The VAT rise.

Telescopi said:
Ah the penny on income tax party. Nice to see you have your practical hat on today but that's hardly a liberal democrat policy is it? Perhaps you are an economic liberal rather than social liberal and side with the part of the liberal democrats most closely aligned with the Tories?
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VAT in it's current form is income tax, considering that, I would rather see a 1% rise in income tax then an inevitably greater rise in VAT.

I'm a social and economic liberal which is why I am against authoritarian, tax and waste parties like Labour.
 
Murf said:
As for the guys attacking Dolph............ I honestly despair because it's people like you who are going to see Labour back into power at some point to wreck the economy for a fourth time in a row. Labour can not ever be trusted with running the UK economy. They prove it time and time again.
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I despair when people exclusively blame Labour when the problem is down to nearly 30 years of incompetent government (external factors aside). By subscribing to this propaganda you are consenting to the continuance of such poor governance, except under a different colour.

If Labour practiced fiscal conservatism throughout the boom years then we still would be in a poor situation (Dolph - to save you checking your 101 fallacies book, yes it is retrospective determinism). Simply because our economy is too dependant on The City. Countries like Iceland, Ireland, etc were running on a surplus and it didn't do them any favours, as like us their economy is too focused on the financial (and arguably, construction) sector.

The above being moot anyway as Labour were elected on a platform of increased spending.

Rest assured if Labour get back in office it prolly won't be off my back. Apart from the last GE, I habitually withold my vote.
 
It's amusing how this has become a debate on "how to live on minimum wage 1on1" instead of why the tax hike is justified and what will it's benefits be.
 
Floogie said:
I despair when people exclusively blame Labour when the problem is down to nearly 30 years of incompetent government (external factors aside). By subscribing to this propaganda you are consenting to the continuance of such poor governance, except under a different colour.

If Labour practiced fiscal conservatism throughout the boom years then we still would be in a poor situation (Dolph - to save you checking your 101 fallacies book, yes it is retrospective determinism). Simply because our economy is too dependant on The City. Countries like Iceland, Ireland, etc were running on a surplus and it didn't do them any favours, as like us their economy is too focused on the financial (and arguably, construction) sector.

The above being moot anyway as Labour were elected on a platform of increased spending.

Rest assured if Labour get back in office it prolly won't be off my back. Apart from the last GE, I habitually withold my vote.
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Pretty much. Labour aren't solely to blame for the current economic problems faced by this country and much of the western world. It's simply ludicrous to suggest so.
 
Floogie said:
I despair when people exclusively blame Labour when the problem is down to nearly 30 years of incompetent government (external factors aside). By subscribing to this propaganda you are consenting to the continuance of such poor governance, except under a different colour.

If Labour practiced fiscal conservatism throughout the boom years then we still would be in a poor situation (Dolph - to save you checking your 101 fallacies book, yes it is retrospective determinism). Simply because our economy is too dependant on The City. Countries like Iceland, Ireland, etc were running on a surplus and it didn't do them any favours, as like us their economy is too focused on the financial (and arguably, construction) sector.

The above being moot anyway as Labour were elected on a platform of increased spending.

Rest assured if Labour get back in office it prolly won't be off my back. Apart from the last GE, I habitually withold my vote.
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I'd agree with you, apart from the problems go back longer than 30 years. Nationalisation of manufacturing and excessive union pressure is what broke the economy, it was just kept on life support until Thatcher turned it off...

The problems started before then, when the importance of employment over efficiency became the state sponsored norm.
 
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The uk is just a dot on the economic landscape, the finance merry-go-round takes several people all around the world to perpetuate the farce that it has become.
As for the vat rise, it's a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things.
Tax the rich until they leave the country that's what I say,most have already left. Tax them if they ever visit again. We need the money.
 
Slam62 said:
The uk is just a dot on the economic landscape, the finance merry-go-round takes several people all around the world to perpetuate the farce that it has become.
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The UK is merely a dot on the economic landscape? Considering the UK rank 6th in the world for GDP, what do you think of the economies that rank worse than that?!
 
Slam62 said:
Tax them if they ever visit again. We need the money.
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That reminds me of a joke. I can't really remember how it goes but I'll try:


John, Terry, David, Liam and Alex go to the pub. At the end of the night they pick up the tab. The tab is $100.

John earns more money then anyone so he pays 50% or $50.
Terry and David both earn around the same so they pick up the tab of $20 each.
Liam is on minumum wage, stuck between jobs so he picks up the tab of $10 and Alex is on benefits and just had 3 babies so he doesn't pay anything.

After several times of this happening, John got fed up and said, you know what, I'm going to go to a pub with people who can afford to pay the same as I do. So John left.

Next time at the pub, Terry, David, Liam and Alex asked for the tab again. This time, since John was gone, Terry and David, to much of their disbelief, were forced to pay $40 each, while Liam who's on minimum wage had to pay $20, Alex again paid nothing as his chav girlfriend needed to buy tampons.

So Terry, David got annoyed and realized how John felt and left too. Next time at the pub, Liam paid the whole thing and never hanged out with Alex again, but that's okay because Alex and his wife are alcoholics so the government gives them extra money every 2 weeks to buy alcohol as long as they attend some pointless meeting once a month.

Moral of the story: If you drive the rich away, you're going to pick up the tab, the government isn't going to say oh okay, that's fine, no one needs to pay the taxes then. They are going to come up after you and everything you own and pretty soon you'll end up leaving as well and England will be left with nothing but the likes of Alex.
 
mavers said:
The UK is merely a dot on the economic landscape? Considering the UK rank 6th in the world for GDP, what do you think of the economies that rank worse than that?!
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3rd world and they all owe a lot less than us, the uk finances are possibly the worst in the world, maybe second to Japan, but japan has a lot of industry and technology.
 
franco_22 said:
That reminds me of a joke. I can't really remember how it goes

Moral of the story: If you drive the rich away, you're going to pick up the tab, the government isn't going to say oh okay, that's fine, no one needs to pay the taxes then. They are going to come up after you and everything you own and pretty soon you'll end up leaving as well and England will be left with nothing but the likes of Alex.
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It's not very funny
I don't think those guys had much in common anyway.
I don't think the government should buy people alcohol.

Where do we get the money from then?
 
Slam62 said:
It's not very funny
I don't think those guys had much in common anyway.
I don't think the government should buy people alcohol.

Where do we get the money from then?
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It wasn't meant to be funny, it was meant to be educational on to how our tax system and utilitarian society works.

I thought that alcoholics got extra money from JSA to buy beer?
 
franco_22 said:
It wasn't meant to be funny, it was meant to be educational on to how our tax system and utilitarian society works.

I thought that alcoholics got extra money from JSA to buy beer?
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You said it was a joke, it's not very educational because those men would not go to the pub together. Jsa isn't enough to buy much beer.
 
There's a more educational version on a similar theme - it's done the rounds in various guises attributed falsely to a whole bunch of people. The tax system explained:

The Tax System Explained said:
Suppose that, every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this...

* The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
* The fifth would pay £1
* The sixth would pay £3
* The seventh would pay £7
* The eighth would pay £12
* The ninth would pay £18
* The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement; until one day the owner threw them a problem. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20." Drinks for the ten now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men? The paying customers? How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

* And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
* The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% savings)
* The seventh now pay £5 instead of £7 (28% savings)
* The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% savings)
* The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% savings)
* The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% savings)

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a pound out of the £20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "But he got £10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved £1 as well.

It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that is how our tax system works.

The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up any more. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
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So we could tax the rich a lot less and get more money, but the coalition aren't doing that are they, so they can't have much faith in the theory.
 
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