Scottish independence

[Citizen of Legoland]

Public sector jobs don't create wealth, they consume it.

The jobs are all very worthy and indeed necessary and the people doing them need in no way feel unworthy of course - they are highly valued. But they don't create wealth. Apart from the rare circumstances where some of these people are generating income by selling products or services, but this is so minimal as to be inconsequential.

And no-one wants to "fuck the poorest over" mate. Everyone wants the same thing and that is a decent lifestyle and decent public services and infrastructure for all. The question is how to get it. Some people want to be generous to the underprivileged by giving them money we don't have, or taking even more money off the wealthy and also off the not wealthy. I don't subscribe to that approach because in the long run, it just doesn't work. There are too many needy and not enough wealthy.

In broad terms, we have 30 million people in employment in the UK. Of these, 50% are in public sector jobs. The vast majority of these and are being funded by state. But the state gets all its money from taxing the other 50%. (Yes it gets tax from the public sector workers, but that just means getting some of the money back that the state gave them in the first place.). The vast majority of the actual money available to the state comes from the 15m working in the private sector.

But we have a population of 60 million people. The 15 million private sector workers are already paying the wages of the public sector 15 million. But they also have to pay for state pensions and income support and disability benefits and attendance allowance and prescriptions and hospitals and everything else from a seemingly endless list, for EVERYBODY. 15 million people are carrying all the costs of a population of 60 million.

And remember, these 15 million are not "rich", they are just "in work". They include waiters at Nando's and window cleaners and fruit pickers. These people have no "spare" money and are probably net recipients of benefits, not net contributors. There are only 2 million who have incomes greater than around £40,000 and who pay higher rates of tax. And these people - 1 person in every 30 - are already giving up to 50% of their money over to the state to support the rest. We cannot continue with this model, burdening the working people more and more and more. It's just not sustainable.

Yes there are a few very rich, but there aren't many of them. And if you earn £1m a year, you are already contributing around 460,000 in tax. This compares to around £6,000 for someone on average pay. That's 77x as much. Someone earning 30x average is already contributing 77x the tax, yet people still clamour for them to pay more, to pay their fair share. How is 77x an average contribution not "a fair share". It's already WAY too much.

So none of this is sustainable. It's propped up by ever increased borrowing and ever increased tax burden. It is the sure as fire road to ruin, the only question being how long the road is.

you missed a very important bit of your analysis.

corporation tax.

add that in and stop the fuckers avoiding it and it all becomes so much more sustainable

True in part, but I had waffled enough. But corporation tax is only 6% of the government's income. Borrowing - pushing us further and further into debt - is 18%. Even if you doubled Corporation tax, it wouldn't come close to plugging the gap.

And whereas we don't want companies dodging paying it as some have done, equally we don't want to further burden those businesses that are paying it. Think about it, if we taxed businesses LESS and taxed employees LESS, then employers could lower their costs. This would make their goods and services cheaper for everyone. They would be more competitive and would win business abroad and our exports would grow. These companies, now more successful could employ more people and grow even further.

You get a positive upward spiral with more people in work, more tax being paid and a more wealthy society. You do this by cutting taxes. Increasing taxes does the exact opposite.

Until they're ill and there's no NHS services available to help them. But apart from that .... :)

 

[Chippy_boy]

you missed a very important bit of your analysis.

corporation tax.

add that in and stop the fuckers avoiding it and it all becomes so much more sustainable

True in part, but I had waffled enough. But corporation tax is only 6% of the government's income. Borrowing - pushing us further and further into debt - is 18%. Even if you doubled Corporation tax, it wouldn't come close to plugging the gap.

And whereas we don't want companies dodging paying it as some have done, equally we don't want to further burden those businesses that are paying it. Think about it, if we taxed businesses LESS and taxed employees LESS, then employers could lower their costs. This would make their goods and services cheaper for everyone. They would be more competitive and would win business abroad and our exports would grow. These companies, now more successful could employ more people and grow even further.

You get a positive upward spiral with more people in work, more tax being paid and a more wealthy society. You do this by cutting taxes. Increasing taxes does the exact opposite.

Until they're ill and there's no NHS services available to help them. But apart from that .... :)

I know you're joking but that's the point mate. If you are a wealthy society, you can have the BEST public health provision, and the BEST public transport and every else. A wealthy economy can afford these things, a poor economy burdened with too much taxation and debt cannot. It's a bit of a paradox but it is nevertheless true and proven countless times here in the UK and the world over, that you increase government income by cutting taxes. You get a more wealthy economy but cutting public spending, and when you have a wealthy economy you can spend more on public services.

