Today is 'budget' day. A budget is something that you work out when you have a fixed amount of money as income and you work out what you can afford to spend.
However government does not work like that, like an adolescent it works out what it wants to spend, then starts borrowing or cadging of everybody else to meet 'the deficit'. With an adolescent that resorts to demanding money with menaces, they were dealt with in a summary fashion by either parents or the local copper. Government has no such constraints on it as it has the monopoly of violence, and when the citizen withdraws his consent to be robbed blind, he/she is faced with jail or heavy fines.
So the word 'budget' is a misnomer, Government has decided it would like to get involved in another shooting war with no exit strategy- AGAIN !.
Brogan in this article is arguing that the 40% rate should now be honestly named the standard rate, and the 25% rate the lower rate. I agree, until we start calling things as they really are, we are never going to get out of this mess.
You will hear a lot today about nonsense about a 'budget for growth', governments do not create real wealth producing jobs, they create public sector jobs which are a drain on national resources.
The Government is still borrowing, State expenditure is still growing.
Would that we had a Sir John Cowperthwaite had the helm, with government spending limited to 15% of GDP.
With George O it is a game of sado-masochism, except in this case the wealth producers are walking away rather than be whipped further.
8 comments:
"40% rate should now be honestly named the standard rate, and the 25% rate the lower rate."
hah! classic. the median income is £22,000, the vast majority of people will never touch the £35,000 higher rate, and Libertarians want it to be called the 'standard rate'. Shows how out of touch with the average person libertarians are!
I suppose by extension the vast majority of people who never touch the standard rate are 'sub standard'. How very Ayn Rand.
Maybe it is to mean that the majority of income tax is collected at the 40% rate...
Mr Stone, you picked on one point.
The main thrust is that the Government decides what it wants to spend and then takes it.
The most insidious tax is inflation and we are all being robbed blind by it, unless you are a debtor.
You are?
Ah, okay.
But until that, and the money printing machines that cause it are restrained we are heading ever deeper into insolvency and financial disaster.
...the wealth producers are walking away rather than be whipped further
A bank a wealth producer? A fucking bank?
Congratulations on winning this week's Polly Toynbee award for economic illiteracy.
Whatever,
Try conducting an export business without banks.
Try conducting ANY business without banks. They provide services without which life would be slower, riskier and more expensive.
The problem with banks is that we have state funded bailouts, deposit insurance (skewing consumer choice), and a currency monopoly enforced by legal tender laws. Add to that the ratings agencies have not been skewered for AAA rating junk. Who has not skewered them? Yes, THE STATE.
So please, stop this lazy banker bashing and look to the parent - the state - who brought up such spoilt children (the banks).
Roger -- my comments weren't 'lazy banker bashing'. They were 'lazy author bashing'. Guthrum chose to use the possibility of HSBC moving offshore as an example of how the government is 'whipping' the 'wealth producers'.
Now, if you -- or he -- would like to explain how banks actually produce wealth (rather than simply moving existing wealth around), I'll be happy to debate the issue with you. But that wasn't your response; you failed to actually address the point I made, and rather responded to a totally different one -- that banks serve no purpose. I didn't actually claim that.
So, how do banks directly produce wealth?
Ok lets use WPP instead, gone to Dublin
HSBC also contribute more than a few bob to the exchequer
eight of ten financial companies are looking to move out of the UK to Switzerland or the Channel Islands.
Economic illiteracy that banks are unproductive or shall we go back to barter
@Guthrum
Ok lets use WPP instead, gone to Dublin
Only part of WPP have gone; plus WPP is an advertising business. They don't create wealth either, just demand.
HSBC also contribute more than a few bob to the exchequer
Through taxes. By that logic, the government should raise every public sector workers salary to (say) a million quid -- think of all the extra taxes that would bring in!
eight of ten financial companies are looking to move out of the UK to Switzerland or the Channel Islands.
I've already agreed with RT that (some of) the functions that financial institutions provide are actually useful. However, that doesn't mean that those institutions need to be based in the UK -- as long as folks have access to those services, they don't care where that company is based...
Economic illiteracy that banks are unproductive or shall we go back to barter
Sorry, Guthrum, but I call bullshit. Of course banks do something useful -- I've already agreed that. What I was taking issue with was your very specific observation that they are 'wealth producers'. They are not, and your refusal to address this specific point is telling.
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