This was sixth form socialism of the most uninspiring kind. It is lazy and dangerous to implement populist measures that won’t raise the money politicians promise. Windfall taxes will hurt pensioners who rely on stable returns for a comfortable retirement, sin taxes hit the poorest hardest, and a Mansion Tax would be a vindictive gesture that will eventually find its way down the property ladder to hit much less expensive homes, too.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Samizdata quote of the daySeptember 24th, 2014 |
 13 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
The thing that strikes me most about the Labour portfolio of “policies” is just how unimaginative, vacuous and simply lacking substance it is. They simply don’t have a fucking clue how to run the country without driving it Venezuela style straight into the nearest ditch…
Cont… For example, Ed Balls showing “how tough I intend to be on the deficit” by identifying £400Mn of savings from child benefit, when the deficit will be £75Bn in 2015. So only another 99.58% to go then you cretin…
The renter is the one who pays.
A strong demolition of this measure by Clive Aslet today.
True – the Labour Party conference showed that “Red Ed” (and so on) are still at university leading a “rent strike” by the students.
The next government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (due to rigged constituency boundaries and so on) is likely a group of people who think they are still running a Student Union.
It will be fun to watch their prat falls – as long as one does so from a safe distance.
For example a little house overlooking the lake in Zug Switzerland.
From the Clive Aslett article ….”If property prices are to come down, credit must be rationed or more houses built.”
He is confused on the impact of credit rationing making houses cheaper if he thinks( and that is how I read it) that this will make houses more affordable generally. That is those who can’t afford a property now then could. These people will likely be the ones who will not be able to obtain credit when it is rationed and so again no house purchase for them.
If the Conservatives had advocated removing the winter fuel allowance for the ‘richest’ 5% of pensioners, Labour and the media would have gone berserk. Yet when they do it it seems to be a sensible and moderate idea.
Johnnydub,
You are very unusual in thinking. The scary thing is a lot will think GBP400m is a lot. And it is to an individual but to the state it is a sum you lose down the back of the sofa.
I cease to be amazed at how much history these cretins can continue to ignore which shows that the very last thing you do to improve tax income for your wild spending plans is to actually raise tax rates or put more tax on stuff, in fact lowering tax rates is more likely to achieve improved income.
Raising the tax free income allowance is a lot fairer and better for the low paid, for the party that advocates a minimum wage, the fact they then tax that minimum wage is not only bizarre but downright immoral by their own standards.
Runcie,
That’s partly because lowering tax rates reduces their power, and so is just as painful to them as reducing government spending.
The other part is due to a belief even more primitive than “sixth form socialism” – that ‘the rich’ are secretly hording these huge piles of wealth, and if they could only somehow be made to disgorge their ‘fair share’ there would be enough to pay for everything being asked for, and more besides.
To rephrase Gore Vidal, “It is not enough that the state be rich, the people must be poor.”
So might the Mansion tax lead to well connected folks having their moats maintained on the dole?
What Da Phuq is Sixth Form Socialism?