Of course you are right in that we can't just stop spending overnight or our hospitals would shut and we need them now. So it's a balance, and an imperfect one. No-one wants to make difficult lives even more difficult. But the goal has to be a mre vibrant economy and that means cutting taxes - or at the very very minimum not increasing them - keeping interest rates low, and cutting red tape to allow our businesses to invest and to thrive.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

True in part, but I had waffled enough. But corporation tax is only 6% of the government's income. Borrowing - pushing us further and further into debt - is 18%. Even if you doubled Corporation tax, it wouldn't come close to plugging the gap.

And whereas we don't want companies dodging paying it as some have done, equally we don't want to further burden those businesses that are paying it. Think about it, if we taxed businesses LESS and taxed employees LESS, then employers could lower their costs. This would make their goods and services cheaper for everyone. They would be more competitive and would win business abroad and our exports would grow. These companies, now more successful could employ more people and grow even further.

You get a positive upward spiral with more people in work, more tax being paid and a more wealthy society. You do this by cutting taxes. Increasing taxes does the exact opposite.

Until they're ill and there's no NHS services available to help them. But apart from that .... :)

I know you're joking but that's the point mate. If you are a wealthy society, you can have the BEST public health provision, and the BEST public transport and every else. A wealthy economy can afford these things, a poor economy burdened with too much taxation and debt cannot. It's a bit of a paradox but it is nevertheless true and proven countless times here in the UK and the world over, that you increase government income by cutting taxes. You get a more wealthy economy but cutting public spending, and when you have a wealthy economy you can spend more on public services.

Of course you are right in that we can't just stop spending overnight or our hospitals would shut and we need them now. So it's a balance, and an imperfect one. No-one wants to make difficult lives even more difficult. But the goal has to be a mre vibrant economy and that means cutting taxes - or at the very very minimum not increasing them - keeping interest rates low, and cutting red tape to allow our businesses to invest and to thrive.

I wasn't joking.

 

[Chris in London]

Looks like the podcast team has weighed into the debate

 

[leithblue]

Public sector jobs don't create wealth, they consume it.

The jobs are all very worthy and indeed necessary and the people doing them need in no way feel unworthy of course - they are highly valued. But they don't create wealth. Apart from the rare circumstances where some of these people are generating income by selling products or services, but this is so minimal as to be inconsequential.

And no-one wants to "fuck the poorest over" mate. Everyone wants the same thing and that is a decent lifestyle and decent public services and infrastructure for all. The question is how to get it. Some people want to be generous to the underprivileged by giving them money we don't have, or taking even more money off the wealthy and also off the not wealthy. I don't subscribe to that approach because in the long run, it just doesn't work. There are too many needy and not enough wealthy.

In broad terms, we have 30 million people in employment in the UK. Of these, 50% are in public sector jobs. The vast majority of these and are being funded by state. But the state gets all its money from taxing the other 50%. (Yes it gets tax from the public sector workers, but that just means getting some of the money back that the state gave them in the first place.). The vast majority of the actual money available to the state comes from the 15m working in the private sector.

But we have a population of 60 million people. The 15 million private sector workers are already paying the wages of the public sector 15 million. But they also have to pay for state pensions and income support and disability benefits and attendance allowance and prescriptions and hospitals and everything else from a seemingly endless list, for EVERYBODY. 15 million people are carrying all the costs of a population of 60 million.

And remember, these 15 million are not "rich", they are just "in work". They include waiters at Nando's and window cleaners and fruit pickers. These people have no "spare" money and are probably net recipients of benefits, not net contributors. There are only 2 million who have incomes greater than around £40,000 and who pay higher rates of tax. And these people - 1 person in every 30 - are already giving up to 50% of their money over to the state to support the rest. We cannot continue with this model, burdening the working people more and more and more. It's just not sustainable.

Yes there are a few very rich, but there aren't many of them. And if you earn £1m a year, you are already contributing around 460,000 in tax. This compares to around £6,000 for someone on average pay. That's 77x as much. Someone earning 30x average is already contributing 77x the tax, yet people still clamour for them to pay more, to pay their fair share. How is 77x an average contribution not "a fair share". It's already WAY too much.

