Haha - no. Inflation rises feed quickly through to voting intention, but inflation falls do not. It takes a long time between inflation falling and voters feeling better off, and longer still between voters feeling better off and voters crediting the government with competence.
There isn't an inflation "fall" prices are still rising.
Services sector inflation is still 5.7% while core inflation excluding food and energy is 3.5%.
This is basically the time of day when a stopped clock is correct.
If populism is the answer, what is the problem? I think the problem is alienation (in the marxist sense of the word - not the existential). Ganesh in the FT is absolutely right that there are no economic similarities across countries driving populism. And this is important, because there are real dangers to the left in offering the wrong sollution to the problem.
If you look at british populism. For all their professed love of country they spend all their time hating it: they hate the bbc, the other countries in the union, they hate the banks, the liberal entertainment elite like Gary Linaker, they hate the life guards, all the other parties, they hate young people, they hate foreigners. The country that they love so is a figment, an imaginary. Even the past they love so is a toxic reconstruction to attack the present they hate so. Everything is set up as enemies.
Marx has this terrific analysis of alienation that begins in work. First, you are alienated from the product of your labour.... what you make belongs to somebody else, then you are alienated from the process of work, when you become an addition to a productive process, third is the alienation of the individual self from your local environment and community (this leads to hedonistic consumption in spare time and distraction from the absurdity of life). In the fourth form of alienation parts of society split off and see other as enemies.
"We are thus led to the fourth aspect, alienation from other people, or from society. Once the traditional community (which understood itself as natural) is broken down, human beings become essentially potentially useful or threatening objects. One can now have enemies in a new sense."
The main lesson here is that populism is a far more profound phenomenon than can be solved by mere redistributive economic strategies.
(Probably some of you will clutch at your pearls for doing a marxist analysis hahahahaha)
Not at all. Marxist economics was mainly crap (there was some good stuff on labour economics) but Marxist sociology is genuinely fascinating and gives real insight into how society actually operates, even today.
We find the probability that Trump is going to be re-elected utterly bewildering. The alienation of so many who are not getting to share the fruits of the US productivity boom we were talking about a few posts ago is the closest I have seen to an explanation.
The reason trump is going to get reelected is that the Biden style statist economic drive doesn't answer the question that populism poses: how to help people feel like they belong and that participatory activity is meaningful.
The reason Trump is going to get re-elected is because there is a right-wing media that pumps out lies and propaganda.
And a non ideological section of the media which nonetheless echoes it.
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
I am starting to question why the NHS is judged on length of waiting lists, rather than health outcomes.
The two are connected - particularly in cancer treatment.
I am starting to question why the NHS is judged on length of waiting lists, rather than health outcomes.
It depends...
Governments would be delighted if they could pull a lever that improved health outcomes
The problem is voters
As an individual, I don't want pesky Government busybodies telling me I smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much, slouch too much. Right up until a heart attack. Then I don't want to wait 3 weeks for a hospital appointment...
Everyone else is imploding. It's like - I'm sure @RochdalePioneers won't appreciate a GG comparison - but ANME does feel a little bit like the Rochdale by-election all over again.
UK dropped off in 2008, and never recovered. Eurozone was never really there to start with.
What explains that? And what are the Americans getting right that no-one in Europe is?
The US has had far more investment than either the UK or the EU, both public and private. They also have more efficient capital markets to facilitate that investment. The UK and most of the EU has been focusing on maintaining current expenditure ahead of that investment and we are paying the price.
Investors in the US are also much more interested in growth whilst our markets are interested in dividends to fund pensions or incomes. A company like Amazon was able to consistently tap the market for more capital despite not paying any dividends year after year after year as it grew to one of the largest companies in the world transforming efficiency in its sector. The reinvestment of profits allowed far greater automation and productivity gains.
I do think that there are opportunities for catch up in both the UK and EU but it is going to require significantly different government policies and priorities. None of the parties seem to be offering these in the current election.
It’s worth remembering that the USA is now the world’s biggest oil producer. It has also seen a vast increase in domestic gas supply, supplied very cheaply to its own industry.
The US economy started pulling away from Europe once their fracking boom catapulted their output into the stratosphere.
When you look at the impact of the rises in energy prices on the German economy since 2022 you can see how important this is. Cheap energy - the next wave being renewables, where yet again the US looks like stealing a march on Europe - is key.
The other thing is their demographics. They remain a younger and faster growing population.
UK dropped off in 2008, and never recovered. Eurozone was never really there to start with.
What explains that? And what are the Americans getting right that no-one in Europe is?
The US has had far more investment than either the UK or the EU, both public and private. They also have more efficient capital markets to facilitate that investment. The UK and most of the EU has been focusing on maintaining current expenditure ahead of that investment and we are paying the price.
Investors in the US are also much more interested in growth whilst our markets are interested in dividends to fund pensions or incomes. A company like Amazon was able to consistently tap the market for more capital despite not paying any dividends year after year after year as it grew to one of the largest companies in the world transforming efficiency in its sector. The reinvestment of profits allowed far greater automation and productivity gains.
I do think that there are opportunities for catch up in both the UK and EU but it is going to require significantly different government policies and priorities. None of the parties seem to be offering these in the current election.
