So I'll not go into Macro issues and Economics.

The UK has, for a long time, been increasing its debt and not investing in the right areas.

We have devolved governments, who blame Westminster for everything and in turn, Westminster blames the devolved entities for mismanglement!

We have a high rate of tax on everything and rather than find a way to decrease the burden on the public purse, we only seem to be able to increase it, then borrow and then hike taxes.

I'm all for taxation, if I can see tangible benefits of where my money is being spent to benefit the country and our communities.

Everyone, less the excessively rich, is feeling marginalised and no-one believes any of the hot air that comes out of politicians mouths.

How do we address this apathy in the UK?

Probably by moaning in the press and then just getting on with it and "harumphing" a lot as the Brits always do!

Everyone is so busy trying to get by that no-one is focusing on how to change things for the better, as we've got government for that, haven't we......?

But this really is about economics. From the article With weak economic growth, high interest rates and high inflation also known as "stagflation" and entirely expected after the mismanagement during and, especially after, the pandemic. Poorly thought out but headline-grabbing subsidies and stimulus packages, led to an economy that was bound to overheat as economic activity normalised. Central banks around the world were asleep on the job and failed to raise interest rates soon enough so that inflation, which couldn't be "temporary" in this case, was allowed to rise. Interest rates will have to stay higher for longer as a result, or we have to be prepared to live with higher inflation and the associated problems: a seance with Dennis Healey would be instructive!

Taxes in most countries have largely been about reallocation since it became fashionable to tax activity over income with VAT increases disproportionately affecting those with lower incomes:we were supposed to rejoice over reductions in income tax but not notice increased . Lobbies have pushed for, and largely got, lower taxex on capital gains and corporate incomes which, again, tend to favour capital intensive companies and government expenditure eschewed investment over deficit reduction during the long period of low interest rates financial repression. To be fair, there were those calling for investment when debt was cheap (savers were effectively paying off debtors), but they were largely ignored. And now the bond markets have woken from their sleep, done their work, and realised that there might be problems. They even noticed the size of central banks balance sheets!

More investment is required, and social spending, despite the routine calls, cannot really be cut further, so additional sources of revenue must be found. Some subdsidies could be cut – and I refer to the point made years ago by Andrew Orlowski about green subsidies often being handouts to the middle classes – but some taxes will also have to be increased and we can stop giving massive tax breaks promising huge investments and "jobs": I can't remember a single such scheme ever providing a net benefit for the taxpayer.

Oh, but don't say it loudly, improving trade relations with the EU would make businesses lives a lot easier!

Way too much money is spent on housing. This takes resources from productive investment. And, as 2008 proved, real estate does not bear the essential characteristic of real investment: the *risk*, because governments will always bail out property "investors" to rescue banks and avoid social unrest, at the cost of penalizing taxpayer.

The solution is to remove the investment gain component from real estate. Thus making purchase of housing serve its core function - getting actual place to live.

For that Capital Gains Tax of 80% should be introduced for properties and land on sale. To protect earlier investors, the tax should be calculated as yearly average from before and after the new tax date. The tax will discourage buying property *for investment*.

To stimulate renovation business, lower capital gain tax should be applied for the 1st and 2nd year after a purchase (20% and 40%). Land without property will not have the 2 year tax discount.

The tax will: incentivize to sell unused property, not to buy property for now mostly unprofitable investment, generate considerable tax revenue for the state, increase the number of properties for sale, thus lower prices. The tax collected can be used to build social housing. Income tax from long term rentals can be lowered to compensate and stimulate property rentals. So the buy-to-rent profitability will not be affected, but will allow more people to rent cheaper. And people, who got rich this way, then spend their unproductively earned money competing with other people for scarce goods and services.

Affordable housing is incompatible with investment. It is time to stop profiteers from collecting unearned income from gov investments in urban infrastructure - as a tube station nearby, for example, makes nearby property more expensive without any cost for the property owner.

That's one area to address for sure.

But there's so much to work on, across the board, that I don't think this concept, on its own, is enough.

It's a great idea, I've been observing the alleged housing crisis we have for a while and wonder where the empirical evidence is, you know the one to justify all the new build appearing on every parcel of land conceivable around the UK?

I'll throw my cynic's hat into the ring, has anyone seen the remuneration packages for the CEO's of these various house building entities is?

I'm exhausted stating the ****ing obvious whenever this is discussed, and then seeing "the powers that be" head off in the opposite direction, convinced that they (with not one single year of business experience between them) know better than the people working in the industries they are manipulating.

Successive governments have coasted on the tails of global economic headwinds, happy that even though we're not keeping up, we've seen more or less improvements in the economy sufficient to keep people comfortably voting for them. Suddenly, when they can't rely on the global corporations to do the heavy lifting, we're facing the basic fact that no-one in government, opposition or the civil service knows how to (a) reduce costs (b) improve productivity or (c) plan for growth.

They've ignored the SMEs that make up more than half of the economy (who can't lobby constantly for perks), and now we're beginning to see the consequences.

Meanwhile, we get idiot commentators that believe if only we chose the right party, everything would be magically fixed. Here's the headline news: they're all useless.

Lots of public services are running with excess waste in the system that needs to be rooted out (management who add nothing), or poor solutions (lets outsource maintenance and then wonder why we pay over the odds for a light bulb to be replaced). waste on hospital treatment that should not happen, waste on glorious It Projects that fail and fail again.... could go on for hours here

Costs that just rise. Get a sodding "quote" and not an "estimate" used to be a quote was a fixed price, estimate could change

Get people into departments who have an inkling of what they are doing, even better, people who actually know what they are doing in a department - with no bullshit on their CV's.