Current Affairs The General Election

[JimmyJeffers]

Absolute and utter nonsense.......

I know that you (probably) don't mean that literally, but you don't have to 'own a castle', or be rich, or be well off, or even just be OK, to vote Conservative. So many Conservative voters fall outside of such an ignorant stereotype.

And the press don't control the electorate, the electorate control the press. Do you really think that if The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail et al, suddenly switched parties and moved to the left, that all of their readers would simple just change their minds and follow? Of course they wouldn't. They'd just find another news source to read.

I agree. Bigotry is a huge problem in this country and people just want to read something every morning that validates their selfish and bigoted beliefs.

 

[orly]

GET OUT KENWRIGHT WE WANT A BILLIONAIRE

HANG ON MATE NOT A BILLIONAIRE, SOMEONE WITH £999,999,999.99 INSTEAD

YEAH OK SOUND

 

[ToffeeTim]

Wasn't this skewed by accountants holding back for the new lower rate, depressing the previous year and exaggerating the following?

Not sure about that tbh. It's very hard for a company to just defer trading profits and it was only a 1% drop from 20 to 19%. There are always valid tax planning options to look at, but not much can be done with a 1% fall.

The main rate of CT was 30% in 2008 under brown but we get more in now at 19%. It's hard to really argue imo.

 

[orly]

Usmanov

Great post mate. As was your one about the bigger prize of Liverpool Docklands. The Consortium owning that Liver building is worse 50 billion. Serious wealthy people who are indirectly keen for not only the ground to be a success but that area of the City to grow. Great for us and the City as a by product of this.

In praise of that morally upstanding mega-billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

Have a guess who the author of this post is before clicking.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Indeed. You should read Zucman's books, if you haven't.

My professional concern (to say nothing of the moral catastrophe and devastating blow to future productivity that austerity always brings) is the sheer economic incompetence of it all.

It is nearly impossible to deliver stable returns for worthy clients (mostly pension funds in my case) because, frankly, the rich have way too much money and they are hoarding it all. Corporations are sitting on unprecedented piles of case, and rather than invest in capex as the Laffler generation of economists assumed, they are instead buying back their shares (which boosts management compensation through the roof), or using it to fund mergers in order to eliminate competition and raise prices. Or, like Apple, literally just sitting on it because there is so much that have no idea what to do with it all.

Meanwhile, the transit services decline, hospitals close, schools can't stay open on Friday, wages stagnate and thus the high street withers, in other words, the real drivers of economic growth drive to a halt... and all the while we are doing nothing whatsoever to try to prevent looming global ecological meltdown. Because taking the Duke of Wellington's 10x inherited hoard and using it to do something useful would be the greater evil.

Again, never mind the moral case - the status quo is fiscally incompetent. Even if you think the poor are all neanderthal northern Brexit simpletons who deserve every misery you can inflict on them, the Tory agenda (and especially the Liberal Democrat agenda, because Javid at least is starting to get it) is an utter disaster for financial markets.

As I've explained elsewhere several times, the Liberal Democrat and Conservative/Eurozone decision to deliberately contract the economy at the height of the worst crash in 80 years, has been an unrelenting economic (not to say moral) disaster. Central banks have had to very reluctantly respond by flooding the system with QE money and gutting interest rates, but because the coalition was intentionally shrinking economic growth, there were and still are no safe returns for the newly-created capital to be found. The money instead poured into inflating stock prices (not because of investment but buybacks and sleazy M&As), and real estate bubbles. There is now almost no capital city in the world not at war that isn't suffering from a real estate bubble.

Now, that's all fine and good for the get-rich-quick private school set that are the Tories and Lib Dems bread and butter, but for people who actually value markets, it is a catastrophe, because pension funds and other institutional investors, which want nothing more than stable, safe, modest long-term returns, are having to chase all the QE froth and private equity speculation (ie asset-stripping which is devastating to local high streets incidentally), which in an age of negative interest rates (!!!), are the only game in town. This is only compounding the market distortions, and it means that when it finally becomes apparent that the entire economy is WeWork, and the whole mess comes crashing down, the scale will be astronomical compared to 2008, and there will be nothing central banks can do this time because they've already been pulling on the emergency lever this entire time.

Thus, we now have the IMF (!!!) and even Larry Summers begging - literally begging - Eurozone governments to borrow money and invest, in order to save the financial system, and they still won't do it because their brains ceased all motor function in 1995 at the exact instant that they finished reading The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

Government borrowing is the life-blood!!! of finance. It is the beating heart of how capitalism and the financial sector works. It is the prime mover of everything else that follows (you should read Mariana Mazzucato, by the way: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mariana-mazzucato) The fact that liberals have managed to convince themselves otherwise will be one day be the epitaph of the entire species. When you attack that, you destroy everything. And that is exactly what has happened since 2008, when we doubled down on everything that created the crash in first place. And when the second, much-larger bill comes due, Brexit and Trump will seem like sunday league compared to the much-deserved but no doubt destructive popular backlash that will follow, which will probably destroy every last bit of the civic and political values that liberals (despite having delivered the death blow) think they hold dear.

Labour is, frankly, the only party in Britain that actually understands macroeconomics.

I can see many of you snorting on your cornflakes because it is the opposite of what you have been trained to believe by the corporate cheerleader press (The Times/Telegraph/Economist et al). But in more sensible publications like the FT there is an overwhelming consensus in support of Labour's broad policy direction (if not for Corbyn, granted, due mostly to matters of personal taste). No serious macroeconomist questions this.

