Man in a Shed: 20 billion tax cut

Friday, June 18, 2010

Where the money goes....

OK its a bit of a cope out for a blog today - I've been trying to write something on the Deepwater Horizon business, but it just doesn't sound right yet. H/T to the TPA etc

Monday, September 15, 2008

The calculating deceit of the Lib Dems

For some of today - when not wondering about the end of the financial world as we know it - I gave a bit of thought to the Lib Dems apparent conversion to tax cuts.

Its going to make our life easier - and move the debate in our direction. Which is good. I don't actually think it will win them any votes as which party do you trust to deliver a smaller state, Conservative or Lib Dem ? ( Anyone answering Lib Dem is beyond help ).

But I hadn't been prepared for the deceit and trickery of Nick Clegg.

I've just listened to Newsnight as Jeremy Paxman tried to get him to explain where his GBP 20 billion tax cut was coming from. ( A hint: It made Charles Kennedy's defence of Lib Dem taxation policy before the 2005 election look lucid. )

But then just a little latter I heard him being interviewed for the Daily Politics and guess what ?
He's not proposing tax cuts at all !!!!! Its just to get headlines. What he's saying is he wants to divert money from Whitehall to the 'peoples priorities' and if any is left over then maybe a little of tax. Given the list of extra spending he mentioned I would expect taxes to have to rise.

They can't be trusted - but then I guess we all knew that.

The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman