Interview: Dominic Frisby – How tax shaped our past and will change our future

Where it all goes?

Basically, one simple phrase: Government Profligacy!

Social Security is the main spend from gross revenue; with Housing Benefit being a major component. Mainly since successive governments have screwed up the housing market.

Government at all levels, National Central; Regional, County, Local, all believe they can can continually raise taxes yet continually reduce the services they are supposed to be delivering! Any complaint is always met by the same bleating nonsense: "Lack of Resources!"

Now if any commercial activity demanded ever increasing fees, charges etc, yet failed to deliver the goods, then this would be theft, and actionable at law.

Government, however, is fixated upon Golden Goose Syndrome.

Consider this: after World War Two, (Which cost was still being paid for years ahead) in the late 1940s it was decided Britain urgently needed its own independent Nuclear Weapons Capacity; which it achieved in the early 1950s. Shortly afterwards the Sizewell B Nuclear Reactor and power station was built; the FIRST in the World. The came the Korean War; then Suez; then Malaya, Cyprus, Aden etc.

Now, however, in order for Britain to build a new urgently required major electricity generation nuclear facility, we have to go cap in hand to the French to build it and China to fund it!!!

Consider Government Spending expressed as a percentage of GDP from 1950 to today: and weep.

https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/

Quick fact check, One of the biggest component of social security spend is not "housing benefit" (about £22bn) but pensions (£160bn)

Housing benefit after all is essentially subsiding low wages paid by big business, and would not be necessary had the nation's council housing been flogged off for a song and an election bribe 30 years ago.

Pensions seem to have highly protected status despite nearly every pensioner I know being pretty well off.

I said major; not the biggest.

Caused by an insane housing market and Government allowing Housing Associations, as supposed "Charities" to become the de-facto social housing providers, but masquerade as charities when they are massive property empires.

Plus private landlords provide the shortfall stock and thus government monies are going straight into their greedy pockets.

Pensions are in supposition already funded; check out the mythical "Fund".

Pensions are a cause celebre, since Government nicked the fund years ago; after sending in tame actuaries who stated it was over-valued! Check this out!

Furthermore, many pensioners are on the breadline: clearly, those you know are not the average type! Why did Gordon Brown introduce Pension Credits?

Have you heard about the "Heat or Eat?" pensioners?

IF successive governments had have so organised the economy to provide real job opportunities and a stable sensible housing market, then most of these problems would have not been there. Instead we have such outrageous nonsense as as Minimum Wage, Zero Hours Contracts and the rest.

Britain, despite the huge tax burden, is clearly a corporate state; not a parliamentary democracy anymore.

Which is why there are so many billionaires and multi-millionaires: a majority of them tax avoiders...

P.S. I am A Capitalist, not a Socialist; but some fair dos are urgently needed...

eh? State pensions are not "funded" they come out of current taxation. Ditto civil service pensions.

Whilst some pensioners might be poor, they are certainly no poorer than the unemployed, and at least not treated like scum. There is a big disconnect between the genuinely broke pensioner (who quite frankly must have been a bit feckless to end up with no pension provision at all), and the affluent ones with 2 * state coming in, plus 2 * occupational pensions, own house, no real outgoings. I see no reason why such pensioner should be so sacred a cow (apart from cynical vote buying) . It used to be a certain about of "reward for winning the war" but now its all baby boomers with entrenched wealth, whilst the younger generation get shafted.

Please read this and think again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Insurance_Fund

You are making numerous glaring assumptions!

Few women now in their mid-seventies, worked full-time: and furthermore, it was uncommon for women to receive an occupational pension. Indeed, a close friend's wife worked in the City for a major firm of solicitors most of her life, Personal Sec to a senior partner: no pension.

The model of a man and wife having two full state pensions and two occupational pensions is based upon much later.

The State Pension is a lottery and depends when a person was born, mainly, as the rules kept changing.

"...who quite frankly must have been a bit feckless to end up with no pension provision at all"; a very ignorant and callous comment. Years ago, most people earned far less than you imagine. Saving proved impossible.

Your view is based upon a much later period in history. Most married women stayed at home and brought up their kids; rather than working full-time, and leaving the children to become a social problem which costs the State even more...

I agree about Civil Service Pensions: yet once more an excellent example of Government's profligacy and fiscal incompetence: worth remembering how civil servants threatened to strike and Gordon Brown caved, made them a special case and allowed retirement at 60 on full index linked final salary schemes. Disgusting! Local authority retirees are slightly different: no wonder Council Tax is so high, as a big chunk is used to meet the cost of retirement pensions.

Thus these costs do not come out of central governments funds.

I've always been very suspicious of these housing associations after I went to a job interview at one. I couldn't work out who the directors were accountable to so I asked them at the interview. Cue stony faces and I didn't get the job.