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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The sting. How George Osborne is tackling the deficit
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The sting. How George Osborne is tackling the deficit
We’re all in this together, so David Cameron told us before the 2010 general election. This assertion was received with derision by many outside the Eton-attending classes. And sure enough, when the coalition came to power after the election, the impact of the deficit-reduction measures was felt most keenly by those at the bottom of society. The Treasury explicitly targeted spending cuts ov…
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14% of 29% = 4.08%. A major chunk, no doubt, but 'very dependent'??
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/UK_taxes.svg/2000px-UK_taxes.svg.png
A lovely tax base to lick his lips at there.
All benefits should come with a slip of paper similar to a pay slip, showing how much it would have been before the removal of the notional income tax.
After all, state pensions are taxable.
And today we hear that Cameron has put David Lammy in charge of a commission to investigate why there are more black people in jail than in our top universities. 'Tackling inequality is going to be my number one priority' he says.
On the same day we discover he's putting his son's name down for an elite public school.
We can all have our own theories. Mine is that one half of his brain is responsible for his gauche PR machine and the other for managing the multi millionaire Cameron/Sheffield clan. And the the two sides don't communicate.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3424549/Camerons-enter-son-London-private-school-Eton-educated-PM-considers-prestigious-18-000-year-prep-10-year-old-Elwen-despite-sending-daughter-state-school-calling-fees-crazy.html
I will never cease to be amazed how you turn out analysis of such quality, so regularly, and so consistently bang-on-the-money. Often, quite literally.
We are very privileged to have you.
Alastair is right that the very top earners are those who are mobile in terms of locating their businesses, but there's a large number of younger managers that are choosing to live abroad for more opportunities and less tax. They (okay, we) are having a great life and contributing little back to the UK, don't see a pressing need to return and pay 40-60% income tax with VAT and other taxes on top.
The Chancellor would do well to try and attract I believe over a million working age graduate expats back to the UK to pay their taxes there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom
Indicates that perhaps this was not originally intended to be made public
There used to be two ways to balance a budget. Increase taxes or cut spending.
Now it seems there is only one way. Spending never goes down, labour or tory.
Osborne is about to cr8p out a giant steaming turd of a Brownian budget, either because he can;t cut spending, or doesn;t want to. My feeling is he can't be bothered, because the only thing in life he cares about is his own leadership bid.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/shares-of-total-income-before-and-after-tax-and-income-tax-for-percentile-groups
Pretax annual income of top 1% is £170,000+. In Alistair's terms this is the affluent and super-rich (top 0.1%). They pay £40b a year in income tax.
Pretax annual income of next 4% is £74,000- £170,000. I'd call this well-off middle class. I'm in this group. We pay £34b a year in income tax.
I'm guessing that both these groups will be squeezed further on pension allowances.
Pretax annual income of next 5% is £54,000 - £74,000. They pay £19b a year in income tax. Less to squeeze.
But the big one is National Insurance. This amounts to £100b a year (compared with £170b for Income Tax) and this hits the less well-off proportionally much harder than the higher earners.
A simple solution is to remove the upper limit on National Insurance contributions so it is no longer regressive, and charge NI to pensioners (including me). I reckon this would raise about £45b. That should be enough. He would have to spend it though. Otherwise it will have a deflationary effect on the economy. Perhaps we will have to wait for Corbyn.
IIRC, he forced it through as a statutory instrument to allow a discrete vote in the HoC when he could have packaged it up with the Budget and a Finance Bill. Presumably, he did that to create a dividing line with Labour. All the reports at the time were of how little sympathy Osborne had with the welfare budget, and the Spectator pointed out he tended to 'sneer' at those on it.
But, still: he won that HoC vote. And more than once. Then, the Lords threw it out, not by a big majority, which was a break of constitutional convention. But the motion was actually for full transitional protection for a minimum of three years, not a total rejection.
So, we expected a sensible modification and taper, which I'd been arguing for all along, as the original proposal was too harsh. And I failed to understand why Osborne hadn't done it all along. If it had been reasonable, it would have passed the Lords, even as a statutory instrument.
But, then, he just called the whole thing off. All of it. He didn't taper or revise it, he just called the whole thing off. Weird.
