They were supposed to be rolling out booster jabs in September and instead we have 'third vaccine for vulnerable as part of the initial course'

Not sure I understand what's different here.

It's not living a "pity life", it's working out where you personally get value.

Not buying a fancy new car or leasing all the time buys me time with my children. Buying a smaller but still nice house buys me years of adventures with my wife. Not spending all my money on whatever buys me decades of my time.

Working until I'm 70 and then living a pitiful life until I die sounds horrendous. I'm lucky to earn a salary that allows me to escape that fate, but it requires care and planning to achieve.

. I cannot imagine myself sitting for 20-25 years not working and just waiting to die.

Waiting to die? That's the best thing you can possibly do outside of work? That's a terrible relationship with work you have.

Whatever you like to do, I imagine you can do it for a year or two but then what? Won't get you bored?

Fascinated at the idea that doing what I want for decades is boring and delaying death yet doing what someone else tells me to do away from my loved ones for 8 hours a day is life affirming and wonderous.

You need a better life outside of work. If the most fun you can possibly have is at work you either work at the world's most exciting job or have a severe lack of imagination.

The same tax rate on everyone affects everyone the same when it comes to calling something regressive. This has a threshold, making it progressive at a first pass. The relative rate approaches 1.25% as income increases towards infinity, assuming no other effects. It affects richer people more.

Edit - the point you came in at though was someone not understanding NI or what the change was, so why you were asking for a citation for "it's 2021 now" is a mystery.

I don't know what isn't clear here. The change to NI is flat over a threshold and the new rates don't go to 2%, the other poster has linked to a page explaining the current rates, perhaps confused by what year it is.

What they linked to is not the new tax. What's unclear?

You don't think OP will enjoy 20-25 years of not working and instead doing what they want?

Yes, those are the current rates. Those rates are changing, and then the change will be replaced with a new tax called iirc the social care levy. It is 2021.

Firstly it tapers off, going to 2% for high earners.

This is wrong. You're talking about NI before the change.

The new tax is also regressive, which adds to this.

Unless this is about the age cutoff, it's not regressive. NI is itself but the change isn't and the levy won't be unless I'm missing something.

Have rents only risen very recently? Not been a growing problem as is constantly claimed here?

So that's why they've risen, people can just afford much more than they used to.

30k plus 2.9k employers NI makes it 32.9k, you get £24k from that.

For £30k, I make it a 25% tax rate in the UK and about 32% in Norway. Going to depend on how you want you want to get an equivalent salary, and other countries can be different (Denmark is higher I think). Figures include both UK and NO employer tax/ni.

governmental spending that you'd deem not to benefit taxpayers like me now, such as the NHS, child benefit, ESA, etc.

Not great to put words into other people's mouths, I've not said this.

Not everything the government spends money on is worthwhile, so some is a negative return. Some will obviously be a net benefit and some is just not relevant to the person paying tax.

We don't all benefit equally, it'd be frankly bizarre if we did.

It won't be the majority, but it won't be an ignorably tiny percentage at the top either.

Given the society in which we live couldn't exist without government and taxation

Again, not what they're saying.

And you dont think any of these things are valuable

That's not what they said.

It's pretty obvious at least some people will pay more in taxes than they benefit from them. That's not the same as arguing for no government exoenditure.

Looking forward to watching the arguments shift from "it won't happen" to "only some have done it" to "ok most do it but most people don't need it" to "it's good the charges have come in".

It's structured in such a way though that there's a guaranteed level of interest

I don't know what you mean by this, it doesn't sound like the loan system.

The interest rate is fixed at inflation +3%[1].

No it isn't, that's the max. Min is RPI.

Actual rate you don't know until you have paid it back / it's cancelled, it can easily (and for quite a lot of people) be negative.

Paying it off is currently equivalent to saving in an account getting 1.1% but without having the access to the money if you need it.

Adds to the difficulty of working this out definitely. The 1.5% figure is useful, thanks, I guess the other important thing is how it's distributed between people.

Since you seem to know a decent amount here, do you know of a figure for estimating where the burden is for increased employment costs? Like corp tax is something like 1/3rd on employees, and as you say some goes to increased costs some to lower salaries.

Splitting the rise between employers NI and employees NI seems to have worked for the messaging. This is much closer to a 2.5% increase in the long run (short term companies can't cut salaries easily but they can definitely delay / reduce increases as well as lower hiring salaries).

Wage increases have clear quirks though. The dropping of that part of the lock here is because of that.

I see people complaining about vegans and vegetarians being loud about 1000x as much as I see them being loud themselves.