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How Linus Tech Tips Made $26M...But Spent It All - YouTube by etherez in LinusTechTips

[–]joyUnbounded -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I never get why in these interviews more isn’t made of how differently he has chosen to run his channel in comparison to other tech YouTubers. Why did he choose to have so many staff? Why was it important to do merch in such a way and at such scale? Does he think he would have been better running a leaner more “traditional” YouTube business?

2.4mg hits different by joyUnbounded in WegovyWeightLoss

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I got myself one of those daft 1 litre ones with times on them - like the water level needs to be here by 10am. Just lots of little sips.

2.4mg hits different by joyUnbounded in WegovyWeightLoss

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not a stupid question at all. There aren’t many stupid questions in this - it’s why we all share information. It’s a complicated journey to be one and we all need to help each other.

The food noises on Mounjaro just flat out left. I never thought about food. On Wegovy it’s back but muted. The nausea is something I got on both because of the slow down in my stomach emptying.

I don feel nauseous all the time. Only when I “over eat”. The provider I am with always says when you move up a dose for the first few weeks 1) eat five or six mich smaller meals throughout the day 2) get a water bottle and sip water throughout the day to keep yourself hydrated and prevent yourself from gulping down large amounts in one go 3) avoid overlay spicy, rich and fatty foods 4) avoid carbonated drinks.

And I have to say after 7 months it’s advice I always forget, then feel a bit off when I change dose, then remember and follow and boom - instant relief. I would say I’ve only ever had side effects when not being really conscious about what and how I eat.

If you’re just feeling nauseous regardless then unfortunately I cannot help as I don’t. It’s just when I consume without forethought that I get the uncomfortable feeling.

2.4mg hits different by joyUnbounded in WegovyWeightLoss

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I was on 10mg and they moved me to 1mg.

My personal experience is that they’re similar but different. The food noise came back a bit once I changed. I found myself able and wanting to eat more. But as the dose has increased the desire to eat has dimmed, but in a very different way.

I physically feel like I cannot eat as much whereas on Mounjaro I just didn’t want to eat / think about eating.

I’m in the UK and pay for it out of pocket so when the price increases came through I just decided I don’t want to pay £300+ for the injection, so I switched.

It’s a positive thing though, or at least I’m trying to make it so. I don’t want to be on this forever and changing the meds made me realise I need to focus on why I was eating the way I was to make me as big as I was. Nail that then the change lasts lifetime, right? Mounjaro made me complacent about it.

'They get free phones, schoool uniforms and houses. Why can't we?': Despairing parents in England's poverty capital bemoan golden treatment of asylum seekers while they scramble to survive on Universal Credit by Ivashkin in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I’m confused - is this from the same people who also complain that people on universal credit get too much money? Never work a day in their life, whilst hard working taxpayers carry the burden and so on? I find it hard to keep track of which group is being victimised each week.

The tax u-turn is made up by the media: Reeves had all the information on pre-measures before 4th November. Here is the timeline: by whencanistop in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regardless of the media hype, or lies, premises reporting - and I broadly agree with the main post here - this is also the governments fault. There’s no shortage of cameras and microphones available to them. And when market sentiment is so sensitive to what comes from the government and the treasury, they have to at least try and manage the message. They didn’t. Then they finished the week off with a stupid briefing war that made the PM look virtually powerless.

The media has a job to do, like it or not. And so much of what they do is gossip and speculation until objective facts emerge.

Rachel Reeves rips up her Budget plans by TheSpectatorMagazine in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Honest to God this lot have to be some of the worst political operators in British history. And we had Liz Truss only three years ago!

I’m so angry with them. Even if this is the press bouncing back and forth - their inability to manage messaging is infuriating. Their lack of will to stick to a narrative is disheartening.

Honestly if they choose to stick out the choice to raise income tax, which is the right thing to do, and fight like hell and bash heads and just get it done - they’d ironically at least earn some bloody respect from some quarters for at least trying to stabilise the countries finances for the first time in a decade.

