Comments on: Financing a Labour government

By: aquifer

aquifer — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 11:29:00 +0000

The thing missing from the article is the role of physical investment directed by government. Provided that investment in say, Smart public transport, energy efficiency, skills training, affordable housing, technical innovation, can provide even a small return in terms of increasing productivity, building the tax base, and reducing external payments for fossil fuels, there is a way to add glue to this financial house of cards. However the identity addicted left’s traditional tastes for a predictable and passive proletariat makes it unlikely that management and technical types and white van men required to lead such initiatives will be commissioned to do so. Union bosses are under-qualified to direct the means of production, or politics, and this is causing unnecessary suffering for families.

By: Ralph Musgrave

Ralph Musgrave — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 10:15:00 +0000

I have doubts about Torporowski’s claim that there would be big problems in trying to extract more tax from the UK population. Tax as a proportion of GDP is much higher in some other European countries. In the UK, it’s 34%, in Sweden it’s 50%, and in Norway, it’s 55%. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio

By: simon

simon — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 09:39:00 +0000

Increased taxes on the wealthy does not necessarily lead to increased revenue.A labour govt`s starting point should that it is not only unlikely to raise more revenue from the wealthy but unless private property is targeted then the revenue is likely to go down as the wealthy emigrate or move their non-property assets abroad prior to a Labour victory.
Sweden is looking at becoming a cashless society and therefore increasing revenue by taxing the black economy.A.Some govts are getting involved with cryptocurrencies.A UK govt could try to open up its own sovereign fund and hope the fund`s value rises steeply.
One of Mrs Thatcher`s mistakes was not to follow Norway and ringfence North Sea Oil revenue into a sovereign wealth fund

By: Ralph Musgrave

Ralph Musgrave — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 09:24:00 +0000

Torporowski’s claim that government borrowing is needed to cover periods of the year when little tax flows into Treasury coffers is debatable. Reason is as follows.

The alleged problem with the state simply spending money without a corresponding amount of tax being collected is that the effect could be too inflationary. Normally that point has considerable merit. However, in the case of a household or firm which finds itself flush with funds because it has not had to pay much tax recently, but knows that IT WILL have to pay tax in a few months time, is it really going to go on a spending spree with that money when it knows full well it will need that money in a few months time to pay its tax liabilities? Unlikely! Ergo, I suggest that if the state (i.e. government and central bank) just ignored short term shortfalls in money flowing in from tax, and created and spent money anyway, it wouldn’t really matter.

By: CommentTeleView

CommentTeleView — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 23:43:00 +0000

Toporowski attempts to discredit the so-called “conservative” view that a balanced budget – namely that in expenditure can’t permanently exceed earnings – is necessary in the long run, by casually suggesting that conservatives are rich people who don’t balance their own personal finances…

He then moves on to say that businesses like taxation because they like the government expenditure that results from it. While the latter part is true, that expenditure would take place even if the people who earned the money spent or lent it instead. Again, the idea that government spending is somehow “better” than private sector spending is a twisting of reality. Redistribution of wealth should mean precisely that: government should not spend money as they see fit, they should give it to citizens to spend as the citizens see fit.