Only in the Labour Party could Ed Balls be the nearest thing to a voice of sanity

One individual said to me last night that he was very annoyed that the general election is looking close, because if ever there was an election whose result ought to be a no-brainer it is this one.

He was right. As one of my friends from University, John Winterson Richards, posted on Facebook yesterday, judging on economic criteria the present government

"inherited a complete financial mess but has delivered zero inflation and increasing employment at the same time, as well as low interest rates and a decreasing budget deficit and the strongest, most stable economic growth in Europe."

I would not want to pretend that John is pleased with everything the government has done: he also wrote that

" ... it is annoying that the Cameroons assume arrogantly that we will still vote for them again simply because the only practical alternative on offer is even worse - but what is even more annoying is that, at least in my case, that arrogant assumption is correct. My strong reservations about the Coalition are nothing compared with my unreserved horror at the thought of the return of the people who got us into this mess in the first place."

And Labour were busy demonstrating yesterday their unfitness to run the proverbial whelk stall, never mid Britain, with total and utter confusion over the taxation of "non-doms."

Back in January Ed Balls said that both the present Conservative-led government and the previous Labour government had made the taxation of non-doms stricter but if you scrapped the status altogether it would probably cost Britain money by driving such people abroad.

Then yesterday Labour announced it was adopting exactly the policy which Ed Balls had dismissed in January.

Hat tip to Guido Fawkes for this pointing out this car crash interview by Shadow Minister Shabana Mahmood in which she claimed that several experts had suggested that scrapping non-dom tax status could bring in millions of pounds but then could not name any of them ...





Comments

Jim said…
yes, the labour party are the worst offenders when it comes to "reducing taxes can actually raise more"

its odd but there is as is well estabished and we have discussed before a level of taxation (does not matter where it is, as that is contested) but it is there. This is the ideal level, lower taxes below set level and the tax take falls, raise them above set level and the tax take falls (due to avoidence and things) labour cant get this first simple lesson.

neither party get the next.

there is a level of taxing essentials that can work, over taxing those is counter productive as it reduces the tax take from other areas. This is what we see with taxes like fuel duty, fuel is essential to business (everthing you buy is delivered, whether that is food to tesco, or indreadents to tesco to bake bread does not matter, the fact is that the price depends on the price of fuel. every business depends on fuel, be that directly or indirectly. the entire economy depends on it not being so expensive its not worth being in business, so we see to reduce the tax on fuel actually increases the total revenue in other tax takes. granted only again to a set level, but its still there and fuel duty is currently way above that level.

but yes, if ed balls is a voice of sanity then perhaps its time for me to go to my padded cell
5:56 pm
Jim said…
for a simple lesson to those who cant understand that second bit.

1. I have some spare money, so i could bank it and get some interest,

or

I could set up a business and risk it, the risk is my money, im risking it because i think i could buy this truck and deliver goods, and from my money I could make more money.

I am taking the risk its my money, now I cant drive a truck (no HGV Licence), so i will have to pay someone else to do that for me.

so now i need to buy my truck, and pay my driver, and fuel my truck, and make a PROFIT. if I dont make a profit from the above then i dont take the risk, i just keep what i had in the first place.

the government lose - because i am not employing a driver (who is taxed on his/her wages) and I am not paying corporation tax on my profit.

I lose - because there were too many obsticles for me to make a profit.

my driver loses - because he/she is now unemployed (so the government lose again, paying benefit not getting tax)

the truck firm lose (1 less truck sold)

the fuel station loses ( not selling fuel to me)

you see how the whole thing works?
6:07 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Indeed. As you probably know, the concept you describe is often called the "Laffer curve" after the economist Arthur Laffer sketched it on a knapkin at a dinner in 1974 with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The term was coined and popularised by Jude Wanniski, a journalist who was present, but Laffer himself pointed out that the concept went back much further, at least to the 14th century Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun and arguably back to Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph, in a letter to the Governor of Egypt, Malik al-Ashtar.

A careful reading of the quote below shows that Ali ibn Abi Talib explicitly suggested that revenues might rise in time because of a reduction of taxes. He wrote


"If the tax-payers complain to you of the heavy incidence to taxation, of any accidental calamity, of the vagaries of the monsoons, of the recession of the means of irrigation, of floods, or destruction of their crops on account of excessive rainfall and if their complaints are true, then reduce their taxes. This reduction should be such that it provides them opportunities to improve their conditions and eases them of their troubles. Decrease in state income due to such reasons should not depress you because the best investment for a ruler is to help his subjects at the time of their difficulties. They are the real wealth of a country and any investment on them even in the form of reduction of taxes, will be returned to the State in the shape of the prosperity of its cities and improvement of the country at large. At the same time you will be in a position to command and secure their love, respect and praises along with the revenues."
10:32 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

Image
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more