About the Author

Hilary P. https://adeptenglish.com/authors/hilary/ is a professional psychotherapist and has

practised in the United Kingdom for over 20 years. Hilary has a keen interest in language learning,
with a classical language educational background. Hilary's particular interests & experience is in
psychology, education & learning, especially online learning and language acquisition.

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Transcript For Learn English Article 397

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 English Listening Mp3 Lesson On Who Pays For The
Pandemic
English Listening MP3 Lesson About Paying For The
Pandemic
Today’s English listening mp3 lesson https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-mp3/ is
going to talk about the English language used when talking about taxes and how people in the UK
are discussing **who is** and **how we** are going to pay for the enormous costs associated with
dealing with the pandemic and the impact of shutting the UK economy down.

The `UK has the 5th largest economy https://cebr.com/reports/world-economic-league-table-2020/

in the world` in 2020/21. In 2018
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/
file/752202/Budget_2018_red_web.pdf , the UK government thought it would spend around £842
billion pounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_Kingdom of
taxpayer’s money in 2019-2020. The government expected to borrow around £55 billion and yet
here we are in 2021 and the total amount borrowed so far is £394 billion pounds, wow!

UK Taxes in 2020 will be £57 billion lower, and spending £281 billion higher
http://cdn.obr.uk/CCS1020397650-001_OBR-November2020-EFO-v2-Web-accessible.pdf if that was
my household budget, I’d be anxious.

It looks like the UK has had to **over spend https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52663523 ** by

`£300+ billion` **in a single year**, and the country is already talking about how are we going to
pay for this?

It was way back in 1789 that Franklin said you can only be certain of two things in life, **death** and
**taxes**. Government comes at a cost, a significant cost, and the everyday decisions we hear on
the TV or radio almost always result in someone having to pay more in taxes. The pandemic is no
different.

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Transcript: English Listening Mp3 Lesson On Who Pays For
The Pandemic
Hi there and welcome to this latest podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/7ixeOS7ezPTZSaISIx2TTw from Adept English. If you listened to our
podcast from last Monday, I was recommending that if you find the podcasts difficult, then you
might benefit from buying our Most Common 500 Words Course
https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/500-most-common-words-course/ to improve your
level of English, so that the podcasts become easier.

If you are already able to understand around 70-80% of our podcasts on first listen, then they are at
the right level for your English language learning. And we do keep the 70 most recent podcasts
available for you to listen to for free. But what if you’d like even more practice with your English
language learning? Well, for a small fee, to cover the cost of downloading, you can access many,
many more podcasts on our website https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/adept-english-
podcast-bundles/ – 50 podcasts at a time.

This means hours and hours of Adept English to listen to – on lots of topics. So you can practice your
English language learning wherever you are, whatever you’re doing if you have 50 podcasts
downloaded https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/adept-english-podcast-bundles/ to your
mobile phone. You can really get going with your English that way!

Reassessing at the start of January 2021

So it’s the start of January and we are still in pandemic. Brexit is complete – we’ve left the European
Union. And it’s time for a reassessment of where we are going, what direction we are heading in?
Many people are hopeful that the dire situation – ‘dire’, DI-R-E means bad – the ‘dire’ situation in the
UK and around the world will be improving over the next couple of months.

We’ve got the even nastier virus that transmits more easily
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/mutant-coronavirus-united-kingdom-sets-alarms-its-
importance-remains-unclear , going round in most of the UK, but also the vaccine roll out continues.
So there’s good and there’s bad news in the situation. And although I think we’ll be locked down for
the months of January and February (why would they not? Those are most people’s least favourite
months anyway, so there’s a sense that we’re not really missing that much!) - despite this, most
people feel hopeful because of the vaccine programme.

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I say ‘most people’. There are some who’re not convinced that it’s good. Either because they suspect
the vaccine may not work or that the benefit will not last very long – and you’ll need to be re-
vaccinated. Or they think that there may be too many people with a bad reaction to it.

Paying our debts in 2021

But most people are feeling more positive, I think, about 2021. However, one of the things which
faces us in January – apart from tax returns and the bill for Christmas, which for us is not too bad
this year, as we weren’t able to do very much! One of the things which faces us is the question of
how to pay for the pandemic?

How do we plan to pay for all those government schemes to help people out with money, to
support businesses which couldn’t operate financially? The UK government, in line with many other
governments around the world has spent a great deal and government debt, that’s D-E-B-T has
grown enormously. ‘Debt’ means ‘how much you owe’, how much you have to pay back. If you use a
credit card, then your ‘debt’ is how much you owe on your card. And the UK government has a big
debt. And it’s estimated that the UK has spent around £280 billion so far. That’s a big hole in the
public finances!