Personally, I think he did this *all* of this in response to the election of Corbyn, whereas previously he was expecting Burnham, and the Lords rejection and Tory MPs jitters were just cover. He didn't expect the backlash he did get over the cuts and, when he did, he realised it was now a political liability - so junked the whole thing and started to look for other groups to victimise. Ones that didn't squeal so much and jeopardise his future political ambitions. And he doesn't really care who or where.
It tells me both his emotional and political antenna are way off. And he just cares about political dividing lines and winning.
But you already knew that.
Its not weird if you see it in the context of an all-encompassing desire to be the next leader of the tory party.
I cant be the only one who is slightly disappointed that a person with all his abilities and opportunities has not managed to acquire something even remotely interesting on his tax return?
I may be wrong, but I'd bet there nothing controversial on the chancellor's return either - apart from his ministerial salary, possibly some income from shares and savings, maybe a rental income from wherever he lived in London before he moved to No.11.
I bet there are plenty of MPs from all sides of the HoC who earn far more than either of them. And there must be plenty of people running local authorities 'struggling' to keep services going, coining far more than everyone else. Why doesn't McDonnell challenge them?
The Government is going to have major problems in the long-term if it keeps consistent uncertainty around private pensions by constantly salami-slicing them.
I suspect he will just ignore McDonnell. "Silly man". That's Osborne speaking.
I think he genuinely thought he'd gain some political credit by managing to extract some tax from them.
He'd probably have been better off letting sleeping dogs lie.
Are you like me in that you'd struggle to know what to do if it was Osborne versus Corbyn?
About the same time Brown decided to increase the top rate of tax to 50% having had it at 40% for the entire Labour years. Principally it was to screw up whoever followed of course and the country as a whole if he hadn't already done enough of that.
Brown, A very nasty vindictive little man
I recall when Ken challenged Boris in 2012(?),who accepted and published. Neither were MPs at the time so had no reason to declare income anywhere. A number of Telegraph writers were somewhat disappointed to learn that their star columnist was on £5k a week for his missives.
Doesn't mean that Brown wasn't massively vindictive in dropping the PM's salary from £195k to £150k on 6th April 2010 though.
Still better than Corbyn though by about 10 to 1
But the time has come to hit pensioners too, it's 4.5 years to the next election and pensioners hate Corbyn with a passion so much they will still vote Tory no matter what.
They are going to milk traditional Tory supporters because they have nowhere else to go and there is a lot of time till the next GE.
Simple really there ain't a problem.
These are the figures to be used for the Boundary review.
Of course some of these people may now go back onto the register but that won't affect boundary review which will be done based on the December 2015 register.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/31/electoral-register-loses-estimated-800000-people-since-changes-to-system
BTW its easy to programme SNP MPs, they have nothing to do and no interest in doing it because they have no power. Only a mug would vote SNP in a Westminster election. I do hate upseting nats because Scotland is a lovely place and scots are lovely people.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/01/29/hmmm-trump-announces-post-iowa-rally-in-little-rock-arkansas/
"Why would Trump detour down there when he could spend the day in Charleston or Vegas?
Why, Mike Huckabee’s from Arkansas, come to think of it. And the Trump event in Little Rock seems to have been added only within the past 24 hours or so, right around the time Huckabee was reaching out to Trump about attending his rally for vets last night. Probably no one in the field has attacked Trump’s main rival, Ted Cruz, more doggedly over the last few weeks than Huckabee."
I wouldn't be surprised if Huckabee jumps to his team.
Trump needs evangelicals to balance his campaign.
No? Thought not.
It's what Brown the last Labour PM did and more importantly why he did it as he was turfed out of No 10 that's the point here. A point I note you have carefully avoided addressing.
Edit to add: not sure I'd want to be Donald Trump's VP, mind
So mostly students that don't vote anyway.
It won't change the voting shares, but it definitely puts university seats on the chop.
Cambridge, the 2 Oxford seats, Manchester Central could be in danger of being abolished.
We have gone from a peak of 10.2% of GDP to predicted 3.7% this year. Whether he is a billion or two out on the final figure won't change that.
In recent years the deficit has been falling at roughly 1% of GDP a year, roughly 18bn and it is projected to do that again in the next financial year.
All Osborne needs to do to sort the deficit is avoid a recession. Easier said than done of course, especially if international events swing against him, but he has a path planned out back to balance.
