You published an analysis of how the budget might affect people’s personal finances (Budget 2024: what it means for you, 30 October), like most other newspapers and the BBC website did. While people want to know how their income might be affected, this analysis takes no account of how we all benefit from improvements in the NHS, including reductions in waiting times, and investment more generally in our public services. Denis Healey used to call this the “social wage”. If I can see a doctor and get treatment quickly, if trains are more reliable, if unsafe school buildings are replaced etc, then my family will be better off even if my disposable income doesn’t rise.
Along with the vast majority of citizens, I cannot afford private healthcare or private education. Another £5 or £10 a week in my pocket would not change this. Only a fool or a populist politician would claim that public services can be improved without raising more revenue from taxation.
John Boaler
Calne, Wiltshire
• Ben Jennings’ cartoon (30 October) of the outraged boss being unable to pay his staff is a great critique of our capitalist system. It illustrates, acutely, the impossible task faced by a chancellor seeking to rebalance the economy. Businesses are established to make money, but they wouldn’t exist without their workers.
Despite that obvious state, no owners, except the most progressive, want to pay their workers any more than necessary. That includes increasing their contribution towards national insurance-based benefits. An additional disincentive for large business owners is that they are unlikely to be using state-run education, health or social services, so don’t value them. They do, however, expect free use of emergency services and infrastructure – for example, roads.
Richard Churcher
London
• Farmer Jonathan Bell (‘Nail in the coffin’: family farmers respond to inheritance tax changes, 4 November) has a farm so valuable that to pass it to the next generation, he estimates, would now incur an inheritance tax bill of around £400,000, yet – despite no doubt long hours and hard work – it only produces an annual profit of £30,000. Surely Tory free-marketeers would deplore such an unproductive use of capital and advise Mr Bell to sell his manifestly overvalued asset and deploy the capital elsewhere.
Ian Simpson
London
• In her article (Here is the real story of Labour’s historic budget – investment over decline, 1 November), Angela Rayner says “we are also strengthening protections for council housing”, yet she hasn’t committed to scrapping right to buy, which has removed over 2m homes from our social housing stock, with 41% now in the hands of private landlords. Your editorial (1 November) bemoans the fall in council funding – 40% in real terms since 2010 – something the budget will not make up for. No mention of land value tax as a fair replacement for council tax to cover the full cost of council spending. Is there any joined-up thinking in government?
Mike Lake
Trusley, Derbyshire
• In the past, not only did we not know the contents of the budget until the chancellor spoke at the dispatch box, but prices at petrol pumps and bars rose at 6pm. Last Wednesday, having received a Guardian alert while walking on Dartmoor, I went for an end-of-walk pint fully expecting the beer to be 1p less. “Don’t know anything about it, mate,” said the barman.
Les Bright
Exeter, Devon
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