Fiddling The Tax
Today’s adjustments to tax legislation just shows how clueless this government really is. The Daily Mash says it pretty succinctly : BROWN TO GAMBLE ON YOU BEING RETARDED
GORDON Brown will today gamble on you buying things you don’t need because they are slightly cheaper, and then believing that rich people are going to pay for it all.
The government is expected to cut the price of novelty smoothie makers from £24.99 to £24.36 while at the same time increasing income tax for the hoity-toity chairman of the company that produces novelty smoothie makers.
In his pre-Budget report, chancellor Alistair Darling will tell the Commons that all you really care about is shopping and telly and that rich people will be still be able to buy their fancy top hats and opera tickets no matter how much tax they have to pay.
The whole thing is unworthy of further comment really.
Agree, this approach is insane. There appears to be some idea that statistics, eg lower taxes stimulate growth, represents a reliable physical mechanism. It doesn’t, unless pople actually feel better off they still won’t spend and these measures won’t change attitudes. 2.5% off VAT is a lot of tax revenue lost but hardly makes most new purchases vastly more attractive.
These measures look very familiar, straight out of the old Labour book of stagflation-inducing economic strategies.
Poor Darling dances to fantasists’ tune
The nature of the boost is the worse as you imply.
One can see that expenditure on capital projects, as the US is considering, is at least an investment for the future and the money trickles down to productive companies and their employees.
The reduction (ie deferment of increase) in corporation tax is sound but just handing money to chavs to spend on mobile phones made in Taiwan is nuts. Putting up NI is nuts^2.
In my view, time humanity got back to Darwin.