“Alistair Darling has already spent almost a fifth of Britain’s GDP on bailing out its shattered banking system – more than any other major economy, according to a grave assessment of the world financial crisis published today by the International Monetary Fund.” [March 2009]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/06/imf-uk-bailout-gdp

In 2007, the Financial Services Skills Council reported that “Financial services constitutes about 7 percent of total output (GDP)” – try Figure 2 in:
http://www.fssc.org.uk/post16_selcom_response_jan_2007.pdf

This reports that Financial Serices, together with Business Services contribute 31.2% of Britain’s GDP:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7789844.stm

I know of complaints that the government is not spending enough on the military and the various wars but I hadn’t realised that it was spending nothing. Readers may find this recent feature in The Economist in September a more dependable guide: Deflating the State:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14505343

Was his opinion canvassed by seance because you do realise he’s been dead since 2002?

Are you just making this up as you go along?

Really?

Did you establish this via a seance because Tobin has been dead for seven years.

I don’t want to be rude but you really are talking out of your arse.

My car is waiting, engine revving, for the remainder.

We are spending over 100% of our taxes on the welfare state and financial services comprise 31% of our GDP. Unlike other industries financial services are entirely people-based and can move rapidly (as is now happening as the hedge fund industry hops to Geneva). It will be impossible to replace the loss with other industries within any timeframe shorter than a decade. And it wont happen at all in a high tax, high-spend environment. That is the key.

As for welfare being recycled into the economy, that argument could be applied to money being thrown out of a window. It is a gross waste of hard-earned taxpayer money and additionally results in a generation of workshy people and has contributed to the breakdown of working class values.

I am not saying that financial services don’t provide an important element of out tax base I just want the proof. So far you have provided £12 billion from Corporation Tax let’s see the rest of it.

You also dodged the issue of where the deficit has come from which isn’t increases in spending on the public sector.

You quote big figures for social security but these pay for things like pensions, unemployment benefit, childcare. Things that are indispensible in any decent society.

This money is also recycled through the economy. Do you not see that cutting pensions, benefits would reduce aggregate spending in the economy?

The deficit could be reduced easily- it would just require increased taxation on the vast assets held by the richest 5% of the population.

Considering that Lord Turner recenetly backed a ‘Tobin Tax’ your definition of leftist ‘tossers’ who don’t understand the economy looks remarkably broad.

Someday the shining light of reality will break through to people like Andy Jarm.

Someday.

the Government’s own bleak forecasts from September show that the Treasury expects to pay out £193.4 billion on social security benefits in 2013/14. Paying interest on the Government’s outstanding debts will cost £63.4 billion.

Total Government spending in the same year will be £758.3 billion. Welfare and debt interest will be 33.8 per cent of that total.

The welfare bill will also absorb more money than every worker in the country pays the state in income tax. In 2009/10, the Treasury is expecting to take in £140.5 billion in gross income tax receipts.

Already the largest single item in the budget, by 2013/14 spending on social security will dwarf every other item of Government expenditure.

For example in 2010/11, total spending on the NHS in England will be £107 billion.

If you tossers are happy to sit here and believe that somehow you dont need the financial sector then good luck to you! Enjoy the bliss of your ignorance before you find yourselves in a rainy, bankrupt island in the north sea with very little to offer to the world

So far you have dug up abut £12 billion that the City contributes to the tax take. Considering public expenditure prior to the crash was about £650 billion that represents approximately 2% of public spending. I’d like to see figures for income tax, NI etc but so far you haven’t provided evidence that the City is a indispensible element of our tax base.

The material that was posted claiming that the deficit is caused by spending on a bloated public sector is bollocks. The deficit is primarily made up of the 1) bailout cash for the banks 2) the liabilities for the zombie banks now appearing on the public balance sheet 3) the drying up of the tax receipts for all the illusory growth from the financial and property sectors during the bubble years.

It used to be easy to legitimately practise tax avoidance – I know because everyone in the city used to do so. It simply isn’t anymore (hasn’t been since about 2005) and nobody bothers because the cost and hassle of IR investigations means it isnt worth the candle unless you are an international billionaire with no tax residency (sadly I am not there yet). All the loopholes were closed (eg the Film Production tax rebate) and if you aren’t a non-dom the only answer now is to pay-up leave the country (or risk jail). Quite right too. I will check out the Corner now!

