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UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

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Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#131

Post by robertlagrant »

Latty wrote: post #124
mathverse wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not seen this done correctly anywhere. I have only experienced taxes getting higher and higher with nothing much to show for it. Meanwhile the really rich folk are also getting richer.

The NHS is great. I've lived my life with access to it and in a society provided for by it, and wouldn't trade it for anything. Taxes have paid for it, and should continue to do so. What alternative are you offering? Not taxing anyone much leaves us with a society that simply doesn't function, we see that right now. FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant when we are already in a situat…

> Of course, the idea there is no way to actually tax the rich is absurd, we can do it, we have just had decades of government with no will to do so.

Which way is that, other than the ways we already do it?

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#132

Post by data_maan »

Reason077 wrote: post #113
data_maan wrote: post #47

Three things: 1 Renewables: The solution exists already but no gov't (in particular the UK) is implementing it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy 2 The UK gov't rather is arresting people demonstrating for housing insulation. This is probably the dumbest thing a gov't can do, since insulation is a "bipartisan" issue and everybody would profit from it. 3 On top of this the UK is on the verge of p…

> "Renewables: The solution exists already but no gov't (in particular the UK) is implementing it" The UK govt has done better than most on renewables in the past decade. Wind energy in particular. In 2020, wind power supplied 24.8% of all UK electricity, and this will continue to increase as major new wind farms - some of the largest in the world - come online in the coming years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_…

You say "better" but you're not giving a comparison.

The UK doesn't appear anywhere in the ranking on the Wikipedia link of countries with >90% electricity from renewables.

You're last link also pertains to electricity only BTW (you make it sound like all energy is considered) and the UK aims for 2025 to have "periods" of fossil-free electricity generation, while other countries do that already today and not just for "periods".

I'm sorry, but the UK sucks.

My only consolation to you is that a number of other western countries also suck.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#133

Post by gruez »

minimaul wrote: post #86
bko wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: >The investment bank predicted that the country’s retail energy price cap — which limits how much households pay for heating and electricity — would be raised to £4,567 in January and then £5,816 in April, compared with the current level of £1,971 a year.... Nabarro said Citi’s new forecasts had taken account of a 25 per cent increase in wholesale gas prices last week and a 7 per cent rise in wholes…

This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses. We already don’t have AC in summers which are growing more and more extreme (regularly over 90F, and sometimes over 100F) - there’s nothing there to turn off. Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and s…

> This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses.

Advocating for "market prices" doesn't necessarily mean letting everyone fend for themselves. You can provide grants/subsidies for the poor, while still keeping market prices so everyone is still incentivized to save as much energy as possible.

>Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation.

Sounds like a great way to discourage investment and make future shortages even worse. The energy industry runs on a boom-bust cycle. Why bother investing for the boom years (ie. right now) when you know the government is going to seize all your profits?

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#134

Post by TomNomNom »

linuxftw wrote: post #101

Inflation isn't causing this. Inflation is devaluing of the currency. What's causing this is increased acquisition costs due to public policy. 6K seems reasonable for a family's annual energy bill. Frankly, it seems on the lower end for such a climate. What's really absurd in the UK is property prices. You'd be able to afford all the energy you desire if you weren't paying 10x what it should cost for housing.

I strongly disagree that nearly 20% of the median household income (£31,400 [0]) is reasonable for a family's annual energy bill. Median income for the poorest 20% is £14,600 - the chances they could afford £6k a year on energy are slim.

Are you really suggesting that housing costs should average around £1400 per year (about one tenth the average annual rent [1]), but energy costs more than 4 times that amount are reasonable?

[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

[1] https://homelet.co.uk/homelet-rental-index

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#135

Post by jacknews »

mathverse wrote: post #109
philipwhiuk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically an inverted 'trickle down economics' argument which has been shown time and again to be bunk. Taxing rich folk more doesn't hurt poor people who don't pay those taxes.

