The Politics Thread

[William the White]

I vote yes. Because it's a good idea, and because i think superjohnmcginlay's an annoying tw*t...

[superjohnmcginlay]

I knew you'd crop up with summat like that.

[CAPSLOCK]

Just to clarify - on everything (including PAYE) or just on goods and services?

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

[Lord Kangana]

Just to clarify - on everything (including PAYE) or just on goods and services?

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

To be honest I would have thought in the first instance it'll just bring in less income.

I was interested to read that peoploe don't pay tax on currency transactions. It seems absurd to me. No doubt the old highly paid/highly skilled/why should they argument will be trotted out. Don't understand why. We all have to pay income tax on our earnings, don't see why there should be exceptions.

[thebish]

Just to clarify - on everything (including PAYE) or just on goods and services?

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

To be honest I would have thought in the first instance it'll just bring in less income.

I was interested to read that peoploe don't pay tax on currency transactions. It seems absurd to me. No doubt the old highly paid/highly skilled/why should they argument will be trotted out. Don't understand why. We all have to pay income tax on our earnings, don't see why there should be exceptions.

my guess is that to raise anything like the amount of income that income tax would have added (in addition to what VAT already raises) the VAT rate would be so massively high that it would simply price many people out of being able to afford buying stuff...

[Prufrock]

Just to clarify - on everything (including PAYE) or just on goods and services?

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

To be honest I would have thought in the first instance it'll just bring in less income.

I was interested to read that peoploe don't pay tax on currency transactions. It seems absurd to me. No doubt the old highly paid/highly skilled/why should they argument will be trotted out. Don't understand why. We all have to pay income tax on our earnings, don't see why there should be exceptions.

My reaction too. Very surprised. It gets a thoroughly surprising yes from me.

[CAPSLOCK]

Just to clarify - on everything (including PAYE) or just on goods and services?

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

To be honest I would have thought in the first instance it'll just bring in less income.

I was interested to read that peoploe don't pay tax on currency transactions. It seems absurd to me. No doubt the old highly paid/highly skilled/why should they argument will be trotted out. Don't understand why. We all have to pay income tax on our earnings, don't see why there should be exceptions.

my guess is that to raise anything like the amount of income that income tax would have added (in addition to what VAT already raises) the VAT rate would be so massively high that it would simply price many people out of being able to afford buying stuff...

But they wouldn't be paying income tax

[BWFC_Insane]

Just to clarify - on everything (including PAYE) or just on goods and services?

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

To be honest I would have thought in the first instance it'll just bring in less income.

I was interested to read that peoploe don't pay tax on currency transactions. It seems absurd to me. No doubt the old highly paid/highly skilled/why should they argument will be trotted out. Don't understand why. We all have to pay income tax on our earnings, don't see why there should be exceptions.

Ermm they pay income tax is how I read it, just no tax on the actual business transactions, unlike say buying goods with VAT??

[thebish]

Just to clarify - on everything (including PAYE) or just on goods and services?

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

To be honest I would have thought in the first instance it'll just bring in less income.

I was interested to read that peoploe don't pay tax on currency transactions. It seems absurd to me. No doubt the old highly paid/highly skilled/why should they argument will be trotted out. Don't understand why. We all have to pay income tax on our earnings, don't see why there should be exceptions.

my guess is that to raise anything like the amount of income that income tax would have added (in addition to what VAT already raises) the VAT rate would be so massively high that it would simply price many people out of being able to afford buying stuff...

But they wouldn't be paying income tax

quite a lot of people don't pay income tax CAPS - usually the poorest people - so they would not have the "saving" - just the massive increase....

[superjohnmcginlay]

The idea's been knocking around for quite some time, just nobody's come up with a decent way of implementing it.

[Prufrock]

Luxury purchases

I know there'll be obvious reasons for it not working

To be honest I would have thought in the first instance it'll just bring in less income.

I was interested to read that peoploe don't pay tax on currency transactions. It seems absurd to me. No doubt the old highly paid/highly skilled/why should they argument will be trotted out. Don't understand why. We all have to pay income tax on our earnings, don't see why there should be exceptions.

my guess is that to raise anything like the amount of income that income tax would have added (in addition to what VAT already raises) the VAT rate would be so massively high that it would simply price many people out of being able to afford buying stuff...