As we are on Burns weekend I should point out that the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain. It is entirely possible that things will go awry but it is a mistake to think that the Chancellor has to make lots of new, difficult decisions to keep us on the current track. If he wants more money to change things around he does but the current rebalancing is already planned out.
Not enough
Shadow chancellor predicts international open borders by end of century"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/31/john-mcdonnell-open-borders-irrelevant-yvette-cooper-bbc-sunday-politics
The statement and those like it will though worry a lot of people in the west and will no doubt have the desired effect. However, I suspect It would not be quite so influential if the various links had have been made more apparent.
so he'll abolish boom and bust ?
plus ca change
In 2008 Huckabee more or less had Trump's economic policies and talked a lot about the working class, though Huckabee is a staunch anti-abortionist his main pitch had always been the economy and living conditions and had never been a fan of Wall Street.
It helps Trump to reassure his right flank with social conservatives while reinforcing his economic message, also Huckabee's character is warm, reassuring and has plenty of experience in government, it will help a lot to calm the nerves about a Trump administration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Mike_Huckabee
The only flaw that I can find is his support for immigration 10 years ago though he switched against it when he started his presidential campaign in 2007.
Basically if not for his strong religious social views I would call him a democrat, perhaps he became a republican based on his religious views like so many other southerners over the past few decades.
On a previous thread he said that: "Her point (excluing flannel) was that people from mysogynist Muslim cultures have a propensity to commit violent crimes against women so for the authorities to allow them in is 'repulsive'. "
When in fact my original post made it clear that what I found 'repulsive' was the attitude of those whose campaign against sexual violence against women was dialled up or down depending on who the perpetrators were.
I'm sorry to belabour the point. People are free to disagree with me. What I will pick them up for is when they incorrectly summarise what I have said. I take sexual violence against women very seriously. I have been the victim of a serious sexual assault. And I have no time for those who seek to explain or excuse it away on the basis of some sort of kowtowing to alternative "cultures", whether these are hippies seeking "free love", sexually repressed males from Middle Eastern countries or just boorish men seeking to exercise power over and inflict pain on women.
I hope that's clear.
And now my Sunday roast awaits.
Mandy is basically a paid shill for the EU and the interest needs to be declared every time he opens his mouth. Kinnock is the same of course. Journalists need briefing on stuff like this.
Unless voter fraud was at Northern Ireland levels - remember when Gerry Adams got whinny because 100k voters got culled from the list? The response from a very brave election official was that anyone who was disenfranchised could call him personally to fix the problem.... Strangely, never mentioned again....
No has the structural imbalance in the economy been dealt with.
Osborne is simply spinning it as he goes along.
In any even it all ignores the cuts in spending which have been taking place to cut out the structural deficit.
The business cycle has not been done away with and no one is claiming it has. A business cycle includes surpluses and deficits a business cycle includes periods of rising growth and negative growth.
''The average length of an expansion has increased significantly since the 1990s. The three business cycles from July 1990 to June 2009 had an average expansion phase of 95 months – or almost 8 years – compared with the average recession length of 11 months over this period. While some economists were hopeful that this development marked the end of the business cycle, the 2007-09 put paid to those hopes.''
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/businesscycle.asp#ixzz3yqvyuVk7
8 years growth 1 years decline. A normal cycle is not a disaster. Browns hyperbole suggested it was. Movement out of a down period is sustained by deficit.
We might expect the next peak to be 2018. But if with periods of lower growth interspersed with higher growth rather than negative growth - it might be later.
We are a long way from being out of the woods and we will be carrying roughly double the level of debt we had before but we are in a much better place.
I want a decent, respectable retirement for all our elderly. However, it should be noted that's where all the money goes and it isn't an investment.
Personally, I would de-link the triple-lock and couple states pensions to average life expectancy minus 10 years (to be reviewed every 10 years going forwards) and encourage individual health savings accounts and private pension savings.
That would be sustainable in the long-term IMHO.
I wish they wouldn't do this sort of thing. Claire Balding being diagnosed with something or other managing to outshine the major issues of the day was another example.
Newspapers don't run front page news stories on the death of their journalists.
The only question, then, is whether one of the also-rans will have a great Iowa caucus.
Rubio? Only one field office in Iowa
Kasich? Maybe
Bush? Hmmm...