How can people save?

All governments print money and come up with new ways to tax people but in the past few years they have been printing even more than usual and calling it quantitative easing. The British government has also introduced new taxes on things like insurance and increased VAT. How can people save for anything when the government keeps devaluing our savings?

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The pound in our pockets isn’t the same, the more money they pump into the economies the less we can buy with our money. They create inflation and that forces up commodity prices like oil, gas, housing and food.

The latest daft idea has come from the European Commission who want standard VAT rates throughout the EU and this might mean us paying VAT on food and maybe the full rate on energy. At the moment there is no VAT on food and although we have rising food prices (because they keep printing money) food is relatively less expensive than luxuries. The same applies applies to our gas and electricity with the VAT on fuel bills at 5%. I agree that the rates should be the same throughout the EU, it would make the system simpler, particularly for companies trading across borders in the EU. We should however keep a differential between essential and non-essentials. The whole system works against the poorest in society and more in favour of the middle classes who live life on credit. In the long term the tax and benefits system is in no ones interest. The way it has been formulated creates a poverty trap that people can’t escape from. They can’t even save for a deposit on a house, by the time they have saved up; the price has gone up. This is clearly a form of wage slavery, to keep people in their place. Then as people struggle to save and struggle to get jobs; the government and their media cohorts brand them as benefit scrounging scum and cut their benefits. Yes, people on benefit often have wide screen televisions and sometimes even smart phones, they lack education and simply listen to and watch the advertising that tends to brainwash them into certain behaviour. Is education improving or is it still for the select few at the so called ‘good’ schools?

I am in favour of VAT because it is a tax on luxuries but essentials must remain VAT free. It could even be extended or raised so other unfair taxes such as the car tax and TV licence could be scrapped. I hate to agree with David Cameron again but his latest idea that the British films industry should produce films that people will actually want to watch and that could make money, isn’t a bad idea! But it’s too little too late; as usual. Why not extend the idea to television programmes and scrap Eastenders and the other rubbish soaps and make stuff that can be exported. The BBC  could be self supporting and wouldn’t need the licence money! We could also get rid of many direct taxes and even get rid of income tax for most people. The council tax could definitely go and have a indirect tax replacement.

These ideas won’t be implemented. Politicians have a vested interest in keeping the less well off down and so do civil servants. They don’t want equality , they want to lord it over the great unwashed.

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Related articles

• Value Added Taxes Around the World (turbotax.intuit.com)
• Graphic: VAT oddities, VAT fraud and VAT increases (telegraph.co.uk)
• Brussels’ VAT shake-up ‘will cost families £800 a year’ (dailymail.co.uk)
• The New French VAT Tax: a headache for business, the example of the boulangeries (johngaynardcreativity.blogspot.com)

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