Originally Posted by
melmothtw
The 'modern generation' has also grown up with underfunded public services and falling living standards, so you can perhaps understand that their priorities might now lie elsewhere.
The flip side of that coin is over-expectation for public services. People talk about the NHS being underfunded. It has had above inflation spending growth every single year, even under the Tories. What they actually mean is that spending growth has not kept pace with historical norms, which are 4-5% above inflation. At no point does anyone - ever - query whether this is actually affordable.
Between the NHS, Education, Welfare and pensions you've basically spent something like 50% of all government spending - this during a period of the highest taxation ever. Those three budgets will happily swallow all other spending if left unchecked. They are all in essence unconstrained demand.
But we can't have that debate - because any talk of changing funding mechanisms to something more sustainable (eg a European insurance model) is immediately howled down as "privatisation, sold to the yanks".
The other issue with those budgets is that they are largely resource - because they're largely paying people and buying consumables - which the Treasury hates because it can't be capitalised as an asset. Just like - here's the aviation content - service wages and civilian support.
The elephant in the room is the sustainability of those budgets and their current funding mechanism. Everything else is trivia.