It’s worth remembering that the USA is now the world’s biggest oil producer. It has also seen a vast increase in domestic gas supply, supplied very cheaply to its own industry.
The US economy started pulling away from Europe once their fracking boom catapulted their output into the stratosphere.
When you look at the impact of the rises in energy prices on the German economy since 2022 you can see how important this is. Cheap energy - the next wave being renewables, where yet again the US looks like stealing a march on Europe - is key.
The other thing is their demographics. They remain a younger and faster growing population.
Energy and demographics.
Wasn't it ever thus?
Pretty much, though education is important too. This points to a worldwide downturn, particularly in East Asia where the demographic pyramid is increasingly an inverted one.
If it wasn't for climate change Africa and the Middle East are the future. Migration rather than growth in their economies may be how it comes into effect.
I’m sure I can’t be alone in wishing the poll was tomorrow. The 4th of July feels impossibly distant.
Rishi seems to be under lock and key now as well, replaced by the word ‘TAX’ which I think is probably better for the cons, albeit not an election-winning strategy.
For postal voters, the votes are mostly delivered now, so for them the opportunity to vote has arrived.
The rest of us have two more weeks to wait and can only focus on getting our popcorn orders in early.
I think I’ve only done postal vote once, out of necessity. I enjoy the ritual (only slightly sullied now by the ludicrous ID rules) of going to the station and the booth; my polling place is pleasingly a bowling pavilion.
But yes - popcorn at the ready. I have booked the fifth off as leave.
I had a postal vote in 2007, for the Scottish elections, when I was working in Oslo and coming home for weekends. I flew out on the Sunday prior to the election, and my vote arrived at home on the Monday.:(
I registered for a postal vote as anticipating being away in the autumn on likely election dates. It arrived yesterday. I think most people will return their postal votes this weekend. Time is running out for Sunak.
Haha - no. Inflation rises feed quickly through to voting intention, but inflation falls do not. It takes a long time between inflation falling and voters feeling better off, and longer still between voters feeling better off and voters crediting the government with competence.
Its not falling inflation which makes people feel rich but rising real income.
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
What bollocks. Countries like Denmark and Finland didn’t have an empire, but work fine today through the simple measure of people being OK to pay a bit more tax.
Nothing to do with Denmark having a far lower population (and population density) and fertile land enabling them to produce three times as much food as they need for self sufficiency and export the difference.
Similar arguments apply with Finland.
UK. Not so much.
This is laughable.
Much of Finland is uninhabitable tundra. It suggests that the UK's problems would be solved by merger with Greenland. Or, indeed, made much worse by Scottish independence.
And if population size is all, we can constantly get richer by cutting the country in half.
Some of Finland is uninhabitable tundra. But agriculture actually extends surprisingly far north - further north in Finland than anywhere else on earth. There is agriculture inside the Arctic Circle. Winters are unproductive, obviously, but Northern Finland in summer is surprisimgly fertile.
Their food security tops even Republic of Ireland apparently.
UK agri sector is about 1% of the economy. Oddly this doesn't matter if you are wanting to eat and there is no food around. One of the epic fails of just looking at GDP and suchlike is that not all economic activity is properly measurable by its price, but only by its value. Diamonds are expensive, potatoes and bread are cheap. Potatoes and bread have far greater value.
We don't live in an autarky. Potatoes and bread can be imported.
They can, unless there is a global food deficit and food exporting countries ban exports to ensure their own populations are fed. India suspended food exports for a while in 2022, for example.
Supporting domestic food production is insurance against the global trade in food collapsing.
And if domestic food collapses due to a blight or local drought?
Being comparatively wealthy is a far better insurance. It means that we can pay more than poor countries so we get access to food (or whatever else we need) first and they don't.
Which considering we don't produce anywhere near enough for ourselves is far better insurance.
Being poor but able to rely upon locally produced potatoes didn't help the Irish when the famine hit.
I'm not arguing against a global trade in food. I'm arguing in favour of ensuring that domestic food production is supported. ..
It is, of course. A better question is whether the support is either efficient, well targeted, or sufficient.
Well our dear friend Bart was questioning the "of course". He advocates removing that support, allowing uncompetitive British food production to stop, and increasing the British vulnerability to a collapse of the global trade in food.
Labour have suspended their candidate in Aberdeenshire North and Moray (pro-Putin and pro-Hamas, by the sounds of it) - is that @RochdalePioneers 's constituency?!
Labour have suspended their candidate in Aberdeenshire North and Moray (pro-Putin and pro-Hamas, by the sounds of it) - is that @RochdalePioneers 's constituency?!
UK dropped off in 2008, and never recovered. Eurozone was never really there to start with.
What explains that? And what are the Americans getting right that no-one in Europe is?
The US has had far more investment than either the UK or the EU, both public and private. They also have more efficient capital markets to facilitate that investment. The UK and most of the EU has been focusing on maintaining current expenditure ahead of that investment and we are paying the price.
Investors in the US are also much more interested in growth whilst our markets are interested in dividends to fund pensions or incomes. A company like Amazon was able to consistently tap the market for more capital despite not paying any dividends year after year after year as it grew to one of the largest companies in the world transforming efficiency in its sector. The reinvestment of profits allowed far greater automation and productivity gains.