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article6175289.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

Darling’s Budget Red Book says the financial sector provided 25 per cent of the £47 billion in Britain’s total corporation tax before the recession, plus a “significant” proportion of income tax and national insurance receipts.

Note the second part of that – significant proportion of income tax and national insurance receipts. Realise what that means.

We already have the highest deficits in the west – not due to the bank bailouts but due to the explosion in welfare state spending (see stats in article below) over Brown’s tenure. Do you really still think that the financial industry needs you more than you need it? If your ignorance is shared by voters (I fear it maybe) then our economy and living standards will plummet years before the time it takes (a decade at least) to bring in the other industries I agree we need to transition to. And do you think those other industries will choose to come to a country with a 50% tax rate and school leavers with the worst literacy rates in europe?

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article6175289.ece

What is the title of that chapter in the book Fantasy Island? Bullshit Britain! The above is a classic case of Bullshit Britain.

France does agri-business well, Germany does high tech engineering well. The US innovates in IT.

Britain? Well, it’s just one vast casino! And Andy Jarm loves it!

What a mug!

If they all fucked off tomorrow (as you would clearly like) the UK wouldnt have the money to support NHS wards or state pensions, let alone our grossly bloated welfare state.

And you still push this nonsense on me as if it’s true! If all the hedge funds buggered off tomorrow, I’m sure we, the people of Britain, would wave them a merry goodbye and get on with the rest of our lives free from their damaging, grasping self indulgence.

And the welfare state chum is acting as the main stabiliser in this recession caused by the banking system’s collapse! Thank our great Labour forefathers that they had the wisdom to put in in place. A bucket of smelly gunge over the heads of myopic free market fundamentalists for attempting to diminish its coverage and usefulness.

You clearly dont have the first clue about what actually happened to the UK during the credit crunch and who caused it. Reading the popular press or listening to the BBC wont get you very far.

Hedge funds actually never lost one penny for the taxpayer and never received one penny of bailout money. London is the centre of the global hedge fund industry and it is a huge tax-generator for our economy. Tell me another industry that we are successful in, let alone world beating?

You need to face up to the fact that however much you despise the bankers and hedgies, for the next decade at least you need them far more than they need you. If they all fucked off tomorrow (as you would clearly like) the UK wouldnt have the money to support NHS wards or state pensions, let alone our grossly bloated welfare state.

Yet again, another socialist with only emotional bile to throw at the problem, unable to face harsh realities and completely determined not to discuss economics and how as a country we actually pay our bills.

No country needs hedge funds. Every industrialised nation on earth became so without Hedge funds. And all had higher taxes too.

You believe that the UK had higer taxes in the 19th century when it industrialised?

Whilst I agree, isn’t that an argument for taking banking out of the private sector into the state or (more likely) voluntary sector in order to attract the other-directed people needed? The argument will come back that this contradicts human nature, because we also need bankers to be innovative and only inner-directed AKA selfish people innovate. (I’ve no idea if that’s true but I do know from past experience here that there are folk who will defend the notion furiously. Whether they have any experience of life or only of economics textbooks I really couldn’t say.)

I know all too well what benefits the Hedge Funds bring to the UK – they’ve helped lead us into the longest period of recession since the depression.

No country needs hedge funds. Every industrialised nation on earth became so without Hedge funds. And all had higher taxes too.

I note you advise Hedge Fund managers to head for Madrid and Dublin. I mean, fucking LoL! Two of the other nations in Europe smashed to bits by the Credit Crunch?!

Honestly, I’m wetting myself with laughter. As I said, if they want to go, they can. The UK needs scientists, innovators, lateral thinkers, go-getters and a banking class to do its fucking job for the first time in history and support coal face industries rather than feathering their own useless, ill-gotten nests.

People like you, deluded enough to think that nothing has changed in the last two years since your wild west economic system crumbled into the dust, need to understand this – The UK just doesn’t need casino managers.

Cheerie-Bye, as they say.