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Enough is Enough

Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I think that's the point. To win hearts and minds you've got to go gently with the sacred cows. And don't mix your metaphors before breakfast, or something.
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paulfromcamden said:
Tell the average person in the street that taxes don't fund spending and I suspect they'll raise an eyebrow and take whatever else you have to say with a very large pinch of salt.
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As stated previously, I believe that the average voter doesn't think about it, nor care. They worry about if they're going to eat, heat the house and have a holiday, and if they're promised they can have all that at no extra cost, cynicism and skepticism takes a holiday.
 
Ponty said:
OK, so back to their plan to ‘tax the rich’, what does that mean, how do they plan to do it and how much will it raise? These basic questions appear to have no answers beneath the usual rhetoric. The only realistic option this type of agenda has outside of a protest group is the Labour Party and note there are 2 labour MP’s associated. How many more will join before Sir K reins them in?
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This would be easy with fat cat bosses of things like energy/water utilities. You would tax them 90%. They are overpaid and most of them are useless. Certainly wouldn't be missed in the delivery of utilities. Just waste their days in meetings.

Though you raise an interesting point with rich people like, say, Ed Sheeran. Apparently Ed Sheeran makes £40 million a year https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunday-times-rich-list-ed-sheeran-net-worth-xtsnnt6p8

I would tax Sheeran about 70-80%. I would have a productivity rebate of about 10-20% for people who could prove they are personally responsible for their income. I would reduce the tax for people like Sheeran gradually over the years to reward people who live in the UK and pay taxes. To a minimum of 50%.

if Enough is Enough would adopt something like this to show they had actually given it some thought, they would do a lot better. Might fill a theatre somewhere like Croydon rather than have empty seats in Clapham.
 
notaclue said:
This would be easy with fat cat bosses of things like energy/water utilities. You would tax them 90%. They are overpaid and most of them are useless. Certainly wouldn't be missed in the delivery of utilities. Just waste their days in meetings.

Though you raise an interesting point with rich people like, say, Ed Sheeran. Apparently Ed Sheeran makes £40 million a year https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunday-times-rich-list-ed-sheeran-net-worth-xtsnnt6p8

I would tax Sheeran about 70-80%. I would have a productivity rebate of about 10-20% for people who could prove they are personally responsible for their income. I would reduce the tax for people like Sheeran gradually over the years to reward people who live in the UK and pay taxes. To a minimum of 50%.

if Enough is Enough would adopt something like this to show they had actually given it some thought, they would do a lot better. Might fill a theatre somewhere like Croydon rather than have empty seats in Clapham.
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People wouldn’t work if they were taxed at 90%. Ed Sheeran et al would just apply for citizenship elsewhere, Monaco etc. The UK would get zero. Back to reality, how’s it going to be done?
 
Seeker_UK said:
Sorry to repeat myself, but my questions are based on the assumption that taxes do not fund spending. I cannot make it any clearer than that.
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My apologies. If you made that clear earlier, I missed it. Sorry

The point is that when considering the shared wealth dimension to social justice, "taxes do not fund spending" and "tax the rich" are contradictory positions. Do you agree?
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Mmmmm, need to think about that. I would say they rest on different assumptions, but they are not necessarily contradictory. Keynes for example said that “whatever government can afford, it can do” which seems to nod towards ‘tax does not fund’, but in the application of Keynes by government that has meant a more distributive attitude to tax that seems to lean more to ‘tax does fund’. The Green Party for example is broadly Keynesian (of one sort or another, there are loads) and while their economic policy is based on taxing the rich, they also have a clause that says that tax does fund spending. Which I guess is the point your were making.

I might end up agreeing with you.

I don’t know enough about Keynes or Keynesianism to say any more at the moment. But to bring it back to the topic of the the thread, I do struggle with the EiS #5 “Tax the Rich”, above all because it isn’t necessary to achieve the other 4 objectives. Taxing the Rich might be a good idea for a number of other reasons, but not to fund our government spending.

I would prefer 5 to be replaced with “A job for everyone who wants one”.
 
Seeker_UK said:
Sorry to repeat myself, but my questions are based on the assumption that taxes do not fund spending. I cannot make it any clearer than that.

