The last 50 comments posted on Liberal Conspiracy

1. James Graham posted on Lib Dems in a tangle over homeopathy
   Unity, I fear you're a little confused. Firstly, the Science and Technology Committee recommend that NICE evaluate homeopathy (paras 87-90). Indeed, they are quite expansive: "We consider the issue of NICE evaluation important because it ensures patient safety and evidence-based practice. Additionally there is variation in practice across the country with some PCTs funding homeopathy and others not." You say this is not necessary, and yet call for all parties to accept the recommendations "in full and without equivocation". Which is it? I have to admit to not being ecstatic about Norman Lamb's second slice of fudge; I think he skips around the subject of placebo entirely. Indeed I think he may actually be responsible for partially proving the homoepathic effect in that the less he opens his mouth, the more effective Lib Dem health policy becomes. But with that caveat aside, I would be very wary of any government implementing a select committee report and bypassing the independent expertise that is available. Select committees are, by definition political creatures. NICE at least aspires to be above all that and, broadly, does its job well (despite what a number of Tories have to say about it). An NICE inquiry need not be expensive and consist of much more than a literature review, but it would be necessary in my view. And I am delighted that the Science and Technology agree with me, in full, and without equivocation.



2. Richard W posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
   @ 85. MikeSC I certainly will not be sneering. The difference is I recognise the enormity of the change that is coming over the next decade. I find the level of denialism on the left and the right bizarre. The left are deluded if they think we can eliminate the fiscal deficit without real terms spending cuts. The right are equally deluded if they believe we can eliminate it by spending cuts alone and no net tax rises. I would suggest most people who suffer the misfortune of living a life of poverty consider their income as the fundamental determinant of that poverty. A well stocked public library would be of little consolation to me if I could not afford to buy food.



3. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
   @83: You sound like Guido Fawkes, sneering at the public sector. I suppose you'll be happy with the deep cuts that schools and universities are preparing for, as just one example? Because you'll have a few pints worth more in your pocket?



4. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
   MatGB: Fair enough, I got confused as to what you were looking for :)



5. Richard W posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
   I would love to meet those people who assess their relative poverty based on how many employees their local council has rather than the income in their pocket.



6. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
   I find I'm having to repeat myself over and over- you haven't addressed the point at all. They want to remove the poor from taxation, but to do so they want to deprive the poor of more than they will gain. Rather than sacrificing 94% of £17billion in order to achieve their aim, would it not be 100% more sensible to just not cut some of the areas where they plan to cut savagely? If this was out of actual concern for the poor, I mean, and not a cynical stunt aimed at the middle incomed.



7. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
   Don, Fair point. For me everyone getting an extra £700 (though a portion of people would see that disappear through certain taxation changes) is at least in my eyes a benefit to the country on a whole for both universal economy boosting reasons and for holistic "national mood" reasons. I want to see more done for the poor in this country, I'd just like to see it done more through empowerment than dictated routes of benefits, even if there must be a mix of both. I'm certainly not closed down to the idea of middle-income tax rises in the future to fund additional things, but then I've always been a fan of the idea of redressing the council tax system in to something more fair to redress that particular issue.



8. Don Paskini posted on Moral courage in Alternative Iraq
   Hi Giles, Are there any of Biggar's arguments in particular that you found compelling and want a more serious response to? I read his article as a rehash of arguments which have already been debated to death between 2002 and 2009. I know in fact, though, that you are jealous because you would like a version of the Decentpedia which covers the output of the New Economics Foundation :)



9. MatGB posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
   Lee, that's the new policy document, I'm looking for the report of the Tax Commission that came out in 2006, and also the policy document passed that year called Fairer Simpler Greener. The new one is as much about local govt financing as it is national stuff and doesn't have all of the costings, nor does it have as much of the mid to long term objectives ('Fair Tax' is for the very first budget, FSG had stuff in for the whole Parliament). I'm going to ignore Mike's repeating the same point again, I thought we'd gotten rid of broken records when we moved away from vinyl, apparently not.



10. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "That is a clearly stated objective of the policy; the revenue raised from elsewhere is what we’re using to pay for the objective, which is a goob objective in and of itself." The policy does not deliver on that objective in a way that makes it worthwhile. As LFF said- only 6% of the cost actually goes towards fulfilling that objective. "I find it utterly wrong that the tax threshold has tracked inflation for so long that people earning less than what’s judge to be poverty level income are paying income tax. People working full time on minimum wage should not be paying income tax, for a large number of different reasons, including discinentives to work and similar." This is the fallacy. That disposable income is the only standard of poverty. This policy deprives the poor of £17bn worth of public services in exchange for a tiny fraction of that £17bn in cash (if any). This is a policy that will leave the poor worse off than if it was not done.



11. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    MatGB, what is this one online? http://www.libdems.org.uk/siteFiles/resources/PDF/Policy%20Briefing%20-%20Your%20Money%20Feb%2010.pdf and http://www.libdems.org.uk/policy_motions_detail.aspx?title=Fair_Tax_-_carried&pPK=b56db258-82dd-4614-80b9-5fc41d531bdc ?



12. Don Paskini posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Don…it would give money to a variety of people that may or may not need the support. " Indeed, but that's the nature of universal public services. And after all, the Lib Dems are proposing to give me a £700 tax cut, and while this would be nice, I'm not sure I need it more than someone who is unemployed or who has got a part time job on the minimum wage.



13. Don Paskini posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    Hi Mat, That's a good point and helpful clarification about the background to the proposal. And I think it is a good policy (though wouldn't be top of my list of priorities). The UK would be a much better place if the main political debates were over the balance of priorities between the liberal idea of freeing people by increasing their income vs the social democrat idea of freeing people through provision of public services. I predict, on a totally unrelated note, that if this policy does get enacted, then it will be no more then a few years before the Right take up the idea that people who don't pay income tax shouldn't be allowed to vote - this is already an idea on the fringes of the Republican Party from which they get all their other ideas. This is not, of course, an argument against raising tax thresholds.



14. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "This would stimulate the economy by putting money in the pockets of people most likely to spend it." Don...it would give money to a variety of people that may or may not need the support. For instance, free childcare? OK so I've got a high power job, so's my partner, earning £150k collectively and now we can get free childcare too. Brilliant. I think the point being missed is that this whole tax redress is to ensure that there is no barrier to earning an amount that most people would consider poverty breaking other than lack of opportunity or skills. This is a redress of the issue that even if you have the shittiest most low paid job you aren't guaranteed by going through that process of having an amount of income that puts you into the range of earnings that takes you out of poverty. It doesn't affect in the slightest the other measures to help those in poverty and unable to work, it doesn't affect the welfare going in to encouraging people back in to work (I'm fairly sure I saw policies somewhere that were encouraging young people in to work experience, for example), it's just a case of making the system of earning a living instantly fair without having to worry about any welfare hoops to jump through.



15. MatGB posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    Thank you Dan, an element of sanity into the discussion. Yes, that money could be spent on those things, however some of the money is being raised through green taxes; polling and feedback shows that people don't mind such taxes if they are seen to be revenue neutral and not just another way of raising money for the treasury. Fuel tax protests and similar happen fairly regularly, and Brown's last way through it (the low sulphur trick) worked, but what can be done next time? Also, it's taking the position the wrong way around. It's not "we've found a way of raising £17bn, what do we spend it on", it was clearly the other way around; when Charles Kennedy set up the Tax Commission, one of the objectives was to rebalance the tax code to take the lowest earners out of tax completely. That is a clearly stated objective of the policy; the revenue raised from elsewhere is what we're using to pay for the objective, which is a goob objective in and of itself. I find it utterly wrong that the tax threshold has tracked inflation for so long that people earning less than what's judge to be poverty level income are paying income tax. People working full time on minimum wage should not be paying income tax, for a large number of different reasons, including discinentives to work and similar. That's the position of the Lib Dems, and it's a position I held before I joined them (the tax commission report was published soon after I joined, I was already arguing for such a policy indepently). If you disagree with this policy objective, for whatever reason, fine, we disagree. But don't mistake the threshold raising as a way to spend identified revenues; it's the objective of the rest of the policy. (and when they've recovered from conference, someone at Cowley St is going to get a snotty email from me asking why said document is not online so I can link to it, my copy is on an old machine)



16. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Mike, all of those things are already paid for and not under threat. In fact, the LDs also have a fully costed policy to increase education spend for the poorest families. You, hidden in your posts, have a position. But the way you are arguing it is utterly wrong headed and has mostly already been refuted. The NHS is not going to be abolished, and education will remain free. So stop talking bollocks about how the NHS is going to be abolished without this money, it’s bollocks and completely pointless. Come up with an actual real example. " This has to be a practical joke, it just fucking has to be. I NEVER SAID THAT THE NHS WAS GOING TO BE ABOLISHED OR THAT EDUCATION WOULD NOT REMAIN FREE. I'm going to have to spell it out like I would to a child aren't I? Some tool said that public services don't aid the poor- don't put food on the table etc. I gave extreme examples of when this is not the case. The fact is that the poor rely far more heavily on public services than do the rich. To tackle the deficit the Lib Dems want to use pure cuts- cuts in public services, with no ring-fencing. It could come in cuts to the NHS, to education, to welfare, etc. I don't know yet because they don't know yet, but they will have to cut. So they have committed themselves to cuts in public services. Scrapping this tax cut could save £17bn of what they would otherwise cut. A good percentage of that money would go to meet the needs of the poor. Instead, they have chosen to cut £17bn and give tax cuts of which a very little percentage goes to the poor- less than proportionate in fact. Less than 10% of the money used goes to the 10% of people with the lowest income, etc. The fact that they have chosen to raise taxes by £17bn in other areas is neither here nor there- because they could have chosen whether to spend that money on protecting public services or on this bad policy of tax cuts.



17. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    MikeSC, you're completely welcome to your wrong opinion. Meanwhile those of us that have read the announcements made by Clegg and Cable about what they're going to raise and what they're going to cut in taxation will continue to actually be right. I beg you, come over to the side of being knowingly right rather than the side of being ignorantly and tragically wrong.



18. Don Paskini posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    Good discussion. I agree with Alix that: "As I said on the LFF thread, you want a bigger safety net/more public services, I want to rebalance the tax system. What you should be saying is “I disagree with this revenue neutral proposal to make the tax system fairer. I want to raise taxes and spend them on public services instead.”" I'm all for taxing the rich and raising £17bn in the ways the Lib Dems suggest. Personally, I'd have gone for raising the threshold, but putting up the basic rate so that people eaning under £25-30k benefit, rather than people earning more than that. That would free up some cash for another eye-catching initiative. I appreciate the political difficulty in having a higher basic rate of income tax, though, and the way this confuses the message. But I think simplifying the tax system and spending £17bn on giving people a £700 tax cut probably isn't the most effective use of that amount of money (though it is above average compared to some of the nonsense that we spend money on). For example, instead of a flat rate £700 tax cut, we could: Increase Jobseekers' Allowance and Employment Support Allowance by £7/week (£2bn) Extend the Future Jobs Fund to guarantee everyone who has been unemployed for a year or longer the offer of a job (£3bn) Introduce free childcare for all working parents (£5bn) Cap the withdrawal rate of benefits at 55% (£5bn) This would stimulate the economy by putting money in the pockets of people most likely to spend it, make sure that literally everyone would be substantially better off in work than on benefit, reduce unemployment and poverty substantially, all for less than the cost of raising the tax threshold to £10,000.



19. Bob B posted on Contra Stimulus!
    News update Sunday: "Succumbing to the 'temptation' of a further fiscal stimulus will backfire, George Osborne warns on Monday, as he stakes out the political battlelines for next week’s pre-election Budget" http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3a299f8-2fa9-11df-9153-00144feabdc0.html Osborne has invoked the support of Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University to counter attack all those economists who signed up to those letters in the FT of 18 February. In the early 1990s, Professor Jeffrey Sachs was one of the leading advocates of instant shock therapy to revive the Russian economy. Remember how well that shock therapy in Russia performed compared with the way the Communist Party government in China have promoted development through the transformation to a capitalist market economy while preserving the party's monopoly over power? "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" they call it. Democratic pluralism has been rejected but there's no doubt that the Chinese road to economic transformation is proving much less traumatic than what happened in Russia.



20. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "MikeSC, you’re a liar and you’re spreading lies. I’m glad everyone can see through this as no-one other than you is moronic enough to take a policy that states clearly £17bn income from extra taxes balanced with a £17bn cost of raising the personal tax allowance threshold, and somehow equate a completely non-announced and imaginary £17bn of public service cuts." You've got to be fucking kidding. It isn't balanced by £17bn of extra taxes because they do not have to commit themselves to only raising taxes while cutting an equal amount elsewhere. This is about their priorities- and how they would cut £17bn of services that they could easily avoid in exchange for £17bn in tax cuts that do very little for the poor. You've completely misunderstood the LFF report as well...