Middle-class types who know nothing about finance but who bleat on about cutting spending because of 'fiscal responsibility' while patting themselves on the heads for being clever because of their Economist mugs really need to download the latest software and install the newest patch into their brains, because their talking points have been disconnected from reality and economic orthodox for going on three decades now, and the consequences will be unprecedented.



Um....what? I mean, it is also the fundamental basis of the entire concept of human jurisprudence...

Welcome back @abelard

 

[orly]

Welcome back @abelard

Yeah I thought it was odd that they'd asked for an account deletion and then came back posting in exactly the same way

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Yeah I thought it was odd that they'd asked for an account deletion and then came back posting in exactly the same way

It's purely a hunch tbh as there's VPNs aplenty being used, but the shared love of the Economist is amusing

 

[dead_soft]

Why is personal wealth such a bad thing mate?

It's not impossible to better yourself and have compassion for the less well off at the same time. It's not a zero sum game. I don't want a world where no matter how good I am, I can't better myself - I can't take personal responsibility. I'd rather alleviate poverty by increasing opportunity rather than limiting it.

And the media exists to sell itself. It doesnt shape; it reflects. People by and large read what they want to read. They supply a demand.

Nothing wrong with personal wealth so I worded my post a bit clumsily. I have a problem with accumulating large sums of wealth without higher rates of taxation. I’m not suggesting a cap on earnings, just that tax levels rise with it.

I really don’t believe it’s true on the media, we are influenced from a very young age on what we choose to read and what information is available to us. People go for ease of availability

 

[The binman chronicles]

They can leave, the UK does not need selfish people... Tax is about rebalancing wealth inequality and there ain't nowhere where wealth inequality increases cohesive society, it may have escaped attention's, the UK is far from happy these days... I wonder why!

As expected those staunch remainers soon parked Brexit and started looking inwards, me myself and I.

When Corbyn does get in anyone feeling compelled to emigrate because the new boat is few centimetres shorter because of tax , the first PM I get and as long as they fit in my estate I'll run them and their direct family to the English airport to begin their new life, may I suggest Peshawar region, no state so no taxation, fund everything yourself, nobody gets anything unless they have own monies, the libertarian dream...

I fear you are looking at this from the wrong point of view. Someone who earns a lot of money may be paying over 100k tax a year, a fair old chunk in NI, they probably have a bigger house so likely paying more council tax, they probably buy more stuff so pay more VAT, road tax, when they die they will pay more in inheritance tax.

These people might run/invest in businesses that allow others to earn and pay tax and NI. So at what point are they being selfish if they are putting back in far more than the average Joe like you or I?

There is a tipping point where if you take too much then they will leave/close down businesses and live off savings as the risks are not worth the rewards or aggressively seek to avoid paying tax through any loopholes. If you take the money that all these high earners put back in out of the system that doesn't help the poorest in society, it makes things worse.

As Corbyn has targeted these people there is next to no chance he will be the next PM in a standalone government, so we will see if all the other parties will be on the same wavelength if he is PM of a coalition.

To put it another way, what would you say would be a fair rate of tax then above what it is currently?

My economics outlook is pretty basic but I think it's the best.....

Low taxes.

Zero tolerance to abuse of the system or avoidance.

Agree, but imho changing the low taxes statement to reasonable taxes. 45% I think is justified on the very large earners on part of their income.

 

[orly]

It's purely a hunch tbh as there's VPNs aplenty being used, but the shared love of the Economist is amusing

We are zoning in on the new @butters multi


Also clever word play too "abelard" --- > "a-bollard" (said with a french flourish!) -----> @Bollard Mayhew

 

[abelard]

Welcome back @abelard

???

Are VPNs not allowed? If you worked in the countries where I worked, you'd use one too.

I don't know if you've ever spent any time in finance, but the Economist is seen as a bit of a joke. FT, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal (save the op-eds, obviously) and to a lesser extent cnbc are the four horsemen.

 

[orchard]

Not sure about that tbh. It's very hard for a company to just defer trading profits and it was only a 1% drop from 20 to 19%. There are always valid tax planning options to look at, but not much can be done with a 1% fall.

The main rate of CT was 30% in 2008 under brown but we get more in now at 19%. It's hard to really argue imo.

Wouldn't mind seeing the detail for that claum, but I would have thought a pre 2008 comparison would be better like.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

???

Are VPNs not allowed? If you worked in the countries where I worked, you'd use one too.

I don't know if you've ever spent any time in finance, but the Economist is seen as a bit of a joke. FT, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal (save the op-eds, obviously) and to a lesser extent cnbc are the four horsemen.

I'm pretty relaxed about multis so don't care much either way, it just amused me how similar your posting styles are. He and I had a running joke about the Economist. Are Bloomberg supportive of Labour? I know Tyler Cowen hasn't been especially complimentary towards him.

 

[ToffeeTim]

Wouldn't mind seeing the detail for that claum, but I would have thought a pre 2008 comparison would be better like.

The screenshot I posted previously from the FT said the revenue reached a "record high". There's other evidence too

 

[nsno-chris]

These people might run/invest in businesses that allow others to earn and pay tax and NI. So at what point are they being selfish if they are putting back in far more than the average Joe like you or I?

Imagine starting a company with your own money and risking everything, giving up on personal relationships to make a success of yourself. Then after getting though all the hardship employing tens of thousands of people, who combined pay tens upon tens of million pounds in taxes, all for someone to come along and tell you to get out of the country because they resent your success.

just one billionaire business owner did that and closed their business, the ramifications would send shockwaves through the economy.