TheWorldExplained

My wife and I got into it last night about the grocery bill. I pulled up an old Target order from February 2020. 28 items. $64.50. Added every single one back to the cart just to see. $158.30. Same 28 items. Same store. Same cart. $93.80 more. In five years. We didn’t buy more. Didn’t upgrade anything. Didn’t add a single extra item. Just needed the same things we always needed. They told us inflation was transitory. They told us it was under control. They told us the economy was strong. Our cart didn’t get any of those memos. 145% increase in five years. Not one member of Congress has looked at a grocery receipt in decades. And it shows.

🚨 BREAKING: Keir Starmer has given Sadiq Khan a peerage

Cheerful Eastern European decorator tells me that he was advised to declare bankruptcy, so he’s now going home with zero debt. He had 30k outstanding on UK bank credit cards (how was he allowed that?). He’d raised the money to build a house abroad. Now the debt is written off. It took just over a week - by email correspondence. No investigation, and he even got a call asking if he wants to claim Universal Credit. Bankruptcy status won’t affect him back home. Imagine this a thousandfold. How many billions are being paid out by UK taxpayers bailing out such debts? Financial irresponsibility at every level. Ruinous for the country, and all entirely “legal”.

🚨 NEW: The UK will run its biggest ever war simulation next year to "be ready" for a future attack

When it comes to tax in the UK, a lot of people are deluding themselves, thinking the government will just go after the wealthy to pay for the ballooning commitments they’ve made. The truth is, the real target is the middle class. And the reason is simple. The middle class is the only viable option for the kind of revenue the government wants. Start with who’s off the table. A third of British adults pay no income tax at all. The bottom half of earners take home about a quarter of the income in this country and pay roughly a tenth of the tax. There’s no pot of gold buried down there, and every party has spent years promising to protect “working people.” Squeezing them is politically radioactive and would raise next to nothing anyway. The rich are off the table too, whatever the Channel 4 documentaries say. The top 1% already pay 28% of all income tax. Their money is capital, dividends and gains, so they’re mobile, and they’ve already started leaving. One widely quoted forecast has Britain losing half a million millionaires by 2028. Push the rate on these people much higher and you collect less, not more. Threatening them polls brilliantly, but relying on them for a tax bonanza is pure fantasy. Which leaves the middle class, and the middle class can’t run. Most are on PAYE, taxed at source before the money touches their account. They can’t turn a salary into a capital gain. They can’t declare residency in Monaco, because the job, the kids’ school and the mortgage are all here. Their wealth is a house they can’t hide under the mattress and a pension they can’t reach. Numerous, visible and immobile. The perfect target, and in some ways the only one. And here’s how it’s already being done. They won’t raise your headline rate of income tax, because they promised not to. But the threshold freeze, the one that sounds like a non-event on Budget day, is quietly hammering you, and it’s now been extended to 2031. Took out a student loan since 2012? You’ve been paying the graduate tax in all but name. Hold investments outside an ISA? You’ve watched CGT climb to 24%, and it’s likely to be equalised with income tax next. Sent your kids to private school? That’s the VAT charge. Saving into a cash ISA? That shelter just shrank from £20,000 to £12,000. And from 2027, your pension gets pulled into inheritance tax, so the pot you spent a career building can be taxed again on the way out. There’s more coming. Mansion taxes, higher CGT, property levies, dividends. Most of the taxes we’re told will hit the ultra wealthy will actually land on the middle class. And in most cases they’re not sat on fortunes, they’re sat on assets they spent a working life building. What’s worse, the burden grows with every Budget, because of the compounding commitments this government keeps making, and that nearly every other party has pledged too. So who pays for the past, present and future spending of the UK government? The middle class. And there’s not a thing they can do about it. Debt-trapped, stuck in place, with nowhere to turn, and the government knows it. If any of this resonated, you’re likely in the taxation crosshairs. I wish you luck.