I do think that there are opportunities for catch up in both the UK and EU but it is going to require significantly different government policies and priorities. None of the parties seem to be offering these in the current election.
It’s worth remembering that the USA is now the world’s biggest oil producer. It has also seen a vast increase in domestic gas supply, supplied very cheaply to its own industry.
The US economy started pulling away from Europe once their fracking boom catapulted their output into the stratosphere.
When you look at the impact of the rises in energy prices on the German economy since 2022 you can see how important this is. Cheap energy - the next wave being renewables, where yet again the US looks like stealing a march on Europe - is key.
The other thing is their demographics. They remain a younger and faster growing population.
UK dropped off in 2008, and never recovered. Eurozone was never really there to start with.
What explains that? And what are the Americans getting right that no-one in Europe is?
The US has had far more investment than either the UK or the EU, both public and private. They also have more efficient capital markets to facilitate that investment. The UK and most of the EU has been focusing on maintaining current expenditure ahead of that investment and we are paying the price.
Investors in the US are also much more interested in growth whilst our markets are interested in dividends to fund pensions or incomes. A company like Amazon was able to consistently tap the market for more capital despite not paying any dividends year after year after year as it grew to one of the largest companies in the world transforming efficiency in its sector. The reinvestment of profits allowed far greater automation and productivity gains.
I do think that there are opportunities for catch up in both the UK and EU but it is going to require significantly different government policies and priorities. None of the parties seem to be offering these in the current election.
It’s worth remembering that the USA is now the world’s biggest oil producer. It has also seen a vast increase in domestic gas supply, supplied very cheaply to its own industry.
The US economy started pulling away from Europe once their fracking boom catapulted their output into the stratosphere.
When you look at the impact of the rises in energy prices on the German economy since 2022 you can see how important this is. Cheap energy - the next wave being renewables, where yet again the US looks like stealing a march on Europe - is key.
The other thing is their demographics. They remain a younger and faster growing population.
Energy and demographics.
Wasn't it ever thus?
Pretty much, though education is important too. This points to a worldwide downturn, particularly in East Asia where the demographic pyramid is increasingly an inverted one.
If it wasn't for climate change Africa and the Middle East are the future. Migration rather than growth in their economies may be how it comes into effect.
Well, that's going to be popular.
Indeed. It is why the Trumpite and Reform agenda of denying climate change will destroy their immigration policy were it to be implemented. The Climate crisis is going to drive a lot of migration.
Everyone else is imploding. It's like - I'm sure @RochdalePioneers won't appreciate a GG comparison - but ANME does feel a little bit like the Rochdale by-election all over again.
Well, except the SNP candidate, the likely winner(?), is still in the game.
Haha - no. Inflation rises feed quickly through to voting intention, but inflation falls do not. It takes a long time between inflation falling and voters feeling better off, and longer still between voters feeling better off and voters crediting the government with competence.
Its not falling inflation which makes people feel rich but rising real income.
Also, the prices have already "inflated", which upsets people as they recall their nominal equivalence 4-5 years ago.
Wages haven't increased by anything like the same amount, so the pain is also still there.
It's good news, although we (people who pay attention to inflation stats) all knew this was going to happen. And when it would happen. It's one theory as to the timing of the election: on the back of good inflation news with more to come mid campaign.
It will likely tick back up slightly in coming months, but that won't be Sunak's problem.
And I'm not convinced many ordinary people pay enough attention to inflation statistics to care about a drop from 2.3% to 2.0%.
Note of caution re today’s inflation figs. While overall CPI rate is back to 2%, services inflation is still 5.7%: ABOVE economists (5.5%) and BoE (5.3%) forecasts. Upshot is actually markets have slightly REDUCED the prob of an Aug cut.
Note of caution re today’s inflation figs. While overall CPI rate is back to 2%, services inflation is still 5.7%: ABOVE economists (5.5%) and BoE (5.3%) forecasts. Upshot is actually markets have slightly REDUCED the prob of an Aug cut.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
Haha - no. Inflation rises feed quickly through to voting intention, but inflation falls do not. It takes a long time between inflation falling and voters feeling better off, and longer still between voters feeling better off and voters crediting the government with competence.
Its not falling inflation which makes people feel rich but rising real income.
Also, the prices have already "inflated", which upsets people as they recall their nominal equivalence 4-5 years ago.
Wages haven't increased by anything like the same amount, so the pain is also still there.
And the most visible prices are petrol prices, which are on the turn again.
We could do with a few years of goods deflation and service inflation. Services inflation means wage increases.
If populism is the answer, what is the problem? I think the problem is alienation (in the marxist sense of the word - not the existential). Ganesh in the FT is absolutely right that there are no economic similarities across countries driving populism. And this is important, because there are real dangers to the left in offering the wrong sollution to the problem.
If you look at british populism. For all their professed love of country they spend all their time hating it: they hate the bbc, the other countries in the union, they hate the banks, the liberal entertainment elite like Gary Linaker, they hate the life guards, all the other parties, they hate young people, they hate foreigners. The country that they love so is a figment, an imaginary. Even the past they love so is a toxic reconstruction to attack the present they hate so. Everything is set up as enemies.
