Cancel Employer Pension?

BernardM

It's far better to tax the 10 per cent of the population who own 71 per cent of Britain's wealth and the quarter of the biggest monopolies who pay no corporation tax. A wealth tax is needed for the super-rich and a windfall tax on monopoly profits in the energy, rail and retail food sectors.

I would like to see Corporation Tax increased by 100% and Capital gains also.

VAT should be abolished it is so unfair

jamesd

OK, double Corporation Tax. That gives the UK the highest rate in the developed world.

Company boards have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to maximise profits so how do you prevent them from relocating their company HQs overseas, or protect them from shareholder lawsuits if they don't? How do you encourage companies from abroad to set up business here when it's much cheaper in Ireland or Luxembourg?

Say you manage to double Corporation Tax income. Now you have paid for half of the lost revenue from eliminating VAT. Capital Gains tax raised 5 billion so if you double that you're left with 80.6 (VAT) - 46.9 (doubled Corporation Tax) - 5.3 (doubled CGT) = 28.4 billion still to find unless you want to cut spending (and most spending is on benefits, including pensions, and the NHS).

When writing about VAT being unfair, it's worth remembering that basic foods are zero rated and energy gets a much reduced rate. That reduces the effective rate of VAT paid by the poorest, who can only buy necessities. It's the well off buying luxuries who pay the highest effective VAT rate and those in the middle with luxuries but not as many as they might like who pay less but still more than the truly poor.

Instead of cutting VAT for everyone, perhaps you might get more benefit for your spending by reducing it only on necessities or carefully selected luxuries?

BernardM

jamesd wrote: »

OK, double Corporation Tax. That gives the UK the highest rate in the developed world.

Company boards have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to maximise profits so how do you prevent them from relocating their company HQs overseas, or protect them from shareholder lawsuits if they don't? How do you encourage companies from abroad to set up business here when it's much cheaper in Ireland or Luxembourg?

Say you manage to double Corporation Tax income. Now you have paid for half of the lost revenue from eliminating VAT. Capital Gains tax raised 5 billion so if you double that you're left with 80.6 (VAT) - 46.9 (doubled Corporation Tax) - 5.3 (doubled CGT) = 28.4 billion still to find unless you want to cut spending (and most spending is on benefits, including pensions, and the NHS).

When writing about VAT being unfair, it's worth remembering that basic foods are zero rated and energy gets a much reduced rate. That reduces the effective rate of VAT paid by the poorest, who can only buy necessities. It's the well off buying luxuries who pay the highest effective VAT rate and those in the middle with luxuries but not as many as they might like who pay less but still more than the truly poor.

Instead of cutting VAT for everyone, perhaps you might get more benefit for your spending by reducing it only on necessities or carefully selected luxuries?

Certainly no spending cuts jamesd, only a Tory think tank would be calling for that. Social expenditure is the engine of economic progress.
Now withdraw from EU as the membership of that club is over 50 billion a year just for the membership.

BernardM

dunstonh wrote: »

Why is it that you assume that all high earners work for banks?

You appear to have a bee in your bonnet about anyone who has earned money and want to penalise them for doing so.

If we are intent on clawing back the excessive profits currently being made by big business at workers' expense, it is clear that we need to raise the rate of corporation tax, which is a tax on profits, to at least 50 per cent, which is what it was when it was first introduced.

The revenue raised could be used to invest in public services and in other areas that would help to develop Britain's economy.

In addition, capital controls would be needed to ensure that the profits created by British workers actually remain in Britain and are invested in the British economy.

However, neither of these measures could succeed without first getting rid of offshore tax havens or, at least, making dealings with them illegal.

jamesd

BernardM wrote: »

Certainly no spending cuts jamesd, only a Tory think tank would be calling for that. Social expenditure is the engine of economic progress.
Now withdraw from EU as the membership of that club is over 50 billion a year just for the membership.

You're the person throwing out ideas here, not me. I'm just asking you to explain how you're going to pay for your proposals.