But they wouldn't be paying income tax

quite a lot of people don't pay income tax CAPS - usually the poorest people - so they would not have the "saving" - just the massive increase....

Indeed. It seems a fair system if you are in the middle, but it's grossly unfair at the extremes. Poor folk would be fooked, and the rich would get to keep the full whack of 100k a year, whilst paying two quid for a loaf of bread. I don't know how they'd cope.

[Worthy4England]

I'm just a simple man

I have a question about taxation...why not do away with income tax and use VAT

I suspect becuse income tax is a fairly static income stream. VAT is much less predictable.

[Lord Kangana]

So anyway, as someone who has been watching the euro shenanigans wondering WTF is going on, I've come to the inevitable conclusion that economists make it up as they go along, because in the last few hours...

The Krauts are gonna save it (yay!)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5236373,00.html

No they're not (boo!)
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... eport.html

But wait, yes they are (now I'm just lost)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010 ... sis-rescue

Of course then we get this gem from The Daily Mail:

For some of us writing at the time of the Eurozone's formation just over a decade ago, the current crisis has been all too predictable. Other currency unions, we pointed out, had been tried in history and always fallen apart... The problems were visible from the outset. For example, neither Greece nor Italy's national finances were in a good enough condition to merit joining. But the greater ideal of a Eurozone prevailed over financial common sense. Economics gave way to politics, as it so often does. Proof, also, that creative accounting is not confined to dodgy public companies

Admittedly, answering your front door is a scary prospect if you're a Mail reader it would seem.

Even Monty's lot are wading in
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1015746220100210

So...any budding economists out there who'd like to call this one for me? Beyond suggesting its going to fall apart, as the largest currency in circulation, with 16 countries ill prepared to revert, reverting is not an option they're likely to take in the foreseeable future.

[superjohnmcginlay]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 022899.ece

Sounds like theyre going to bail them out to me, don't think they've any choice.

[bobo the clown]

Of course then we get this gem from The Daily Mail:

For some of us writing at the time of the Eurozone's formation just over a decade ago, the current crisis has been all too predictable. Other currency unions, we pointed out, had been tried in history and always fallen apart... The problems were visible from the outset. For example, neither Greece nor Italy's national finances were in a good enough condition to merit joining. But the greater ideal of a Eurozone prevailed over financial common sense. Economics gave way to politics, as it so often does. Proof, also, that creative accounting is not confined to dodgy public companies

Admittedly, answering your front door is a scary prospect if you're a Mail reader it would seem.

So...any budding economists out there who'd like to call this one for me? Beyond suggesting its going to fall apart, as the largest currency in circulation, with 16 countries ill prepared to revert, reverting is not an option they're likely to take in the foreseeable future.

Well, I'm not exactly budding, but it was my first degree ...

I'm not sure why the fact that it's in the Daily Mail makes it automatically & necessarily incorrect.


Facts ; - to combine the currencies of a wide range of disparate nations is tremendously difficult.

It is vastly more than simply costing everything in the same units.

To work requires an increasingly homogenous POLITICAL structure. THIS is what Lisbon has been about in reality.

This is because you MUST give up the national freedom to set your own fiscal policies. Fiscal policies cover your exchange rate, your taxation sysyems, your Govt. spending policies, your interest rates. All these are witheld from nation-states in the Eurozone. Hence the UK was able to do what it did last year, but others were not.

It requires truthful and verifiable economic statistics. The Greeks, Irish & Italians, for sure don't know what those words mean. Begium, were it not for the public money pumped in to keep the EU system based there going, would have folded like Pompey on a bad day decades ago.

Countries who do this need to have converged economies so that the starting rates are similar. There were 4 'tests' for this at the time. Few countries met it (the UK, interestingly, did), so the policy makers fudged the rules. Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy & Belgium should NEVER have been let join.

If the Greeks get bailed ... & their total, in the scheme of things, is not massive ... then why should anyone decide to conform to the requirements ? Also, if they are, then the issues will have been papered over & just be waiting to happen all over again.

On letting these join the currency was inevitably on shaky footings. It was always carrying these weakeness'. A crisis is/was inevitable & to be honest, I don't think we've seen tyhe real crisis this time.