Marx has this terrific analysis of alienation that begins in work. First, you are alienated from the product of your labour.... what you make belongs to somebody else, then you are alienated from the process of work, when you become an addition to a productive process, third is the alienation of the individual self from your local environment and community (this leads to hedonistic consumption in spare time and distraction from the absurdity of life). In the fourth form of alienation parts of society split off and see other as enemies.
"We are thus led to the fourth aspect, alienation from other people, or from society. Once the traditional community (which understood itself as natural) is broken down, human beings become essentially potentially useful or threatening objects. One can now have enemies in a new sense."
The main lesson here is that populism is a far more profound phenomenon than can be solved by mere redistributive economic strategies.
(Probably some of you will clutch at your pearls for doing a marxist analysis hahahahaha)
Not at all. Marxist economics was mainly crap (there was some good stuff on labour economics) but Marxist sociology is genuinely fascinating and gives real insight into how society actually operates, even today.
We find the probability that Trump is going to be re-elected utterly bewildering. The alienation of so many who are not getting to share the fruits of the US productivity boom we were talking about a few posts ago is the closest I have seen to an explanation.
The reason trump is going to get reelected is that the Biden style statist economic drive doesn't answer the question that populism poses: how to help people feel like they belong and that participatory activity is meaningful.
The reason Trump is going to get re-elected is because there is a right-wing media that pumps out lies and propaganda.
hahaha that too... In reality managing populism is not something that can be done over one electoral term.
No. He has had little to do with it falling and alot to do with it going up.
It will also start to edge up again shortly.
Although I agree with the broad point, it hardly matters for Sunak if inflation is going to edge up shortly.
Unless there's a miracle, these are the last set of inflation figures that he'll see published as PM (and, if there's a miracle, we'll all be too busy trying to work out what the hell just happened to be concerned about inflation going from 2.0% to 2.1%).
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Sir Jim who moved to Monaco to save - checks - £4bn in taxes.
And he's lecturing other people about paying their taxes?
What a total fucking scumbag.
That's his point isn't it? "We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
But is he a working person by Starmer's definition?
Tbh the whole Ratcliffe endorsement looks unhelpful. In the modern parlance, he is saying the quiet bit out loud.
You have to tax the rich. The poor don't have any money 👿
What's interesting about Sir Jim's rather mealy-mouthed SKS endorsement is that it feels like he's on a journey to Reform. It would be impossible for him to endorse them, and pointless as they won't form the Government, but I can see him 'let down by Labour' in a couple of years and going over to Reform if they are still a force.
I’m not sure the Ratcliffe endorsement is one that Labour would actually want.
He’s widely reviled, regularly mocked in the Guardian for his tax move, mocked by football fans for his involvement so far with Man Utd and his tax move (I’m a son of the soil, local born Man Utd fan but fuck you peasants, I’m off to Monaco so you can’t touch my lovely money).
He’s ridiculed for trying to effectively get the government to spend money on a stadium for Man Utd rather than inconveniencing billionaire owners. He’s also the man who thinks the Ineos Grenadier is a good idea and thinks that cycling is a clean sport.
As TSE and others alluded to earlier on here, it’s cynical bollocks as he’s been buttering up Burnham and Starmer for ages for spending on Old Trafford.
Haha - no. Inflation rises feed quickly through to voting intention, but inflation falls do not. It takes a long time between inflation falling and voters feeling better off, and longer still between voters feeling better off and voters crediting the government with competence.
Its not falling inflation which makes people feel rich but rising real income.
Also, the prices have already "inflated", which upsets people as they recall their nominal equivalence 4-5 years ago.
Wages haven't increased by anything like the same amount, so the pain is also still there.
Your pay might not have but my pay rises have been comfortably above inflation as have those of many millions - minimum wage has increased by over 10% for both the last two years.
The key factor has been, as almost always, the housing effect.
Those hit by big increases in mortgage costs have been hurt financially - those who have paid off their mortgages have been much better placed.
Haha - no. Inflation rises feed quickly through to voting intention, but inflation falls do not. It takes a long time between inflation falling and voters feeling better off, and longer still between voters feeling better off and voters crediting the government with competence.
Its not falling inflation which makes people feel rich but rising real income.
Also, the prices have already "inflated", which upsets people as they recall their nominal equivalence 4-5 years ago.
Wages haven't increased by anything like the same amount, so the pain is also still there.
And the most visible prices are petrol prices, which are on the turn again.
We could do with a few years of goods deflation and service inflation. Services inflation means wage increases.
Fuel and energy prices also feed into almost everything else, thanks to logistics and business premises. Even if there’s been no inflation in the cost of the widgets themselves, the cost of selling them has gone up.
The precursor to fuel and energy prices returning to something sensible, is for Ukraine to win their war, so everyone needs to keep arming them. At least Ukraine has most of the Western world on their side, meanwhile Putin has to go grovelling to Kim Jung-Un to keep his army in tanks and ammo.
The Conservative Party has, for so long, been a successful political party because it has been able to tie together disparate groups, who don't all share exactly the same ideology.