A solution which has been suggested

So one of the things which you read in the newspapers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-
55236851 at the moment and which you hear people say is ‘Tax the rich’. This is offered as a solution
to the current problem. ‘The rich’ means ‘the people with lots of money’ – and who can therefore
afford to pay some more tax. And ‘tax’, T-A-X is the money that the government take from everybody.

Statistics show us https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2020/06/24/post-coronavirus-the-

rich-will-get-richer-from-rising-inequality/?sh=135e75df774a that over the last few years, the rich
have been getting richer and the poor – that’s the people without any money - have been getting
poorer. So this ‘tax the rich’ is seen by many as a good idea. It’s certainly better than taking more tax
from the poor. So again, the poor, ‘P-O-O-R’ means those people in the opposite situation to the rich
– those people who have very little money. The argument says that the people who are rich have
been less affected by the pandemic and the people who have least have been most affected.

Many of the people in the middle have still been able to carry out their work online. It’s the people
who generally have to go in to work, who have to be physically present to do their jobs, who’ve been

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most badly affected by the pandemic. If you’re a hairdresser or you work in a shop or a restaurant or
if you’re a painter and decorator – you decorate people’s houses for a living – then you will have had
no work and no money coming in. And of course, there are those people who’ve simply lost their
jobs and have no work at all.

What does the Wealth Tax Commission say?

So of course, taxing the rich is better than taxing more those people who don’t have much in the first
place. But who are the rich? How do we define that? Of course, who is rich and who is poor is what
we call ‘relative’ anyway – depends where you stand how you see it. What one person would count
as ‘rich’ differs from what another person would think of as ‘rich’. The UK is a rich country
comparatively. So an organisation in the UK called ‘The Wealth Tax Commission’ - they’ve been
looking into this https://theconversation.com/footing-the-covid-19-bill-economic-case-for-tax-hike-
on-wealthy-151945 .

Their version of ‘tax the rich to pay for the pandemic’ often includes the figure of £1M. So
households which are worth more than £1M should be taxed 1% of their wealth each year, for five
years. And this would raise £260 billion, supposedly – so it would go a long way to filling that hole in
the public finances. It’s a bit simplistic perhaps – ‘simplistic’ means ‘overly simple’ meaning that
probably the situation is more complicated. I think that one of the problems is that rich people have
far more flexibility in where they put their money – so such a tax may cause money to just simply
‘move out of the country’ and be put elsewhere, so that the action would generate less money than
expected.

And also there may be people, especially in places like London, who have owned property for a long
time – or whose house has been passed down from parent to child – and who therefore may fall
into the category of ‘the rich’ because of the value of their house in London being so ridiculously
high. It may not actually mean they’re rich – they’ve just got property which has increased in value
and they’ve held onto it for a long time. Of course, you could say ‘You have a property worth over
£1M – you should sell it to pay the tax’. But maybe that’s difficult if the person is old and they’ve
been there a long time and they’re attached to their property.

Too simple perhaps, but some positives

It’s a simplistic idea perhaps, but one which has lots of people supporting it, and which even enjoys

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some support amongst those people who are worth more than £1M. It’s seen as something which is
less likely to do further damage to the economy. Whereas if you raise tax on goods, so called VAT or
if you take more tax on people’s earnings, that’s income tax – this tends to put more of a dent in the
economy. And that’s the last thing that we need at the moment.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens, won’t it? And to see what other countries, all
around the world do to raise money to cover the debts incurred as a result of the virus. Use this
podcast to practise your English.

Goodbye
Listen a couple of times to ensure that you understand all the words, looking up any new words you
haven’t heard before. Then listen a few more times, once you know all the words and you
understand all the podcast. Then you’ll have that lovely experience of being able to understand and
think, completely in English.

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Links
* Mutant coronavirus in the United Kingdom https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/mutant-
coronavirus-united-kingdom-sets-alarms-its-importance-remains-unclear

* English listening https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-mp3/

* Income inequality https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2020/06/24/post-coronavirus-

the-rich-will-get-richer-from-rising-inequality/?sh=135e75df774a

* UK Economic and fiscal outlook http://cdn.obr.uk/CCS1020397650-001_OBR-November2020-EFO-

v2-Web-accessible.pdf

* UK 2020 5th largest economy https://cebr.com/reports/world-economic-league-table-2020/

* How much will COVID-19 cost? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52663523

* UK Government spending
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_Kingdom

* UK 2018 Budget https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/

attachment_data/file/752202/Budget_2018_red_web.pdf

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* Tax the wealthy https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55236851

* The COVD-19 bill https://theconversation.com/footing-the-covid-19-bill-economic-case-for-tax-

hike-on-wealthy-151945

* Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7ixeOS7ezPTZSaISIx2TTw

* Podcast Bundles https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/adept-english-podcast-bundles/

* Most Common 500 English Words https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/500-most-

common-words-course/

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First published: January 2021

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