So, no cuts. Why are you proposing to cut the worker's pensions? What are you planning to do to prevent that?

BernardM

This is a depression, not just a recession, and the government's measures have failed to protect people and preserve their jobs.
Only a massive programme of planned investment in industry and public services could prevent a depression on the scale of the 1930s. The government urgently needs to take the whole financial sector into public ownership, use public money to create jobs and boost people's purchasing power through higher wages, benefits and pensions. Prices must also be controlled in order to ensure higher production rather than price inflation.
Putting taxpayers' money into the banks is not working in terms of getting that money to companies. The lesson has to be learned quickly that banks are just another public utility that the economy requires to function effectively. Like all the other public utilities, they need to be run for the benefit of us.
Manufacturing jobs are vanishing at an alarming rate. Almost every indicator shows that Britain is not in a recession but a full-scale depression.
The neglect of the state pension has driven hundreds of thousands of pensioners to continue working past retirement age since that is their only way to keep body and soul together, which cuts job availability even further.

BernardM

dunstonh wrote: »

Why is it that you assume that all high earners work for banks?

You appear to have a bee in your bonnet about anyone who has earned money and want to penalise them for doing so.

What about that assumption made in post 2 about the MMR debate.
All the families involved who are the most affected stand against conventional medicine and surely their opinion matters most in that debate.

http://www.cryshame.com/

http://www.!!!!!!/shared/y79l0c6pps

dunstonh

What about that assumption made in post 2 about the MMR debate.

What assumption? The MMR issue was a media scam. There was no issue.

bendix

BernardM wrote: »

This is a depression, not just a recession, and the government's measures have failed to protect people and preserve their jobs.
Only a massive programme of planned investment in industry and public services could prevent a depression on the scale of the 1930s. The government urgently needs to take the whole financial sector into public ownership, use public money to create jobs and boost people's purchasing power through higher wages, benefits and pensions. Prices must also be controlled in order to ensure higher production rather than price inflation.
Putting taxpayers' money into the banks is not working in terms of getting that money to companies. The lesson has to be learned quickly that banks are just another public utility that the economy requires to function effectively. Like all the other public utilities, they need to be run for the benefit of us.
Manufacturing jobs are vanishing at an alarming rate. Almost every indicator shows that Britain is not in a recession but a full-scale depression.
The neglect of the state pension has driven hundreds of thousands of pensioners to continue working past retirement age since that is their only way to keep body and soul together, which cuts job availability even further.

It's hard to know where to start with the utter nonsense you post. It's no more than a medley of loosely connected sentiments, none of which are thought through and many of which contradict each other.

Here's an example. Within a few lines you are urging for all banks and the entire financial sector to be taken into public ownership, before making the bold assertion that "putting taxpayers money into banks is not working".

So I'm kinda confused.

I'm also intrigued as to where all the money for your ideas is coming from? How will the government take the financial sector into public ownership? The only way I can think of is to buy them from the public sector who currently own them, or are you suggesting forced nationalisation, a move which will alienate us from the world business and economic community faster than North Korea. How will you pay for that?

I'm sorry, but you're talking palpable nonsense which was discredited in the 1930s, let alone today.

BernardM

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), known as the bankers’ bank, has previously issued a warning which states,

“The current market turmoil is without precedent in the postwar period. With a significant risk of recession in the US, compounded by sharply rising inflation in many countries, fears are building that the global economy might be at some kind of tipping point. These fears are not groundless.”

The BIS had previously warned, correctly, that the ‘credit bubble’ would burst and “culminate in a deflation that might be hard to manage.”
In other words the BIS are warning of a depression not seen since the 1930s.
The effects of this depression will be dumped onto the backs of the working class.
What in effect is unraveling is the ideology which claims that ‘market forces’ are the highest and best mechanism for organising society. Moreover it is becoming ever more apparent to millions of people that capitalism is incapable of meeting even the most modest needs of the majority of the world’s population.

http://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2008e.htm

http://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2008e8.pdf