And it's done this by being pragmatic and remembering that there are going to be people who believe homosexuality is a sin, and there are going to be people are publicly gay, but they might share common views about - say - the size of the state.
I'm reminded of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was caught on tape saying that the US was in a (culture) war, and there would only be one winner.
No, Justice Alito, there is no winner. You cannot silence the voices of the 50% of people who disagree with you without actual war. And that actual war (see the Thirty Years War for an example) will end with everyone grudgingly agreeing that actually they can't agree and they can't force other people to agree with them.
The Conservative Party cannot just be the party of people left behind by globalisation. Nor can it just be the party of pensioners. Nor can it just be the party of wealthy plutocrats. It needs to be a big tent. If you choose to silence - or make unwelcome - the voices that disagree with you, then you are consigning yourself to electoral oblivion.
This is why "we didn't win because we weren't centrist enough" and "we didn't win because we weren't right wing enough" are both bullshit arguments. You didn't win because you were unable to make the tent big enough.
Where was the voting market behind monetarism when MT made that her guiding theme? There wasn't one. She decided that that was the right thing for Britain, and set about winning the arguments. That's how you get positive change. Crafting your platform out of a mishmash of what voters have found acceptable up until now is not a plan to get into (or stay in) government; it's a way to go around in circles achieving very little.
And I also don't think the issue is that Tories 'haven't been right wing enough', it's that they have sold themselves as the right wing alternative, benefitted from doing so, and changed their minds completely when it comes to actually doing anything right wing. That's a question of trust, rather than a question of politics. Those who feel that they haven't been centrist enough should vote for parties that espouse social democracy, of which there are two in the political mainstream. Why do they need a third? It smacks of reducing the alternatives available to voters because they aren't actually that confident in the attractiveness of their centrist prospectus.
Every time the Tories get into power they're lured into nanny-statism. Thatcher had enough about her to push against that for several years. Imperfect though such direction might prove I think it is beneficial. Reducing the size of the state should be top of the list for any government.
OK.
The number of people of pensionable age is rising every year: we have promised them (repeatedly) that there is no circumstance where their pensions will grow less than 2% or wages or inflation. In addition, the proportion of people who are pensioners will grow every year. And a pensioner costs approximately 15x as much in social and health care as someone in their 20s.
So: interest payments, healthcare and pension cost increases are nailed on. And they are half the budget.
We need to spend more on defence. Policing and the administration of justice have been cut to the bone.
I want to cut the size of the state too. But we all need to be realistic about the challenges facing us with a greying population.
Plus everyone wants more transport projects and everyone wants increasingly improving schools. Add on people always having a pet regulation….
The problem is that most expect the state can do more than it can do. It could only do what it did in the first place due to the revenue of empire and tbe legacy assets and soft power in the post empire world which have slowly inevitably decayed
Also, as life becomes more complex the state can do less. EM Forsters "The Machine Stops" was a boring book foisted on us at school but a very prohetic one.
The choice is collapse with authoritarianism on the way or a wholesale deregulation, a very limited state based on a principle of Caveat Emptor and an acceptance that people will make bad or inept decisions and suffer as a result and it is not the states job to prevent or mitigate this, other than to set some core, simple to understand rules (which is basically what Common Law is).
I think the die was cast though when Cameron beat Davis in 2005, or perhaps even when Wilson won in 1964.
What bollocks. Countries like Denmark and Finland didn’t have an empire, but work fine today through the simple measure of people being OK to pay a bit more tax.
Nothing to do with Denmark having a far lower population (and population density) and fertile land enabling them to produce three times as much food as they need for self sufficiency and export the difference.
Similar arguments apply with Finland.
UK. Not so much.
This is laughable.
Much of Finland is uninhabitable tundra. It suggests that the UK's problems would be solved by merger with Greenland. Or, indeed, made much worse by Scottish independence.
And if population size is all, we can constantly get richer by cutting the country in half.
Some of Finland is uninhabitable tundra. But agriculture actually extends surprisingly far north - further north in Finland than anywhere else on earth. There is agriculture inside the Arctic Circle. Winters are unproductive, obviously, but Northern Finland in summer is surprisimgly fertile.
Their food security tops even Republic of Ireland apparently.
UK agri sector is about 1% of the economy. Oddly this doesn't matter if you are wanting to eat and there is no food around. One of the epic fails of just looking at GDP and suchlike is that not all economic activity is properly measurable by its price, but only by its value. Diamonds are expensive, potatoes and bread are cheap. Potatoes and bread have far greater value.
We don't live in an autarky. Potatoes and bread can be imported.
They can, unless there is a global food deficit and food exporting countries ban exports to ensure their own populations are fed. India suspended food exports for a while in 2022, for example.
Supporting domestic food production is insurance against the global trade in food collapsing.
And if domestic food collapses due to a blight or local drought?
Being comparatively wealthy is a far better insurance. It means that we can pay more than poor countries so we get access to food (or whatever else we need) first and they don't.
Which considering we don't produce anywhere near enough for ourselves is far better insurance.
Being poor but able to rely upon locally produced potatoes didn't help the Irish when the famine hit.
I'm not arguing against a global trade in food. I'm arguing in favour of ensuring that domestic food production is supported. ..