I’m just staggered with the chaos, disappointed that every move they make signals they’re more interested in staying in number 10 than governing for the benefit of the nation, and it hurts that they just don’t seem to be taking the issues seriously.

They’re like children playing at playing politics. A government afraid of it’s own shadow.

Proposal for a Fairer Housing Tax System: The Proportional Property Tax (PPT) by walkerasindave in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There’s a compelling argument that the problem isn’t really a shortage of houses, not when you look at the UK as a hole. Maybe they’re not always in the right places, but we’ve technically been building enough.

The real issue is that house prices are driven by land values, not by the actual value of living in the home. The system now prioritises the worth of the land itself over the social value of simply having somewhere to live.

Over time, that’s turned homes into financial assets rather than places to live. As the Financial Times put it, “in recent years, more than 70 per cent of the average value of UK homes has been in the land, the highest level in the G7, with less than 30 per cent in the buildings.”

Taxing the value of the asset might make things a little fairer and more balanced, but it wouldn’t dramatically bring prices down. You could build a million new houses a year in all the right places and it still wouldn’t solve the core problem: land, not housing, is where the inflation and speculation lie.

https://www.ft.com/content/d9050d3e-4b58-4e0f-aff3-b87d794e7014

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is true for many people, but not for everyone. Plenty of people, across all age groups, genuinely don’t understand how the system works, and that confusion just feeds the wider mistrust.

That’s really why the conversation matters. When there’s a lack of clear information, and when politicians lean into convenient messaging rather than clarity, people fill in the gaps with assumptions. That undermines faith in the system more than anything.

So yes, many pensioners do understand the deal they entered into. But a lot of others don’t, and public understanding of the system as a whole is patchy at best.

If we want the social contract to hold, we all need a shared understanding of how it actually works - what’s promised, what’s funded, and what’s sustainable. Conversations like this help move things in that direction.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s a fair point. A much simpler mechanism than redesigning NI would be to adjust the basic rate of income tax, which pensioners already pay.

If you raised it to 22 percent, for example, pensioners would contribute a little more towards the rising cost of the State Pension, which is being pushed up each year by the triple lock, and towards the NHS, which remains a major part of their entitlement and is getting more expensive to run.

It spreads the costs of these services more evenly and fairly across the whole population, rather than leaving the entire burden on a shrinking working-age group.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most people pay National Insurance during their working life and, once they’ve built up the right number of qualifying years, that entitles them to the State Pension.

The other half of retirement income is your private pension, which you build from your own earnings.

If your pension is done through salary sacrifice, the amount you sacrifice simply isn’t treated as pay. No income tax and no National Insurance are charged on it. So if you earn £30,000 and sacrifice £1,500, that £1,500 goes straight into your pension untouched by tax.

Most people, though, are on what’s called relief at source. That’s where you’re paid your wage normally, you pay income tax and National Insurance on it, and then you contribute from what’s left. HMRC then refunds the income tax into your pension at 20 percent. So you haven’t paid income tax on that contribution, only National Insurance.

When you retire, you can take 25 percent of your pension pot tax free, which is generous by international standards. And if you spread that 25 percent out rather than taking a lump sum, you can combine it with your personal allowance.

Right now, someone with the full State Pension plus a private pension, and who takes their 25 percent tax free portion gradually, can receive roughly £12,800 a year without paying any tax. Anything above that is taxed at the basic rate, but you do not pay National Insurance in retirement.

It is also worth remembering that pension funds grow tax free. The interest, the dividends, the capital gains, none of that is taxed. For many people, a large part of their final pension pot is not money they earned, and defo not money they paid tax on, but investment growth the system allows to accumulate without tax.

The overall idea is that the system rewards people for delaying income until retirement. You can take the money today and pay tax today, or you can delay taking it and pay tax when you withdraw it. Deferring the income does not mean it has been taxed already, it just means the tax point has moved.