So none of this is sustainable. It's propped up by ever increased borrowing and ever increased tax burden. It is the sure as fire road to ruin, the only question being how long the road is.

you missed a very important bit of your analysis.

corporation tax.

add that in and stop the fuckers avoiding it and it all becomes so much more sustainable

True in part, but I had waffled enough. But corporation tax is only 6% of the government's income. Borrowing - pushing us further and further into debt - is 18%. Even if you doubled Corporation tax, it wouldn't come close to plugging the gap.

And whereas we don't want companies dodging paying it as some have done, equally we don't want to further burden those businesses that are paying it. Think about it, if we taxed businesses LESS and taxed employees LESS, then employers could lower their costs. This would make their goods and services cheaper for everyone. They would be more competitive and would win business abroad and our exports would grow. These companies, now more successful could employ more people and grow even further.

You get a positive upward spiral with more people in work, more tax being paid and a more wealthy society. You do this by cutting taxes. Increasing taxes does the exact opposite.

You're right, Corporation Tax generates headlines so the press can scream about Amazon, Starbucks, Google and the rest but there's a real trend towards governments moving away from Corporation Tax. Tax authorities hate it, it's too difficult to police and - as you say - contributes an ever dwindling amount to the Treasury. What is happening / will happen is a trend towards indirect taxation, even more so than now - hence the rise in VAT rates across Europe in the past few years - taxation taking place where transactions happen, rather than tax authorities engaging in a smoke and mirrors game of whether profit is true to Luxembourg/Dublin/Bermuda. Even better for HMRC - VAT is self-assessed, and self-collected - Tesco collect it from your weekly shop and pay it over. Best of all, it's getting harder to hide and suppress VAT receipts with better EPOS and ERP systems and data mining tools used in VAT inspections.

I wouldn't be surprised if Corp Tax rates drop significantly in line with a rise in VAT. The maximum rate in the EU is 25%, so the UK has a bit of room to push things (though Hungary just ignored that and implemented 27% with no comeback from the Commission).

 

[Chippy_boy]

You're right, Corporation Tax generates headlines so the press can scream about Amazon, Starbucks, Google and the rest but there's a real trend towards governments moving away from Corporation Tax. Tax authorities hate it, it's too difficult to police and - as you say - contributes an ever dwindling amount to the Treasury. What is happening / will happen is a trend towards indirect taxation, even more so than now - hence the rise in VAT rates across Europe in the past few years - taxation taking place where transactions happen, rather than tax authorities engaging in a smoke and mirrors game of whether profit is true to Luxembourg/Dublin/Bermuda. Even better for HMRC - VAT is self-assessed, and self-collected - Tesco collect it from your weekly shop and pay it over. Best of all, it's getting harder to hide and suppress VAT receipts with better EPOS and ERP systems and data mining tools used in VAT inspections.

I wouldn't be surprised if Corp Tax rates drop significantly in line with a rise in VAT. The maximum rate in the EU is 25%, so the UK has a bit of room to push things (though Hungary just ignored that and implemented 27% with no comeback from the Commission).

VAT is an evil tax though isn't it. Few would argue that those on say £10,000 a year shouldn't be paying any tax at all, and yet VAT taxes everybody and hits those at the bottom hard. I am morally opposed to VAT but given the EU pressure to raise it even higher, I guess we are stuck with it.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Until they're ill and there's no NHS services available to help them. But apart from that .... :)

I know you're joking but that's the point mate. If you are a wealthy society, you can have the BEST public health provision, and the BEST public transport and every else. A wealthy economy can afford these things, a poor economy burdened with too much taxation and debt cannot. It's a bit of a paradox but it is nevertheless true and proven countless times here in the UK and the world over, that you increase government income by cutting taxes. You get a more wealthy economy but cutting public spending, and when you have a wealthy economy you can spend more on public services.

Of course you are right in that we can't just stop spending overnight or our hospitals would shut and we need them now. So it's a balance, and an imperfect one. No-one wants to make difficult lives even more difficult. But the goal has to be a mre vibrant economy and that means cutting taxes - or at the very very minimum not increasing them - keeping interest rates low, and cutting red tape to allow our businesses to invest and to thrive.

I wasn't joking.

You should have been.

As an aside was anyone here apalled at that poor kid with a brain tumour whose parents have had to taken him to the Czech Republic for treatment. The Czech Republic, FFS. Where they have better medical facilities than we do. And what's their basic rate of tax? 15%. Higher rate? 22%.