It is, of course. A better question is whether the support is either efficient, well targeted, or sufficient.
Well our dear friend Bart was questioning the "of course". He advocates removing that support, allowing uncompetitive British food production to stop, and increasing the British vulnerability to a collapse of the global trade in food.
Bart has some niche views, which don't find much support in UK politics. But they're not entirely irrelevant if they help question how efficient government subsidies are.
UK dropped off in 2008, and never recovered. Eurozone was never really there to start with.
What explains that? And what are the Americans getting right that no-one in Europe is?
Its possible to discuss ways of increasing of increasing productivity.
But before that you have to want to increase productivity.
And do European workers want to increase productivity ?
There can be good reasons for not wanting to.
Probably not. A lot of people simply can't be arsed.
The USA is such a paradox. Every period of relative decline is replaced by a renewed burst of creativity. The 21st century will be a US century as much as the 20th, because of innovation, high productivity, and a growing population. China, by contrast, could have a population half of its current level, by the end of the century, and a notably lower share of world economic output than the USA.
And yet, many of the USA's outcomes - relative to its economic success - are appalling. The worst life expectancy of any rich country, and the kind of widepsread poverty that you'd only find in the most rundown parts of this country or Southern Italy. Not to mention a country where one half of the population hates the other half.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country on earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and it’s potholed and falling to pieces in many places. The railways make ours look Swiss.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I can't say I find that very appealing, if true. Not unless, there are offsetting tax reductions in other areas.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
So much for Leon's 'Chinese sabotage' convictions.
New Boeing whistleblower comes forward hours before CEO’s Senate testimony https://thehill.com/business/4727085-boeing-whistleblower-jim-calhoun-senate-testimony/ ..Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s (D-Conn.) office identified the whistleblower as Sam Mohawk, a quality assurance inspector for the planemaker in Renton, Wash. Mohawk alleges Boeing improperly tracked and stored faulty parts, and that those parts were likely installed on airplanes including the 737 Max, which is manufactured at the Renton facility..
Mind you his comments will not I imagine win over many Tories to Labour but might have a few leftwingers spitting out their herbal tea and going Green.
'Mr Caudwell said he had donated to the Conservatives in 2019 “because I couldn’t possibly stand a Corbyn government, and I am still of exactly the same view there.”
He praised Sir Keir's attempts to get rid of what he called "the loony Left" which he claimed had focused on "extreme socialist policies", instead of "creating a wealthy Britain".
"We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
Sir Jim who moved to Monaco to save - checks - £4bn in taxes.
And he's lecturing other people about paying their taxes?
What a total fucking scumbag.
That's his point isn't it? "We can't tax rich people in order to help the poor because they'll go off to Monaco and other places, we have to create real genuine wealth.”
But is he a working person by Starmer's definition?
Tbh the whole Ratcliffe endorsement looks unhelpful. In the modern parlance, he is saying the quiet bit out loud.
You have to tax the rich. The poor don't have any money 👿
What's interesting about Sir Jim's rather mealy-mouthed SKS endorsement is that it feels like he's on a journey to Reform. It would be impossible for him to endorse them, and pointless as they won't form the Government, but I can see him 'let down by Labour' in a couple of years and going over to Reform if they are still a force.
There's alot of business people wanting to back the winner. Ratcliffe may be genuine but many are just backing a winner. If this was a Tory winning campaign I suspect many would be different in their outlook.
The shadow health secretary has said he would buy up private beds for the NHS, in defiance of objections from “middle-class Lefties”. Wes Streeting said a Labour government would get the NHS to buy thousands of beds from care homes, to “unblock” a failing health and care system, while expanding use of private hospitals for state-funded operations.
Mr Streeting said there was “nothing Left-wing” about leaving working class patients to lie in pain because of “middle class Lefty” objections to the use of the private sector.
(narrator: it's cheaper for the NHS to build and run and staff its own hospitals instead of subcontracting to the private sector)
Yes, but in the short term, if you want a push to empty waiting lists…
Things like MRI are completely separate, often. So doing somethings in private hospitals would work. Much has dual employer staff, of course. Then again, extra facilities.
For the Envy types, an advantage would be the reduction in spare capacity in private health, slowing it down. So no more “Speak to a GP right now”, “have your scan this evening”….
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
I always see the US as a country of a thousand daily individual kindnesses and entrenched institutional cruelty.
Everyone else is imploding. It's like - I'm sure @RochdalePioneers won't appreciate a GG comparison - but ANME does feel a little bit like the Rochdale by-election all over again.
Well, except the SNP candidate, the likely winner(?), is still in the game.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
I always see the US as a country of a thousand daily individual kindnesses and entrenched institutional cruelty.
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
That's an article from the Telegraph which is as strange as usual.
Headline of "UK cancer care lagging 20 years behind Europe", yet the study quoted (which is not linked afaics but the piece is stuffed with internal Telegraph links) is against Scandinavia, not Europe.
Strange framing, and I'm not sure what the game is:
1 - Framing current Tories as a failure? 2 - Clickbait? 3 - NHS Bashing? 4 - Something to with Streeting's alleged "buying up social care beds" policy? I have no idea even what a "social care bed" is when it is at home.