Who is the rich folk? Because any tax increases I have experienced so far affected me and I dont feel rich at all.

That would be shareholders. ie profits accruing from other people's hard work should be taxed heavily.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#136

Post by arcturus17 »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #99
phantomathkg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain why you think people is slacking, please?

I can’t say why. But work seems to have no “gravity”. Like in my brother’s government job, coming into office was a given. You could have serious career repercussions if you were slacking off. Then the lockdown happened and work moved online. Everyone was slacking off, including the managers. Now they’ve got in-office mandates again but some of the workers just don’t come in when they don’t fee like it and just log i…

Are there any indicators that real productivity has in fact declined?

An alternative hypothesis is that a lot of time spent at work was bullshit (ie, unproductive) to start with - only many people have realised it now.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#137

Post by blitzar »

ak_111 wrote: post #114
yrgulation wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"ban loads of our low paid workers" wait until you learn how much lower people are getting paid now that they depend on a work visa. hint: a lot less than europeans coming in pre-brexit.

You need to factor in the cost of training them and their quality of service. For example European drivers usually have better English skills or have worked in similar coffee shops before, used to driving in Europe, familiar with cleaning and construction regulations, ...

"Of course foreigners steal your job, but maybe, if someone without contacts, money, or speaking the language steals your job, you're shit." ~ Louis C. K.

But sadly yes, Europeans tend to have better English than the English.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#138

Post by arcturus17 »

Goronmon wrote: post #127
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t say why. But work seems to have no “gravity”. Like in my brother’s government job, coming into office was a given. You could have serious career repercussions if you were slacking off. Then the lockdown happened and work moved online. Everyone was slacking off, including the managers. Now they’ve got in-office mandates again but some of the workers just don’t come in when they don’t fee like it and just log i…

It's funny that you haven't actually said that less work is getting done. It just sounds like you are saying that "working from home" is equivalent to "slacking off", even if you didn't intend it to come out that way. Maybe people were always "slacking off" at their jobs, they just had to work harder to hide it when people were in the office?

I posit something similar in a sibling comment, because productivity indicators have not significantly dropped and I doubt the impending recession has anything to do with a newfound collective laziness.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#139

Post by mvc »

robertlagrant wrote: post #129
mvc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No price controls can account for the fact that energy prices are up a lot globally. Sure, but how would these energy companies fancy being under the thumb of Putin. If they want to benefit from the spoils of free markets with consumers who haven't died from covid then they must pay their fair share to maintain them. So whether it's a cap on the prices they can make, or a tax on their profits. Doesn't really matter…

All of that is still paid for by consumers, and we already tax profits. Where do you think the money (including the profit taxes) comes from? Consumer prices.

They are making record profits

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62382624

Not from any particular clerverness. Or increase in productivity. Purely because of abnormal market conditions due to a war waged by a dictator they have collaborated with for the last 20 odd years.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#140

Post by Latty »

break_the_bank wrote: post #128
Latty wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? That's why I was very specific about who should pay it. This is such a common response to any taxation. It is true that any solution done wrong can make things worse, but that's not a reason not to try and solve the problem, it's a reason to do it right. The alternative, not taxing anyone much, has been tried: it gets us here, with public services collapsing and the country becoming less and less desirable to ex…

Isn’t income over a certain number already taxed at 45%? How much higher are you proposing?

In theory, in practice the very rich pay an effective tax rate of around 20%, because they can turn it into capital gains and dividends with lower rates than income tax.

So we need to increase taxes there rather than income tax, and, I would personally argue, begin taxing wealth rather than just income when people have millions of pounds of assets.

Of course, I'd also argue we should have higher bands, once we fix the other problems and people are actually paying those rates. Paying say, 60% over a million pounds of income seems totally reasonable for me. You've already got a huge amount of income at that point taxed at a lower rate. You can afford to pay more, and should want to in order to get a better society to live in.

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