redone w/ U.S. for comparison
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Tyreek Hill putting in the overtime hours off the field
Or maybe tax capital gains similarly to income from work…or at least closer.
Won’t move the needle in the UK
You would get about £8bn if you equalized CG tax to income tax rates.
The UK is currently paying about 50% of all tax take on social benefits (about £260bn) and healthcare (£190bn), with debt interest at about £90bn.
State Pensions are at £135bn (of the £260bn) and growing at a rate of 2.5% (or over) every year due to the triple lock.
The UK has one of the narrowest tax bases of the developed world (2% of the population basically pays 50% of the income taxes).
We are already talking about marginal rates approaching 60%, which is now causing widespread behavioral changes in the higher earning population (they are leaving, working less hours, or taking early retirement).
Simply put, the public pension system in the UK has become financially unsustainable given how narrow the tax base supporting it is.
News from Ohio.
One of the teaching pension schemes is trying to vote itself more benefits (full COLA adjustment) when its retired base is increasing relative to its contribution base of employed teachers.
At a certain point, can’t local taxpayers simply not say “no, we will not pay more into the fund”?
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Yeah, I’ve been writing about what’s been going on over there:
Most recent:
July:
Older:
6 May 2024: Public Pension Governance Drama in Ohio
10 May 2024: Ohio Pension Drama Continues: Investigation Called on “Hostile Takeover”
16 May 2024: Ohio State Teachers Pension Drama Continues! Board Turmoil!
17 May 2024: More Ohio STRS Commentary: Alternative Assets in Pensions, Anonymous Memos, and Teachers Pensions in General [corrected/updated on May 22]
1 June 2024: Corrections and Clarifications on Ohio STRS: Audits and Investments
27 June 2024: Ohio STRS Drama Continues: No Bonuses and Board Member Resigns
15 July 2024: Ohio STRS Update for 15 July 2024: More Legislative Action, Advisor Resignation(s), Research on Public Pension Asset Returns
FWIW, Ohio STRS has a relatively low employer contribution rate:
https://publicplansdata.org/quick-facts/by-pension-plan/plan/?ppd_id=88
The bars are what Ohio STRS employers are actually contributing, and the yellow is the average for similar pensions (that is, other teachers pensions).
Of course, taxpayers may not be interested in a contribution rate of about 25%.
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Really late response to this…
I agree that it will be really difficult to deal with the disruption to the economy, but perhaps it will help to solve a lot of the issues we’re facing around the environment, water supplies, and sustainability.
Well, the Government and Politics should not have disrupted “the economy” in the first place.
Looks like China has finally cracked under the pressure of having too low a retirement age. Too many people retired vs working, so they have now pushed the ages out further.
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The move has also sparked indignation among younger people, who complain that they are working ever-longer hours to support an aging extended family.
I would think this is in the interest of the younger people. For a stable society, each person must average X hours in their lifetime. More years to complete X means less average hours per year. However, it may be that X for the younger generation is much higher than X for their parents’ generation.
I think that’s the real trouble. Honestly across many countries but particularly those with big demographic problems. Older generations vote themselves benefits paid for by workers. Cash in. Then demographic issues set in and just rely on younger people making up the slack.
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Its also never going to work because you will eventually reach a point that taxes get so high that productivity growth gets crushed (labour supplied by the younger folks gets reduced), and the younger working folks simply cannot pay for the liabilities foisted upon them by the older generations.
The PTB won’t be able to borrow their way out of that problem either (as debt service costs will constrain that avenue as well).
So I am expecting higher taxes (more taxes on the working folks and a bit more on the retired (as they are lightly taxed)), but also some pruning of the excessive benefits that the older generations voted for themselves (healthcare specially).
Will be a big political fight. Of that I have no doubt.
Maybe France can learn something here
Trying to turn around the trend…
I do not think this is going to catch on.
The nation is Russia, btw. I wouldn’t click through at work.
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I guess that’s one way to encourage people to return to the workplace.
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Maybe they could try, and I’m really just spitballing here, NOT sending all of their young men away from their young women to illegally invade a sovereign country.
Hear me out… what I mean is, if the young men and the young women were physically located in the same zip code (or whatever the Russian equivalent is) then maybe, just maybe, they’d have more sex leading to more babies.
Also, if the men weren’t being systematically killed off by the men in the country they illegally invaded, there would be a bit more sperm to go around and impregnate the women. And the women might be more comfortable getting pregnant if they weren’t constantly worrying about their baby daddies getting killed.
I know, that’s some pretty radical outside-the-box thinking, but it’s so crazy it just might work!
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Unzip code?
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Obligatory “Code zips you!!”
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If you’re going to go there, I fear the more likely outcome would be for Putin to address his generals’ demands for more cannon fodder by authorizing the conscription of women.
When the conscripts get bored in the newly co-ed trenches…
I guess if he drafted women and then made pregnancy or mothering a young child a “get out of conscription free” thing then there would probably be lots of babies.
1st baby gets Mom out of the Army, 2nd baby gets Dad out of the Army.
They’d be at replacement rate in no time!
They might lose the war in Ukraine, but they’d stabilize their population.
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