Perhaps it's Macmillan Cancer going for clickbait with a "poster paint press release to get attention today before releasing the context later" - the report is not obviously easy to find on their website afaics.
UK dropped off in 2008, and never recovered. Eurozone was never really there to start with.
What explains that? And what are the Americans getting right that no-one in Europe is?
Its possible to discuss ways of increasing of increasing productivity.
But before that you have to want to increase productivity.
And do European workers want to increase productivity ?
There can be good reasons for not wanting to.
Probably not. A lot of people simply can't be arsed.
Unless they benefit from increasing their productivity why should they bother ?
If all the financial benefit instead goes to the executive oligarchy or in taxation then it makes sense not to increase output put to spend more or your work time looking at the internet.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
I always see the US as a country of a thousand daily individual kindnesses and entrenched institutional cruelty.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
I always see the US as a country of a thousand daily individual kindnesses and entrenched institutional cruelty.
Good summary.
It's not a vision I'd care to share.
The USA is much closer to 18th century England than we are.
The US is explicable by the Founding Fathers being 18th century English gentry and professionals, all of them classicists, who deliberately modelled their new State to be like the aristocratic Roman Republic. Right down to wielding the power of the rods and axes, so to speak.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
I wonder if there's some religious aspect to it as well.
A Puritan self improvement in the promised land meme echoing down the ages.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
When did that come in? That looks like pandering to wealthy people and traditional Conservative supporters, such as professionals and small business types. Has that been wired in since personal pension pots?
I've lost both parents since then, but neither had a personal pension pot.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
I wonder if there's some religious aspect to it as well.
A Puritan self improvement in the promised land meme echoing down the ages.
Rugged individualism and unapologetic, extreme inequality.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country in earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and its potholed and falling to pieces in many places.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
It's funny how we were thinking the same thoughts simultaneously.
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
I wonder if there's some religious aspect to it as well.
A Puritan self improvement in the promised land meme echoing down the ages.
Rugged individualism and unapologetic, extreme inequality.
On the religious aspect, afaics in Christian Communities there are two places where "Health and Wealth" theology thrives (aka the Prosperity Gospel, see for example Kenneth Hagin as an archetype from some years back).
1 - Where they are rich enough to need an excuse to ignore the teaching around concern for the poor, and all the others aspects. See some USA 'Evangelicals'. The same type of self-deception practised by 'Christians' who are full-throated Trump supporters; somehow the claimed values do not apply thoroughly.
2 - Where they are destitute enough to need a hope, and can be exploited by their pastors, or feel destitute. See Nigeria as perhaps the extreme case. There are versions in the West (including the UK) where congregants are exploited.
There are nuances, but that seems to me to be broadly accurate.
(I should note that other religions have their own dynamic.)
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct. Part of that may I hope be savings due to falling interest rates etc.
UK dropped off in 2008, and never recovered. Eurozone was never really there to start with.
What explains that? And what are the Americans getting right that no-one in Europe is?
The US has had far more investment than either the UK or the EU, both public and private. They also have more efficient capital markets to facilitate that investment. The UK and most of the EU has been focusing on maintaining current expenditure ahead of that investment and we are paying the price.
Investors in the US are also much more interested in growth whilst our markets are interested in dividends to fund pensions or incomes. A company like Amazon was able to consistently tap the market for more capital despite not paying any dividends year after year after year as it grew to one of the largest companies in the world transforming efficiency in its sector. The reinvestment of profits allowed far greater automation and productivity gains.
I do think that there are opportunities for catch up in both the UK and EU but it is going to require significantly different government policies and priorities. None of the parties seem to be offering these in the current election.
I’d say that the US has a large segment of investors who are interested in growth rather than (primarily) dividends.they have plenty of dividend farmers. See Boeing and its motivations.
There is a considerable gap between the two. I can recall some serious vituperation directed towards Amazon and its investors. To the point of declaring it immoral not to prioritise dividends.
Comments
Services sector inflation is still 5.7% while core inflation excluding food and energy is 3.5%.
This is basically the time of day when a stopped clock is correct.
Governments would be delighted if they could pull a lever that improved health outcomes
The problem is voters
As an individual, I don't want pesky Government busybodies telling me I smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much, slouch too much. Right up until a heart attack. Then I don't want to wait 3 weeks for a hospital appointment...
Wasn't it ever thus? Well, that's going to be popular.
Wages haven't increased by anything like the same amount, so the pain is also still there.
It will likely tick back up slightly in coming months, but that won't be Sunak's problem.
And I'm not convinced many ordinary people pay enough attention to inflation statistics to care about a drop from 2.3% to 2.0%.
Note of caution re today’s inflation figs.
While overall CPI rate is back to 2%, services inflation is still 5.7%: ABOVE economists (5.5%) and BoE (5.3%) forecasts.
Upshot is actually markets have slightly REDUCED the prob of an Aug cut.
https://x.com/EdConwaySky/status/1803322997832351765
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise
1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
We could do with a few years of goods deflation and service inflation. Services inflation means wage increases.
Unless there's a miracle, these are the last set of inflation figures that he'll see published as PM (and, if there's a miracle, we'll all be too busy trying to work out what the hell just happened to be concerned about inflation going from 2.0% to 2.1%).
