Hence my use in the hypothetical sense of the verb "would" in the opening sentence... But my comments apply equally to Westminster which is afflicted with the same fiscal incontinence as Holyrood.
So you want to cut the state in half, do you? Halve education, halve healthcare, halve defence, halve justice, halve old age pensions? Really? The total tax take is about 40% of GDP, as it has been for many decades and as it is in most developed countries; that money gathered in taxes is not lost to the economy but is the economy - all of it is circulated back around the economy rapidly. Fortunately your proposal is unlikely to attract the votes of anybody except a few who are either very rich and selfish - or very stupid.
i have always done a lot of overtime and it sickened me how much tax i was paying. it must be a real pisser to be in the higher tax bracket, more often than not through hard work and devotion to your vocation. i seem to be in that bracket like many up here due to the levels of self employment, where i am big enough to pay tax and collect vat but to small to find ways of avoiding it. i cant decide weather braders is genuinely angry,envious, ignorant or just taking the piss on how we do things up here, i think it's a mixture of the 2nd and 3rd. @Gimlet, people arnt gonna leave because there mansion is now gonna cost a little more, people live here, like anywhere else for many reasons. i don't know if i believe the the 220k average house price stated in edinbro, considering the prices you pay for homes over here in argyll. the shock i got when i moved from aberdoom. there must be an awful lot of cheep flats in Edinburgh. but i was still willing to pay the price just for the life style. just pulling figures oot o ma heed here, but if your a self made person i recon it was 80% you 20%state and citizen assisted. so give us back our 20. or feck off.:smile:
I didn't say people would leave necessarily- though some will, certainly if there is a punitive "mansion" tax where people are effectively charged an annual fee to own property above a certain value - but that the market will devalue to meet the new reality. That sounds great if you want a house but can't afford one, except that market devaluation also means market slowdown, maybe even stagnation so there will be fewer properties on the market and a reduced incentive to build more. And if there is a mansion tax of the kind Labour and Vince Cable dream about, which will extend far beyond tradtional "mansion" territory, there will be many usually elderly people who own large properties but have little income, who will be forced to sell into a depressed market to avoid a charge they cannot afford. That is tantamount to a land grab. Its an extraordinarily illiberal concept particularly when it will without question devalue and slow the housing market thereby producing a net reduction in overall tax revenues, not an increase. Illiberal, spiteful, fiscally and economically counter-productive and implemented only because it is in sympathy with the prevailing political ideology.
i feel like shedding a tear for the poor souls that will be affected by this new tax structure. cant imagine there will be much stagnation when the very people that are forced to move due to seeking work."get on your bike and find work"remember that one? will not be looking for homes over 325K and will certainly not be looking for mansions. as for the poor sod living in said homes with no real income, well i guess they will have to make like the MAJORITY and deal with it.
You are choosing to misquote Gimlet and even put words into his mouth, but I am sure he is more than capable of defending himself. What I would like to say is that whilst taxes are part of the economy tax cuts are not lost to the economy either, they are left in people's pockets to spend how they wish, and if they are spent overseas then so be it, we are part of a global economy after all. Productivity is falling, there is spare industrial capacity, energy and commodity prices are fluctuating, France is on the brink of collapse and Germany is starting to look a bit queasy. The post war tax, borrow and spend paradigm has run it's course. The bankers and big business are sitting on mountains of cash and overvalued assets; we need something new.
Glidd is living in a dream land. That's what I call Switzerland, you know - Dream Land. It does indeed sound like the closest you will get to a democracy in the modern age. The Establishment in the UK would never go for it though. Too scary and they don't want to give up their power to the great unwashed.
deffo when yer blind yer blind.:smile: seriously tho. two many people to please all at once combined with today's high expectations.
Politics:- The art of pursuading the electorate that the others should bare the resposibility of paying more of theirs so that we can keep more of ours.
Gimlet's exact words, which I quoted, were "How about cutting the size, reach and cost of the state by half". This necessarily means cutting state expenditure by half, does it not? And how have I misquoted him? If G puts forward such a radical proposal, surely he must expect to have its consequences pointed out.
The issue is the velocity of circulation of money around the economy. If money circulates around more rapidly, that is growth - if more of it sits unused, that is less growth or recession. The tax take is circulated much more rapidly than money "left in people's pockets".
Steady on, old boy! You might justify describing France as having been on the brink of collapse in 1789, 1870, or 1940. Saying France is on the brink of collapse in 2014 is totally nonsensical.
which you Really. As recently as 2008, the problem was that many of the world's major banks (including in the UK) were very seriously undercapitalised. Since then strenuous measures have been taken, at great expense, to re-capitalise the banks and repair their balance sheets. This has been largely successful; stability has been restored. This is the state of affairs which you describe as "sitting on mountains of cash" as though that were a bad thing.
yes stability was restored to the capitalist system by a state communal ( communist ?? ) hand out,,,, I am still laughing
I don't think it does. I can't imagine the state spends uniformly across the whole range of activities it engages in therefore if you half the state you wouldn't necessarily spend half the amount. It could also be argued that the cost of the state is separate from the expenditure of the state i.e. 1 mandarin could spend the same amount as 2 mandarins halving the cost of mandarins yet the spending remains the same. A bit like how many angels can dance on a pin head. Anyway, it is the principle that the state is too big and needs cutting back that I agree with.
Only a moment ago you were praising the virtues of the velocity of money. Businesses lack the confidence to invest when existing plant operates at less than capacity. Is that a good thing ?
Prosperity and growth are not built on spending and consumption - and especially not state spending and consumption and concomitant borrowing that can never be repaid; they are built on production and exports. Anyone who thinks otherwise should go home and try spending and borrowing their way to riches and see how they get on. But don't come running to me for a bail out when the roof falls in. I shall turn a deaf ear. As you sow so shall you reap.
