Just how nutty are the Green party?

danielanthony said:
If these loons ever get into power I'll be able to stop working so hard as the massive taxation will make earning a high salary pointless. Why bother working 80h+ per week as a barrister when you could earn the same working 16h per week in Games Workshop ;)
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Utter nosense:rolleyes:
 
estebanrey said:
Does not compute...
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Yes it does, the 2 are completely unrelated.

One is an attempt to reduce unwanted and accudental pregnancies, the other is an attempt to improve the welfare and quality of life of children and ensure the mothers cam have appropriate leave without loosing their job.

2 very sensible and coherent policies.
 
Nitefly said:
Re-edit. I'm surer of myself this time :p

If you had no personal allowance, you would get taxed 20% on the first ~£10,000+ of your earnings.

Let's say someone earned £20k per annum and assume the personal allowance is £10k for simplicity.

Current Rules:

£20k gross earnings = £10k untaxed earnings + £10k taxed earnings at 20% = £18k net

Proposed rules:

£20k gross earnings = £20k taxed earnings at 20% plus £3900 = £16k plus £3900 = £19,900 net.

That's the principle anyway.
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Lets look at this a little more, don't forget that their also merging national insurance into general taxation, so the figures go like this:

Current rules:
£20k gross earnings
£10k untaxed earnings + £10k taxed earnings at 20% = £2k tax
£12k national insurance at 12% = £1.44k tax
Net = £16,500 net

Proposed rules:
£20k gross earnings
20% income tax + 12% general taxation = £6400 tax
+ £3900 citizens income
Net = £17,500 net

£1k benefit at £20k, not bad. Lets look at £32k, the approximate threshold for higher rate tax payers

Current: £24,720 net, Proposed: £25,660 net.

Hang on, you can earn £5,500 above the UK average salary, and still be £940 better off?
Above this level, both the current, and proposed tax systems will have citizens paying 40% tax and 12% national insurance on all new income. Meaning, the green policy puts more money in the pockets of the poor, and the rich.

How will this be paid for? Higher, and more tax bands of course

Tax rates will be banded and will increase progressively so that those on higher incomes are paying higher marginal rates of tax. In particular, rates higher than 40% will be introduced for those on the highest incomes.
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This hasn't been costed out yet. I'd suggest that this is because it means quite significantly higher tax for the vast majority of citizens.
 
Trifid said:
This is not a couple of percent required across the board, they will need tax revenues to increase massively. The only one that they have costed out on that list is £280b. That is huge, even for a country, about half of our current tax income.
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No they won't because there would massive savings in things like wasted military expenditure, excessive prison populations, and not subsidizing things fossil fuel power stations. Increased revenue would come from stopping tax loop holes and enforcing minimum alternative taxation preventing creative book keeping.

Total tax increases for a majority would be minimal, in fact a large part of the poorest in society will be financially better off and the whole population will have a higher quality of life.
 
D.P. said:
No they won't because there would massive savings in things like wasted military expenditure, excessive prison populations, and not subsidizing things fossil fuel power stations. Increased revenue would come from stopping tax loop holes and enforcing minimum alternative taxation preventing creative book keeping.

Total tax increases for a majority would be minimal, in fact a large part of the poorest in society will be financially better off and the whole population will have a higher quality of life.
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Why are so many on the left economically illiterate?

The things you have listed won't even come close to making a dent in the shortfall. The entire military budget, for example, is only about £40bn a year. The total prison budget is £4.1bn.

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2015UKbn_14bc1n_3050#ukgs302

The proposals in the green party policies can only be achieved by massive tax rises. Ironic considering many of them will also do significant damage to the economy at the same time.
 
Dolph said:
Why are so many on the left economically illiterate?

The things you have listed won't even come close to making a dent in the shortfall. The entire military budget, for example, is only about £40bn a year. The total prison budget is £4.1bn.

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2015UKbn_14bc1n_3050#ukgs302

The proposals in the green party policies can only be achieved by massive tax rises. Ironic considering many of them will also do significant damage to the economy at the same time.
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If by massive tax rises you mean closing tax lop holes and increasing the top band tax to 50% for the super rich then yes! other no. The greens basically a proposing a Scandinavian model of slightly increased taxation and better quality of life for all.
 
