How would you tackle the deficit?

[Lexi]

I believe it's over 900 billion.

What would you do? Withdraw from the EU? Reform benefits? Tackle immigration? Raise taxes on the rich?

And would your policies cost more than they save?

[Jack H]

More slowly, keeping people in work is more important than fast reductions.
If Britain left the EU, the farming industry would collapse, it exists on EU subsidies..

It is not possible for normal people to quantify the cost of proposals.

[Bear]

Withdraw from the EU.
Stop getting involved in pointless wars.
Stop paying benefits to those not born here.
Benefits for one child only.
Charge non British for use of the NHS.
Cap benefits for the unemployed.It can easily be less than £26,000.
Remove road tax and put it the price on petrol - the bigger the car,or more mileage done,the more you pay.
Cap how much someone can get into debt,with their bank.

[SW11]

Bazza and Bear have answered for me. Nothing more to add

[Wick]

I would cut the military budget by bringing troops home to protect OUR borders, I believe we can defend ourselves against global terrorism from within our own borders.
I would address problems with our immigration policies and ENFORCE them.
I would raise taxes on the rich but only modestly and very gradually.
I would penalize businesses that outsource jobs and I would reward businesses that generate jobs within our country. I would make very modest cuts to all social programs and I would address fraud and abuse. I would end the failed war on drugs and I would make major cuts to all foreign aid.

Realizing that these suggestions would cause a major unemployment crisis I would address that by large tax breaks for small businesses that create jobs,especially manufacturing and production facilities.

[herbie7754]

I would introduce a sliding scale of personal taxation, the more you earn the higher percentage of tax you pay.
At the moment, tax percentages rise by stepped increments, so that people earning between one amount, and a much higher sum, pay the same percentage tax, so long as they don't enter a lower or higher tax bracket.
My idea is to make a graph with % tax on the vertical axis, and taxable income on the horizontal axis.
Both axis are logarithmic so the more you earn the quicker you pay a higher tax percentage.

Of course, people who earn many millions can always give money to registered charities to reduce their tax burden, or re-invest it WITHIN our own country, to offset this against tax !

[guiri]

Decimate the Civil Service.

[musicrulesok]

Not selling companies off to foreign buyers, bring back call centres to UK, not destroying the NHS, because those reforms will see it end up like the USA. Bringing the likes of Health care Professions to train up in hospitals, keeping universities solely academic with people who wish to do postgraduates etc, being able to do so. Reopening the coal mines and allowing people to make goods in the UK not "made in China"!
Making rich people ie Celebs, media, greedy MPs and bankers have a basic salary each depending on what they do not millions like they have and they pay a certain tax, hence bringing the extra monies back into the economy. Stopping unnecessary bonuses too!
Not waging wars, when we are supposedly broke and our military has been cut. We should be fighting for the preservation of each other and all life not the universal destruction of all!
Enough said!

PS The deficit isn't all of our problems, because it was greed that got there in the first place and greed is still playing a vital part. With the idle rich allowing poorer folk to pay for their extravagant lifestyles, it catches up with you after a while!

[Michael]

Excuse me... the deficit is in the TRILLIONS !
1. raise the tax on any Corporation
2. Over $200,000...raise the tax bracket
3. JOBS ! ! ! ! ! jobs = tax revenue
4. Get SERIOUS about "Fair Trade"
5. Social Security tax goes BACK TO 6.2 % ( why spend
"tomorrows' money" on inept management of
our economy) ?

[Paul]

I would certainly seriously consider a withdrawal from the EU. It is worth remembering our farmers managed very well before we joined the Common Market and money was not wasted on quotas with surpluses being sold off cheap to the Russians! Membership is costly and leaving would free us to make our own laws and choose which regulations work best for our own businesses. The latter being vital to our economic recovery.

Ditch the social engineering in our education system and return to stringent teaching in an ordered environment because only when the system educates our own children to the standard required of employers will we not have to bring in immigrants to do the jobs many of our people can't, or won't. So bring back the work ethic too.

Foreign aid is something we can ill-afford. This aid is going to many countries who are clearly able to manage without it.

Prune the NHS back to being a genuine 'if the bough breaks' service for British people rather than the mollycoddling 'available to anyone who cares to ask' branch of social services it has become.

Hopefully the Government will overturn the reckless and disingenuous House of Lords defeat over its welfare reform plans. These are long overdue and it's high time those like the pathetic hand-wringing bishops moaning on and on about 'child poverty' were given the contempt they deserve: many hard-working families can only wish they received £26K after tax and other deductions. THEY have to live in a house commensurate with their means, and THEY sometimes have to move because of circumstances, and THEIR children often have to share a bedroom.

This is all about state money: our money: taxpayer's money. Only pruning the expenditure of this source can tackle the deficit which is reduced by curtailing borrowing because of the interest payment that have to be made.

The idea of taxing the 'rich' always gets the left excited and licking their lips, but I'm not sure that I can see the justification of on one hand encouraging entrepeneurs who start off taking huge risks, and then when those who don't come a serious cropper succeed, punish them with more taxation.
50% is probably about right in my view.

As to whther these policies would cost more than they raise, I obviously do not believe they would otherwise I couldn't really proffer them as suggestions for takling the deficit.

On the whole though I think the coalition is doing reasonably well.