He’s widely reviled, regularly mocked in the Guardian for his tax move, mocked by football fans for his involvement so far with Man Utd and his tax move (I’m a son of the soil, local born Man Utd fan but fuck you peasants, I’m off to Monaco so you can’t touch my lovely money).
He’s ridiculed for trying to effectively get the government to spend money on a stadium for Man Utd rather than inconveniencing billionaire owners. He’s also the man who thinks the Ineos Grenadier is a good idea and thinks that cycling is a clean sport.
As TSE and others alluded to earlier on here, it’s cynical bollocks as he’s been buttering up Burnham and Starmer for ages for spending on Old Trafford.
NEW THREAD
The key factor has been, as almost always, the housing effect.
Those hit by big increases in mortgage costs have been hurt financially - those who have paid off their mortgages have been much better placed.
The precursor to fuel and energy prices returning to something sensible, is for Ukraine to win their war, so everyone needs to keep arming them. At least Ukraine has most of the Western world on their side, meanwhile Putin has to go grovelling to Kim Jung-Un to keep his army in tanks and ammo.
But they're not entirely irrelevant if they help question how efficient government subsidies are.
And yet, many of the USA's outcomes - relative to its economic success - are appalling. The worst life expectancy of any rich country, and the kind of widepsread poverty that you'd only find in the most rundown parts of this country or Southern Italy. Not to mention a country where one half of the population hates the other half.
I was in San Francisco last week - probably the richest city in the richest state in the richest country on earth. The destitution was unlike anything I have seen anywhere outside India. Filthy people, dressed literally in rags, with severe mental health problems, in large numbers all across downtown. A colleague was in Atlanta recently. He saw the same there.
Infrastructure in the US is terrible. Drive the 101 from San Francisco to San Jose, through the heart of Silicon Valley, and it’s potholed and falling to pieces in many places. The railways make ours look Swiss.
Access to healthcare is expensive, life expectancy is lower than ours, there is a massive opioids addiction epidemic, the country is horribly and violently divided.
If you’re well off and live in a safe suburb, your life will probably be better than the one lived by your equivalent in Europe. If you’re not, though, it won’t be. It will be far tougher and far more pitiless.
Productivity isn’t everything!
I think the harshness towards those at the lower end of society is a feature, not a bug, of American society. The message is "This is what failure looks like. Avoid it."
New Boeing whistleblower comes forward hours before CEO’s Senate testimony
https://thehill.com/business/4727085-boeing-whistleblower-jim-calhoun-senate-testimony/
..Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s (D-Conn.) office identified the whistleblower as Sam Mohawk, a quality assurance inspector for the planemaker in Renton, Wash. Mohawk alleges Boeing improperly tracked and stored faulty parts, and that those parts were likely installed on airplanes including the 737 Max, which is manufactured at the Renton facility..
Things like MRI are completely separate, often. So doing somethings in private hospitals would work. Much has dual employer staff, of course. Then again, extra facilities.
For the Envy types, an advantage would be the reduction in spare capacity in private health, slowing it down. So no more “Speak to a GP right now”, “have your scan this evening”….
It's not a vision I'd care to share.
Headline of "UK cancer care lagging 20 years behind Europe", yet the study quoted (which is not linked afaics but the piece is stuffed with internal Telegraph links) is against Scandinavia, not Europe.
Strange framing, and I'm not sure what the game is:
1 - Framing current Tories as a failure?
2 - Clickbait?
3 - NHS Bashing?
4 - Something to with Streeting's alleged "buying up social care beds" policy? I have no idea even what a "social care bed" is when it is at home.
Perhaps it's Macmillan Cancer going for clickbait with a "poster paint press release to get attention today before releasing the context later" - the report is not obviously easy to find on their website afaics.
No idea.
If all the financial benefit instead goes to the executive oligarchy or in taxation then it makes sense not to increase output put to spend more or your work time looking at the internet.
The US is explicable by the Founding Fathers being 18th century English gentry and professionals, all of them classicists, who deliberately modelled their new State to be like the aristocratic Roman Republic. Right down to wielding the power of the rods and axes, so to speak.
A Puritan self improvement in the promised land meme echoing down the ages.
I've lost both parents since then, but neither had a personal pension pot.
1 - Where they are rich enough to need an excuse to ignore the teaching around concern for the poor, and all the others aspects. See some USA 'Evangelicals'. The same type of self-deception practised by 'Christians' who are full-throated Trump supporters; somehow the claimed values do not apply thoroughly.
2 - Where they are destitute enough to need a hope, and can be exploited by their pastors, or feel destitute. See Nigeria as perhaps the extreme case. There are versions in the West (including the UK) where congregants are exploited.
There are nuances, but that seems to me to be broadly accurate.
(I should note that other religions have their own dynamic.)
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct.
I quite like the list posted by @MrBedfordshire , who I assume lives in a first floor flat because the Ground Floor cannot apply there. I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct. Part of that may I hope be savings due to falling interest rates etc.
There is a considerable gap between the two. I can recall some serious vituperation directed towards Amazon and its investors. To the point of declaring it immoral not to prioritise dividends.