The point is that when considering the shared wealth dimension to social justice, "taxes do not fund spending" and "tax the rich" are contradictory positions. Do you agree?
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KS will answer this and knows a lot more about it than me, but why is it contradictory? AIUI the MMT position is that tax doesn’t fund spending but is a means of controlling inflation and ensuring use of the currency. Someone’s got to pay and it should be those who can most afford it.
 
Ponty said:
People wouldn’t work if they were taxed at 90%. Ed Sheeran et al would just apply for citizenship elsewhere, Monaco etc. The UK would get zero. Back to reality, how’s it going to be done?
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Utility bosses don't work anyway. They would still be on something like £100,000 rather than stupid salaries like £1,000,000 to deliver something that everyone needs and the bosses play no direct part in delivering. I'm sure they would work for £100K.

If Sheeran wants to bugger off to Monaco then I say good riddance. There will be plenty of rubbish songwriters who can take his place.
 
notaclue said:
This would be easy with fat cat bosses of things like energy/water utilities. You would tax them 90%. They are overpaid and most of them are useless. Certainly wouldn't be missed in the delivery of utilities. Just waste their days in meetings.

Though you raise an interesting point with rich people like, say, Ed Sheeran. Apparently Ed Sheeran makes £40 million a year https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunday-times-rich-list-ed-sheeran-net-worth-xtsnnt6p8

I would tax Sheeran about 70-80%. I would have a productivity rebate of about 10-20% for people who could prove they are personally responsible for their income. I would reduce the tax for people like Sheeran gradually over the years to reward people who live in the UK and pay taxes. To a minimum of 50%.

if Enough is Enough would adopt something like this to show they had actually given it some thought, they would do a lot better. Might fill a theatre somewhere like Croydon rather than have empty seats in Clapham.
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If EiS were to adopt this, it would illustrate that they have given it no more thought than you just have
 
notaclue said:
Utility bosses don't work anyway. They would still be on something like £100,000 rather than stupid salaries like £1,000,000 to deliver something that everyone needs and the bosses play no direct part in delivering. I'm sure they would work for £100K.

If Sheeran wants to bugger off to Monaco then I say good riddance. There will be plenty of rubbish songwriters who can take his place.
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It’s this type of view which will ensure the likes of EiE will always remain a protest group. A few straightforward questions they can’t credibly answer and they’re done.
 
Obviously in the above example most of Sheeren's money would be confiscated before he's allowed to leave. He "earned" it in the UK after being educated by the UK, supported whilst busking by the UK, kept healthy by UK NHS etc.
 
Seeker_UK said:
I clearly don't get it at all then; if taxes don't fund spending, then no-one has to 'pay' anything.
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That’s because they do, it’s just the timing of cash flows which is used to bamboozle people to claim that it doesn’t. Govt creates money and spends it, then ‘cancels’ it through taxation. If it cancels less than it ‘spends’ it has a deficit, if it cancels more it has a surplus. Without taxation, the whole system implodes.
 
Ponty said:
That’s because they do, it’s just the timing of cash flows which is used to bamboozle people to claim that it doesn’t. Govt creates money and spends it, then ‘cancels’ it through taxation. If it cancels less than it ‘spends’ it has a deficit, if it cancels more it has a surplus. Without taxation, the whole system implodes.
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Nobody has said tax is not necessary. It is necessary. But not to fund spending as your sequencing demonstrates.

Taxes do not fund spending.
 
ks.234 said:
No body has said tax is not necessary. It is necessary. But not to fund spending as your sequencing demonstrates
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It’s semantics. Same as me having zero money in my account but an overdraft facility. I don’t need money in my account to fund spending, but I wouldn’t spend unless I had the method to repay the overdraft to bring it back to zero.
 
Ponty said:
It’s semantics. Same as me having zero money in my account but an overdraft facility. I don’t need money in my account to fund spending, but I wouldn’t spend unless I had the method to repay the overdraft to bring it back to zero.
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If tax is cancelling, as you correctly say, it cannot then become something again after it has been cancelled out of existence. Tax is cancellation, and yes, according to orthodoxy there is a need to balance the books, but that is an accounting requirement, not a funding requirement.

Besides, the difference between what spent out and what comes in is met (in orthodox) by what is called ‘borrowing’ but is in reality the government borrowing its own money that it has created on a promise to pay it back with interest by, just creating it, it is just shifting money from one pocket to another
 
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