Britain is not a highly taxed country https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/09/18/britain-is-not-a-highly-taxed-country/. As has often been said, the UK wants European-style public services with US levels of taxation. The impossibility of that is now being apparent, and there is only one direction in which we can move.
@RichardJMurphy
What I find hard to understand is that when I received my first salary advice in Luxembourg back in 2005, I checked to see how the deductions on it compared to what I would have been paying in tax and NI in the UK on the same salary. The answer was that give or take a few £s they were pretty much the same (fluctuations in exchange rate would have been enough to take care of the difference). What I don't understand is that the deductions I was paying in Luxembourg were contributing to one of the world's most generous state pension systems (the average state pension over here for a full 40 year career is about £800/week, pensions here are contributions dependent so vary with earnings over your career but the absolute minimum pension for a full 40 year career £441/week)
The healthcare over here is exemplary with no waiting lists worth talking about, no difficulty getting an appointment with a GP nor any difficulty getting dental treatment under the local healthcare system.
How can that be? Is the British government so extraordinarily profligate with taxpayers funds that they can't afford luxuries like decent pensions and healthcare. Has the British civil service ballooned so much that it's soaking up most of the government's revenues - what is that Luxembourg does right that Britain very clearly gets completely wrong?