It's OK frigging about with your economies if everything going on is within your own walls, but the whole premise of European economic & social integration seems to ignore the ability of the Far-East ... China in particular and India to undercut them.

Europe cannot keep having social rights which mean our goods increasingly cost more & more & more relative to the global competition. The French, Germans, Dutch, Begians just don't seem to get this. They regularly vote in Governments who say they will tackle the issues & then cave in when "the citizens" revolt.

I get very tired of morons who think that we should join the Euro "so we don't have to change our money when we go on holiday". It means changing a damn-sight more than that.

[Lord Kangana]

You only have to read the comments section of the Daily Mail to see that its written by lunatics for the digestion of lunatics. This isn't a purely political probelm, though the right would love to paint it that way. Economically the euro will survive, the strongest economies in it are far stronger than the weaker ones that could bring it down. They'll have to tweak Maastricht, but its just words on a piece of paper, and sometimes you've got to change your attitude when the facts and circumstances dictate.

As for the social rights issue, thats one thing, but again as someone who has to deal with financial institutions over there, they have much, much tighter financial regulation than we. Brown would never have been allowed to pursue totally laissez faire economics unfettered if we were part of it, nor as citizens would we. If I bounce a cheque over there, they shut my account. So we haven't a panacea, and thats why UKIP and their like p*ss me off, because they don't (and won't) tell the whole story. Its all about balance, rights and responsibilities.
And again, as someone who has to deal with the euro, its been f*cking the pound all over the shop for 3 years now, so I'd see that as evidence of the paucity of our economic action, even if they have made mistakes.

The denoument? I don't know, I doubt the single currency is going anywhere, the cost/benefit of that is too great one way, and I doubt its going to weaken significantly against our own any time soon. I suppose from a purely selfish point of view, I just want to know if there'll be a short-term de-valuation.

[thebish]

I'd like the Euro so I don't have to change my money when I go to abroad-land....

[bobo the clown]

I'd like the Euro so I don't have to change my money when I go to abroad-land....

I'll see you in the "Today I'm Angry About ... " thread Vicar !!

[bobo the clown]

You only have to read the comments section of the Daily Mail to see that its written by lunatics for the digestion of lunatics. This isn't a purely political probelm, though the right would love to paint it that way. Economically the euro will survive, the strongest economies in it are far stronger than the weaker ones that could bring it down. They'll have to tweak Maastricht, but its just words on a piece of paper, and sometimes you've got to change your attitude when the facts and circumstances dictate.

As for the social rights issue, thats one thing, but again as someone who has to deal with financial institutions over there, they have much, much tighter financial regulation than we. Brown would never have been allowed to pursue totally laissez faire economics unfettered if we were part of it, nor as citizens would we. If I bounce a cheque over there, they shut my account. So we haven't a panacea, and thats why UKIP and their like p*ss me off, because they don't (and won't) tell the whole story. Its all about balance, rights and responsibilities.

And again, as someone who has to deal with the euro, its been f*cking the pound all over the shop for 3 years now, so I'd see that as evidence of the paucity of our economic action, even if they have made mistakes.

The denoument? I don't know, I doubt the single currency is going anywhere, the cost/benefit of that is too great one way, and I doubt its going to weaken significantly against our own any time soon. I suppose from a purely selfish point of view, I just want to know if there'll be a short-term de-valuation.

Yep, but I've ever read one sentence which sums up the total moral ineptitude of the whole core attitude of the EU leaders it was the one you used above ... "They'll have to tweak Maastricht, but its just words on a piece of paper".

That, 100%, encapsulates the European leaders view on democracy.

If they cared they'd have allowed referenda on the Lisbon Constitution. The best reason I recall for not doing was "it's rather dull & most people wouldn't understand it anyway". Way to go Jacques.

The day they eventually pass their own Auditor's report on them will be a good one ... & stop sacking people who dare tell the truth about their spending and lack of controls.

The Euro will survive & the German's will, again, have to foot the bill ... but even doing that will be against the law as it stands. "Don't worry, we'll change the law". But none of this alters Europe's strange view that it can live in it's own little bubble & everything will be alright.

[Lord Kangana]

So you're saying George Osbourne will just continue with Gordon Brown's economic policies then?