D.P. said:
If by massive tax rises you mean closing tax lop holes and increasing the top band tax to 50% for the super rich then yes! other no. The greens basically a proposing a Scandinavian model of slightly increased taxation and better quality of life for all.
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How much tax do you think is lost through loopholes at present? The math simply doesn't add up no matter how much wishful thinking is involved.

Even the most generous and unrealistic tax gap assessment is £122bn, with more realistic assessments coming in around 35bn, that isn't remotely enough, and the 50% tax band didn't actually raise any additional money.
 
robgmun said:
Even then that wouldn't come even close to closing the 280bn gap.

EDIT - Beaten by Dolph
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The 280bn shortfall is a BS number that ignores the other policies such as changes tax free allowance and reduction in welfare costs.

Do you honestly think they just pulled a number out of their backside with zero considerations for economics?

The £71 a week for adults is basically a form of negative income tax that Dolph is a big supporter of!
Sure higher earners and the rich get the money but will pay back more in total tax than they do now.
You can then scrap unemployment benefits, job seekers allowance, child tax credits, disability benefits, etc etc, because everyone is guranteed a living wage and there are no benefits traps. Giving everyone a living wage will have many other net financially positive results such as reduced crime, improved health, increased productivity, reduced economic complexity, reduced benefits fraud, reduced welfare costs, increased government efficiency.
 
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Dolph said:
and the 50% tax band didn't actually raise any additional money.
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And you know one of the reasons for this, due to its short period of implementation and highly advertised start and abolition allowed the affected people (Those earning over 150k) to utilise tax rules and shift their income forward before it came in and delayed income till after it was gone, thus giving a very distorted view of its efficacy.
 
D.P. said:
The 280bn shortfall is a BS number that ignores the other policies such as changes tax free allowance and reduction in welfare costs.

Do you honestly think they just pulled a number out of their backside with zero considerations for economics?

The £71 a week for adults is basically a form of negative income tax that Dolph is a big supporter of!
Sure higher earners and the rich get the money but will pay back more in total tax than they do now.
You can then scrap unemployment benefits, job seekers allowance, child tax credits, disability benefits, etc etc, because everyone is guranteed a living wage and there are no benefits traps. Giving everyone a living wage will have many other net financially positive results such as reduced crime, improved health, increased productivity, reduced economic complexity, reduced benefits fraud, reduced welfare costs, increased government efficiency.
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And that all sounds great, apart from the greens aren't planning on stopping all those other benefits, and also use stepped tax bands, both of which damage the system and reduce the effectiveness.

Additionally, many of their other policies have high costs, and high loads on the economy in terms of drag factors, such as raising energy prices and significantly changing the working relationship between employer and employee.

I genuinely do not think they have coated out their policies properly, backed up by the attitude of many of their supporters as to what takes significant parts of the budget and could have spending reduced.
 
Freakbro said:
And you know one of the reasons for this, due to its short period of implementation and highly advertised start and abolition allowed the affected people (Those earning over 150k) to utilise tax rules and shift their income forward before it came in and delayed income till after it was gone, thus giving a very distorted view of its efficacy.
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So what you are saying is labour introduced it at the wrong time. It is almost like it was a political trap and nothing to do with economics...
 
Dolph said:
So what you are saying is labour introduced it at the wrong time. It is almost like it was a political trap and nothing to do with economics...
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No I'm saying it was scrapped to early with too much warning to be able to get an accurate economic assessment, but let's ignore that and keep trying to score cheap political points
 
D.P. said:
Do you honestly think they just pulled a number out of their backside with zero considerations for economics?
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Having had a look at their policies, yes I do. The numbers have never needed to add up because no one really cared about them.
 
Freakbro said:
No I'm saying it was scrapped to early with too much warning to be able to get an accurate economic assessment, but let's ignore that and keep trying to score cheap political points
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The 50% tax rate was a political rather than economic move though so surely is fair game for political points scoring?
 
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