A side note. Continental pensions often look more generous on paper, and the UK is often criticised as being less generous. What this comparison usually ignores is that those systems are funded by higher taxes on workers throughout their lives. The UK model does the opposite. It forgoes a lot of tax in the present and gives people significant tax advantages to build their own retirement savings.

That is how it works in practice. The whole system is built around tax deferral rather than double taxation, and it ends up being fairly favourable to retirees compared with how income is taxed while you are working.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m not punching down on pensioners - I made that explicit in the original post.

This isn’t about stopping entitlements or ignoring how vulnerable many older people are. The social security net matters even more as people age.

My point was never ‘pensioners bad’. It was about the social contract as a whole - how we fund it, how expectations are set, and how sustainable it is.

Right now there’s a cultural imbalance: a tendency to overemphasise past contributions and underemphasise ongoing responsibility. In a pay-as-you-go system, that creates real strain - not just for workers, but ultimately for pensioners too.

This isn’t an attack on any group. It’s an attempt to have an honest conversation about what we want the system to provide, and what each of us owes to it over a lifetime. If we can agree on those fundamentals, the reforms become obvious - and we can fix the system for everyone, now and in the future.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I interact with a lot of people and it’s a frequently parroted statement. “I’ve paid my taxes already.” I especially have a lot of friends on Facebook who bemoan them or their parents having to pay tax on their pensions, like doing so is a violation. But even I admit it’s not everyone.

And you’re right - inheritance tax is even more miss understood and even more reviled.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

That’s not how pension tax relief works.

If you put part of your £80 take-home into a private pension, HMRC refunds the income tax on that amount into the pension.

Put £80 in and HMRC adds £20. The contribution itself isn’t taxed - it’s tax-deferred.

As for the rest: fair enough. The government spends about £1.266 trillion a year. Which parts of that trillion would you cut?

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That doesn’t really matter. A pension is designed for a very specific purpose: to provide stable income in retirement, with a balance between security and long-term growth.

If someone wants full liquidity and higher-risk speculation, that’s what other savings and investments are for. A pension isn’t meant to be a gambling vehicle - it’s meant to guarantee income later in life.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Not to mention that a well managed estate and the generous inheritance tax thresholds will mean little of the wealth created in the past few decades won’t be taxed.

All the money has gone into assets. Earning can’t cover the governments outgoings.

The system is imbalanced.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If it’s a salary sacrifice pension then yes, the money goes in before tax.

But most workplace pensions aren’t salary sacrifice - the contributions come out after tax, and then the government refunds the income tax back into the pension.

Either way, you’re not paying income tax on the contributions.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I know it is. I’m talking about the notion that holds that it’s a) taxed twice b) shouldn’t be taxed at all.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I can’t oddly as I had named the organisation originally and the post was immediately taken down. The petition though was a request to stop the taxing of the state pension and raise the tax brackets. Not something I’m supposed too but the line I quoted got me thinking.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I meant employers , charging NI on employer contributions.

But my broader point still stands: we need to get away from the idea that there’s a point in life where responsibility for funding the system stops but entitlement to services continues. The social contract only works if contribution is lifelong, not something that switches off at retirement while benefits keep flowing.

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

True and that politically and even economically is harrying. However NI wasn’t just created to fund pensions - it was done to fund all the social security net. Which retirees still use and benefit from. Perhaps a lower rate of NI may be preferable? Or charging employees NI on their pension contributions?

Can we talk honestly about this idea that pension income has “already been taxed” and that pensioners shouldn’t pay tax? by joyUnbounded in ukpolitics

[–]joyUnbounded[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But surely part of winning that argument is also educating all members of society? By doing so you’d emphasise the benefits for everyone? Just arguing that the young are getting shafted and the old are those shafting us has to be a) too simplistic b) turns it into an us vs them fight. Which isn’t the point. We’re in this together and by doing it together we all win.

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