 

[Ronnie the Rep]

You're right, Corporation Tax generates headlines so the press can scream about Amazon, Starbucks, Google and the rest but there's a real trend towards governments moving away from Corporation Tax. Tax authorities hate it, it's too difficult to police and - as you say - contributes an ever dwindling amount to the Treasury. What is happening / will happen is a trend towards indirect taxation, even more so than now - hence the rise in VAT rates across Europe in the past few years - taxation taking place where transactions happen, rather than tax authorities engaging in a smoke and mirrors game of whether profit is true to Luxembourg/Dublin/Bermuda. Even better for HMRC - VAT is self-assessed, and self-collected - Tesco collect it from your weekly shop and pay it over. Best of all, it's getting harder to hide and suppress VAT receipts with better EPOS and ERP systems and data mining tools used in VAT inspections.

I wouldn't be surprised if Corp Tax rates drop significantly in line with a rise in VAT. The maximum rate in the EU is 25%, so the UK has a bit of room to push things (though Hungary just ignored that and implemented 27% with no comeback from the Commission).

VAT is an evil tax though isn't it. Few would argue that those on say £10,000 a year shouldn't be paying any tax at all, and yet VAT taxes everybody and hits those at the bottom hard. I am morally opposed to VAT but given the EU pressure to raise it even higher, I guess we are stuck with it.

Would it not help if we raised the tax threshold to £15,000?

 

[FromPollockToSilva]

I know you're joking but that's the point mate. If you are a wealthy society, you can have the BEST public health provision, and the BEST public transport and every else. A wealthy economy can afford these things, a poor economy burdened with too much taxation and debt cannot. It's a bit of a paradox but it is nevertheless true and proven countless times here in the UK and the world over, that you increase government income by cutting taxes. You get a more wealthy economy but cutting public spending, and when you have a wealthy economy you can spend more on public services.

Of course you are right in that we can't just stop spending overnight or our hospitals would shut and we need them now. So it's a balance, and an imperfect one. No-one wants to make difficult lives even more difficult. But the goal has to be a mre vibrant economy and that means cutting taxes - or at the very very minimum not increasing them - keeping interest rates low, and cutting red tape to allow our businesses to invest and to thrive.

I wasn't joking.

You should have been.

As an aside was anyone here apalled at that poor kid with a brain tumour whose parents have had to taken him to the Czech Republic for treatment. The Czech Republic, FFS. Where they have better medical facilities than we do. And what's their basic rate of tax? 15%. Higher rate? 22%.

They don't have better medical facilities, they have cheaper private healthcare options because the country is so much poorer.

 

[Chippy_boy]

You're right, Corporation Tax generates headlines so the press can scream about Amazon, Starbucks, Google and the rest but there's a real trend towards governments moving away from Corporation Tax. Tax authorities hate it, it's too difficult to police and - as you say - contributes an ever dwindling amount to the Treasury. What is happening / will happen is a trend towards indirect taxation, even more so than now - hence the rise in VAT rates across Europe in the past few years - taxation taking place where transactions happen, rather than tax authorities engaging in a smoke and mirrors game of whether profit is true to Luxembourg/Dublin/Bermuda. Even better for HMRC - VAT is self-assessed, and self-collected - Tesco collect it from your weekly shop and pay it over. Best of all, it's getting harder to hide and suppress VAT receipts with better EPOS and ERP systems and data mining tools used in VAT inspections.

I wouldn't be surprised if Corp Tax rates drop significantly in line with a rise in VAT. The maximum rate in the EU is 25%, so the UK has a bit of room to push things (though Hungary just ignored that and implemented 27% with no comeback from the Commission).

VAT is an evil tax though isn't it. Few would argue that those on say £10,000 a year shouldn't be paying any tax at all, and yet VAT taxes everybody and hits those at the bottom hard. I am morally opposed to VAT but given the EU pressure to raise it even higher, I guess we are stuck with it.

Would it not help if we raised the tax threshold to £15,000?

Yes, I think it would. There's no case for people of incomes at those sorts of levels paying any tax whatsoever in my view. But of course you can't get to that position overnight because you have to balance the books in the short term and national debt is already running at astronomical levels. Truly astronomical. So we need to reduce borrowing and whilst we are doing that, reducing tax take is very hard because it would mean even more severe spending cuts. But as a goal, definitely we should be aiming for no tax on £15,000 income I think.