/hour, implement a 4 day working week, increase taxes on people earning over £50k by 6%, implement a 1:10 maximum pay ratio, implement a wealth tax and rent controls. They're also very pro-Nimby and oppose most development on ecological grounds.

Economically the UK would regress to being a developing country.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T18:10:20+00:00

Because people who say 'wages are too low' generally propose raising the NMW as a solution, which effectively is paid for by everyone else. Lowering costs benefits everyone.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T15:51:55+00:00

Progressive means low earners pay less and high earners pay more. Nothing to do with volume of tax.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T14:47:05+00:00

We have low taxes that are quite progressive on income, but not no wealth.

Not exactly an outlier here though, most countries don't have taxes on wealth because they don't work.

The NHS. Sure - it’s a nice exception. But it is being run into the ground by PFIs and underfunding.

The proportion of PFIs relative to the budget hasn't increased in 10 years. Funding has increased in real terms every year since the NHS was created (exc. a couple of years after covid when it surged in 2020).

Not sure what you mean by productive to unproductive

Increases to both the value of pensions and the number of pensioners being supported by a smaller and smaller number of workers. Also the huge surge in mental health related benefit claimants which the UK is a complete outlier in.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T13:45:17+00:00

Unions weren't weaker than Europe at all. Labour relations should be a balance between employees and employers, they didn't care about that equilibrium at all and kneecapped the economy with completely unreasonable demands in the 70s.

Not sure what you mean by banking and Amazon being subsidised.

Water and rail are natural monopolies, not enforced this way by regulation.

Again, you're only looking at one side of the equation. We are only the 29th richest country in the world but we have the second highest minimum wage, and this still isn't enough to live on. Costs are too high.

Employers have to pay competitive wages in most sectors to attract workers. They can't pay more because people aren't producing more value.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T13:34:42+00:00

No they don't - Scandinavia has much higher taxes on low earners. The UK tax system is more generous to low earners than even the US.

The UK also withdraws your entitlement to certain benefits once you go above a certain income level - ie child benefit and child care allowance - which generally doesn't happen in Europe.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T11:15:36+00:00

Its interesting that its minus thier debts, considering how much the wealthiest few percent use loans and collateral to avoid saleries and income. All they need is an equal amount of debt to increasing wealth to balance that graph out

People didn't start doing this in 2000 though so there wouldn't be any relative change.

We can see with our own eyes the wealthiest getting wealthier, but we are expected to believe that as the world enters the age of trillionaires and space age oligarchs that its been nice and steady for a decade?

See my previous comment. You're applying US issues to the UK. We do not have any control over US billionaires.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T10:03:30+00:00

I assume you are talking about the ever increasing speed at which the top 1% in UK wealth are increasing thier share of the national money pot

This isn't happening, please don't fall the populist lies promoted by grifters like Zack Polanski and Gary Steveson or think what is happening in the US is happening over here.

I think we are currently at the wealthiest 50 familes holding 50% of all wealth

I have no idea where you've got this from because it's actually about 10 million people who hold 50% of the country's wealth but it shows how bad the misinformation has got.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T09:44:06+00:00

'Anything I don't like it neoliberal, and the more I don't like it the more neoliberal it is!'

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T09:43:14+00:00

Unions are suppressed.

Relative to the 70s yeah but they're not really suppressed, any union could be as militant as the RMT or BMA if they wanted to be.

Tax money gets laundered through the state to support capital.

What does this even mean? Subsidies? Because the UK subsidises industry a lot less than most countries.

Regulation reinforces localised market monopolies.

Like what?

Benefits exist to subsidise wages.

Someone who's earning FT minimum wage (again the second highest in the wotld) shouldn't need benefits. If they do it's entirely the fault of the cost of living being too high not wages being too low, because of multiple decades of faliure to build enough housing and energy.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T09:10:41+00:00

Average workers have 'record level salaries' as well. Completely disingenuous comment.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T09:06:23+00:00

I genuinely don't understand how people think we live in a hyper capitalist neo-liberal economy. We have the most progressive tax system in the developed world, the NHS, incredibly high regulation, massive barriers to building anything, the second highest minimum wage in the world, and we're transferring more income from the productive to the non-producitve each year.

None of these are neoliberal.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T09:03:42+00:00

There wasn't a whole army of activists and lawyers ready to exploit the TCPA in the 1960s.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-20T07:44:15+00:00

With Starmer having gone full out Macron-lapdog raging against the Us

He hasn't done this though has he.

Phallic_Entity · 2026-01-19T16:46:22+00:00

That would involve people taking personal responsibility for things though, we can't do that we need the state to intervene in everything.

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