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Samizdata quote of the day Tax cutting can be simultaneously a good thing to do and a stupid thing to promise. Winning policies and election winning policies are not always the same thing. What’s so hard to understand about that?
– Daniel [when did he get too old to be called Danny in public?] Finkelstein in The Times.
If politicians could offer strawberry and chocolate flavoured policies, then in a democracy they would.
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Instead they keep offering us plain vanilla policies.
Almost completely off-topic. Has anyone noticed that the linguistic degradation of our days has meant that although everyone’s talking about Gordon Brown’s coup, what he’s really doing is staging a real, genuine balls-out coup.
Did anyone really think the electorate voted for a dose of resentful Scottish socialism at the last election? Does the political class really think that who becomes PM is a matter simply for their own party political convenience?
If Mr Brown succeeds in pushing Blair out, the Queen should suggest to Mr Brown he calls an election immediately. If he refuses, the Queen should ask someone else to form a government. What we have in prospect is the worst of all – rule by Usurpers.
A personal view of tax and inflation, first made in response to There’s nothing inevitable about Brown’s succession by Simon Heffer in the Telegraph on 30th August 2006.
Best regards
Hmm – I wonder if any politician has ever hit on the idea of promising tax cuts and then when elected keeping his promise by cutting taxes that hit the poor. It seems to me the norm is to increase taxes on the poor and cut taxes for the rich.
The rich will always get more from tax cuts because they pay more tax.
Just read an interesting article about Estonia. Tax reform seems part of the “Tiger” package.
Mr Thorpe,
In your perfect world, should the poor (however you wish to define that term) pay zero tax?
Also, should anyone who is not poor (see above) ever get a tax cut if the poor are paying nonzero tax?
No doubt there will be shouts of “trickle down” and other such – but this “tax cuts for the rich” stuff misses the point.
If high rates of income tax are cut revenue goes up – the rich pay more money (even as a percentage of the total tax take) – of course there are losers (tax lawyers and other such) but I can live with that.
That was true both of the Reagan top rate tax cuts, and the Thatcher top rate tax cuts.
It is, in fact, only tax cuts at lower rates that do not tend to increase revenue (although they do not cut revenue as much as one might think).
Of course none of the above is a justification for tax increases on the poor (such as the increase in V.A.T. from 8% to 15% in 1979).
Also if one wishes to reduce taxes for the “masses” one must control government spending – the central problem of our time.
As for Guy’s argument:
Yes up to a point.
Politicians will propose popular policies, but only a very brave politician will propose polices that are opposed by the establisment – even if such policies are popular.
For example, most people think that taxes are much too high (see the Taxpayers Alliance survey and other such) – but who is proposing to cut them?
Also most people think that the E.U. has too much power – but who is proposing to return any of these powers to the Britian? Even though failure to do so makes any talk of preventing new regulations (in virtually all areas) a nonsense.
If such policies were strongly argued for over time (any policy line must be argued for over time – not produced as an election stunt) they would be very popular – but they are not proposed by the main political parties because the establishment hate them (who wants to take on the power of the B.B.C. and the rest of the power elite).
Take a different issue.
For many years the great majority of the British voters, rightly or wrongly. supported capital punishment.
Yet none of the political parties offered this policy. It was left to a “free vote” in the House of Commons (so that it would never get restored).
The voters had no say – because the elite decided that capital punishment was wrong.
It is the same with many policies.
It takes a brave politicians to support a popular policy – if the elite oppose it.
Mr Cameron certainly would not do so – after all then he would no longer be “modern” (i.e. late 1960’s).
The poor are a tool the rich use to extract wealth from the middle classes.
Think about any government program to “help” the poor. The funds never go directly to the poor but are used for computers, buildings, software, automobiles, furniture, office supplies, so on and so forth, all provided at a healthy profit by companies owned by rich people.
That that I have anything against the rich per se, I just object to being forced to fund the corporate welfare.
Rich