{"id":60566,"date":"2021-12-07T08:59:13","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T08:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=60566"},"modified":"2021-12-07T08:59:13","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T08:59:13","slug":"people-think-8-of-uk-government-spending-is-on-mps-and-that-all-pensioners-share-just-11-of-government-spending-between-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2021\/12\/07\/people-think-8-of-uk-government-spending-is-on-mps-and-that-all-pensioners-share-just-11-of-government-spending-between-them\/","title":{"rendered":"People think 8% of UK government spending is on MPs and that all pensioners share just 11% of government spending between them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is staggering how little people know about the UK economy. I <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/luketryl\/status\/1467778968589901826?s=27\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">noticed this chart is part of the thread on Twitter yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-60567\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Screenshot-2021-12-07-at-08.09.59-550x295.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"295\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Screenshot-2021-12-07-at-08.09.59-550x295.png 550w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Screenshot-2021-12-07-at-08.09.59-768x411.png 768w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Screenshot-2021-12-07-at-08.09.59-1536x823.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Screenshot-2021-12-07-at-08.09.59-2048x1097.png 2048w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Screenshot-2021-12-07-at-08.09.59-600x321.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The research appears to be entirely genuine. What is staggering is the scale of ignorance that it reveals. People are quite simply clueless as to what the government spends its money on.<\/p>\n<p>Amongst the extraordinary perceptions of the public belief that 8% of government spending is on MPs salaries, when it is actually 0.01% and that just 11% is spent on pensions,<\/p>\n<p>The implication is almost more worrying: they think 650 MPs get almost two-thirds of what all poensi0oners do, combined.<\/p>\n<p>The overestimation of a great many other spends is also alarming. It's as if the government scare machine might be working on everything from aid, to debt to next zero.<\/p>\n<p>The question is, how to address this?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is staggering how little people know about the UK economy. I noticed this chart is part of the thread on Twitter yesterday: The research<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2021\/12\/07\/people-think-8-of-uk-government-spending-is-on-mps-and-that-all-pensioners-share-just-11-of-government-spending-between-them\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}