21. MatGB posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    Mike, all of those things are already paid for and not under threat. In fact, the LDs also have a fully costed policy to increase education spend for the poorest families. You, hidden in your posts, have a position. But the way you are arguing it is utterly wrong headed and has mostly already been refuted. The NHS is not going to be abolished, and education will remain free. So stop talking bollocks about how the NHS is going to be abolished without this money, it's bollocks and completely pointless. Come up with an actual real example.



22. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Are you fucking dense?" Right back at you, you're the prime example of why we need a government that is pledging to invest more in education, specifically mathematics. Lib Dem's for example?



23. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    @62: Are you fucking dense? This is what I said: "Your simplistic view of poverty as merely disposable income would see a person on £9000 (and the NHS) considered less well off than a person on £9001 (without the NHS)" Which is completely true. Alix said that this measure would help people out of poverty. No it wouldn't, because in order to pay for this slight increase in disposable income the poor lose in potential public services that would otherwise not have to be cut. "No public service can put food on the table, clothes on the kids, or gas in the tank. Increasing disposable income for the poorest workers allows them to better meet their everyday needs. End of. Now fuck off, Mike" This is a good example of the kind of idiocy that Alix's premise can lead to (that disposable income is the only measure of poverty, public services don't come into it). Are you better able to put food on the table with £100 in disposable income and a charge of £500 for necessary private healthcare or with £90 and an NHS? Are you better able to put clothes on the kids without subsidies for childcare, and thus no option to work? Are you better able to put gas in the tank when you're doing the morning commute to a fee-paying private school?



24. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    MikeSC, you're a liar and you're spreading lies. I'm glad everyone can see through this as no-one other than you is moronic enough to take a policy that states clearly £17bn income from extra taxes balanced with a £17bn cost of raising the personal tax allowance threshold, and somehow equate a completely non-announced and imaginary £17bn of public service cuts.



25. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    I've read more of the LFF pdf, and it is absolutely mind blowing. In between putting two graphs together that represent two different things (and then putting a measley qualification underneath that one graph shows the impact of one policy in one year while the other a generation of Labour reforms), they completely go off the hypocritical scale. Apparently it is not enough to judge Labour purely on one policy, as their record shows they've redistributed income. Yet when it comes to Lib Dem policy it is absolutely fair game to use a portion of only one policy (not even the whole policy!) to claim the party is being regressive...and even then they manage to fail completely in the logic stakes (as MikeSC so eloquently portrays in this very thread). I honestly can't get over how partisan this supposedly non-partisan body have been. It's a shocking report based on only half of the reality and comparisons to incomparable ideals. Amazing.



26. rob tennant posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    No public service can put food on the table, clothes on the kids, or gas in the tank. Increasing disposable income for the poorest workers allows them to better meet their everyday needs. End of. Now fuck off, Mike



27. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    @52: I can't be arsed reading all that shit. Browsed through, and it's nonsense- you don't know what you're talking about. You haven't understood what I am saying, you haven't understood what LFF said. This is it in a nutshell for all you hard of thought liberals: The Liberal Democrats have outlined a policy, and these are the effects of this policy: -It removes £17billion of potential public expenditure -It puts £1billion of that into the pockets of those with incomes below £10,000. -It gives more money to the rich than it does to the poor. They may gain *proportionately* less so that, to them, it is less valuable- this does not change the fact that billions are being lost that could be used more progressively. We are about to enter a period of deep cuts in public services- the Lib Dems are especially excited, even more so than the Tories, about the savagery of these cuts- 100% of the deficit as opposed to 80%. If you think that this is not going to affect public services, you're deluded. Now who benefits the most from public services? The poor of course. Money spent on protecting public services would be significantly more efficient than the 6% that would go to the poor under this plan. The Liberal Democrats are essentially swapping £17billion of public services for £17billion of tax cuts. The poor gain significantly less from these tax cuts than they would if £17billion of the most effective public services that will have to be cut wasn't. It would be like scrapping the NHS and then dividing the money saved among the populace with the poor getting 6%- they have gained in disposable income! How progressive! But they have lost in useful services. That it why it is regressive- it is allowing £17billion worth of cuts in public services to go ahead in order to fund £1billion worth of help for some of the poor. From taking a significant share of £17billion they have gone to having £1billion.



28. BenSix posted on Moral courage in Alternative Iraq
    Isn’t it a good thing that theists engage with the rational world? And, come to that, I hear guys like Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas weren't complete idiots.



29. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "That was just an example of the kind of logic Alix was using- taking disposable income as the sole measure of poverty and not considering the public services that money could save- poverty of income should not be divorced from ways to meet needs without expenditure of personal income." Oh mikeSC, you really are a crafty little liar.



30. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    His whole argument is that even thought Lib Dem's have costed a tax alteration that takes £17bn in taxation on corporate expenses and assets that are less easy to hide and avoid, to pay for £17bn of tax cuts that will proportionally significantly benefit the poor....that technically that £17bn of tax cuts doesn't have to be paid for by the £17bn of revenue raised if you decide to swap the numbers around arbitrarily. Thankfully by the same logic the £17bn of public service cuts that are made to pay for the £17bn in tax cuts are plugged instantly by the £17bn of tax revenues raised, so the outcome is the same (unless your name is MikeSC). It's childish, and it's why it's time to stop engaging with him



31. The Familiarity of Core Conservative Values « Carl Packman posted on The Familiarity of Core Conservative Values
    [...] For some, relativism has always been the turf of the left, particularly on the subject of poverty. Emerging ideas from within the Tory right are now trying to claim relativitism as more important to Conservatism than it currently is. One such development is the Progressive Conservative project at Demos. Their latest essay, entitled Everyday Equality, deals exclusively with trying to demonstrate the importance of inequality and the wealth gap and how this can be important to the future of Conservatism. (Continue) [...]



32. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Is this your whole argument, about the revenue-neutral thing? There is nothing to stop them from spending the money raised from the green taxes etc on raising the threshold! You’re trying to make out like they are unable to do so, for some magic unknown reason." There's nothing to stop them spending money on any other bad idea either should they want to, so what?



33. Theses on Progressive Conservatism « Carl Packman posted on Theses on Progressive Conservatism
    [...] return to community – and the surpassing of current modes of government and market structure. (Continue) Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)NEW WAYS OF WORKING POST [...]



34. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Show us where Lib Dems have said they’re going to reduce front-line NHS support for the public." That was just an example of the kind of logic Alix was using- taking disposable income as the sole measure of poverty and not considering the public services that money could save- poverty of income should not be divorced from ways to meet needs without expenditure of personal income.



35. On Charity and other guilt-driven processes « Carl Packman posted on On Charity and other guilt-driven processes
    [...] The 7th of March marks the end of fair trade fortnight; and what a noble campaign it is too, not simply serving to allow indifferent middle class westerners to drop a couple of coins in a pot, but actually a way of addressing some of the pitfalls of our trade system in a way that promotes fair remuneration for hard work in the world’s most impoverished countries. (Continue) [...]



36. rob tennant posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    

    They are under no obligation to spend the money raised from the other tax rises in this way

    Is this your whole argument, about the revenue-neutral thing? There is nothing to stop them from spending the money raised from the green taxes etc on raising the threshold! You're trying to make out like they are unable to do so, for some magic unknown reason.



37. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    Alright, so we can now be sure that MikeSC is a blinkered Labour mouthpiece deployed to fly in the face of logic and reality...I think we can draw a line under this particular conversation given it's going nowhere? As for a more interesting side of things, Rob, I didn't think they were exclusive. Certainly everything I've seen come from the Lib Dems (as a voter not a member) is that they are pushing for money to go in to people's pockets to help them when they need it, as well as to reform the tax system to make it fairer. The reality is that there is a shed load of money that is being wasted or plans to be wasted by this government. The sheer volume of public spending that can be made more efficient or reclaimed completely means it is not outside the scope of a party to make the right sort of cuts and actually increase the welfare output, albeit marginally. The trouble with both Labour and Tories is that they have their hearts set on some of these bigger policies that cost too much and offer too little, Trident being the obvious one. It's too easy to get sucked in to the narrative that cuts MUST mean front-line service cuts, because usually when it's being said it's by two parties that if they had to cut anything would rather cut public services rather than the third party management services and pie in the sky expensive policies that don't benefit the common person one jot.



38. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Who’s to say we have to choose between reshifting taxes towards the rich and away from low-paid workers, and increasing benefits for the poor? Perhaps if we reduced the level at which people pay the 50% tax rate, that could pay for it. I think Mike and the gooners at LFF have forced an ideological distinction that need not be: to say that, if you absolutely must choose between giving low paid workers more income and giving the unemployed more benefits/paying more into public services, is a false choice – because as progressives we believe in both." I haven't forced any such thing. I quite clearly said that giving the poor more disposable income is a good thing- but it is not a good thing when, in order to do so, you cut far deeper than you otherwise would have to. £17billion in lost public funding to pay for £1billion in tax cuts for those on under £10,000 is not progressive.



39. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    Lucky enough, the film is shit. "I’ll say it again. To say a tax proposal is “revenue neutral” means that it raises taxes in one area and lowers them in another, so that the net tax take to the government remains the same (about 39.2% currently). I’m sorry, but I didn’t make this definition up. You’re really letting yourself getting hung up on a semantic point." It's not a semantic point at all- in saying that it is "revenue neutral", people are trying to make it out as if it's isolated- unconnected to the rest of economic policy. It's not. They are under no obligation to spend the money raised from the other tax rises in this way. Revenue neutral is an obfuscation, nothing more. "Again, that’s an ideological judgement. As I said on the LFF thread, you want a bigger safety net/more public services, I want to rebalance the tax system. What you should be saying is “I disagree with this revenue neutral proposal to make the tax system fairer. I want to raise taxes and spend them on public services instead.”. Instead you’re trying somewhat pointlessly to argue that “revenue neutral” means something other than what it does. Mind you, at least you have quickly come down to the ideological brass tacks of this, which I welcome. The LFF piece was silly because it tried to apply the term “regressive” to a proposal that tackled regressiveness and because it failed to understand that a tax cut can only benefit people who pay tax. I’d have been much less inclined to comment to the extent that I did if they’d just said, like you are, “We think there are better ways of spending that money.” Ok, think that. Just don’t expect people on low incomes (like me, for instance) and/or people who want to see the balance of taxation shifted from income to wealth (again like me) to agree with you." It is completely regressive. It increases the gap between rich and poor and middle and poor. It transforms money spent on services into money in pockets, and during this transformation the poorest lose out as the services that could be saved with that money are more valuable than the little that they gain. Let's look at this £17billion of public spending that potentially wouldn't have to be cut. Far more than 6% of that benefits those on less than £10,000. It is turned into a tax cut in which only 6% benefits those on less than £10,000. It is not a good deal for the poor whichever way you slice it- it is a proposal that will take more from the poor than it will return, that's not fair and that's not progressive.



40. rob tennant posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    @Alix Who's to say we have to choose between reshifting taxes towards the rich and away from low-paid workers, and increasing benefits for the poor? Perhaps if we reduced the level at which people pay the 50% tax rate, that could pay for it. I think Mike and the gooners at LFF have forced an ideological distinction that need not be: to say that, if you absolutely must choose between giving low paid workers more income and giving the unemployed more benefits/paying more into public services, is a false choice - because as progressives we believe in both. Do I want to have my cake and eat it? Most probably.



41. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Your simplistic view of poverty as merely disposable income would see a person on £9000 (and the NHS) considered less well off than a person on £9001 (without the NHS)." Show us where Lib Dems have said they're going to reduce front-line NHS support for the public.



42. Lee Griffin posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    I have to say this has been the most amusing thread I've read in ages. I love your assertion, MikeSC, that somehow the Lib Dem's, a party that was the FIRST mainstream party to call for a higher taxation on those earning over £100k, are trying to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. I guess because it was Labour that finally gave in an did it that suddenly the fact it was a Lib Dem policy first is redundant. I also love the idea, MikeSC, of you hiding behind dodgy statistics that exist solely to try and make the false argument that Labour are somehow better (after cutting the 10p tax band that plunged the poor deeper in to poverty) at keeping the poverty gap (which has been growing since they got in power) closed. The thing that concerns me from reading the LFF report (apart from the lack of direct sourcing of their information) is that this is a report based on assumptions that aren't explicitly said. Why has it been assumed that with a raise of the personal allowance to £10k that the higher rate income band will also rise? I know that it's labour's policy to increase the bands in line with each other, but that is more of an inflationary issue than one of fairness. Nowhere in any literature I can find do the Lib Dems say they'll be changing the tax bands, so in reality there is very little proportional gain for those on higher incomes; if a Lib Dem or someone else wants to point out where they have said it I'll gladly take this all back. Then there is the issue of MikeSC's hang up on the £17bn while only £1bn goes on the poor analysis. Aside from the seemingly flawed LFF analysis that in predictably partisan manner tries to fight the corner for taxing the poor only to give it back to them in welfare (while the Lib Dems here *don't* tax the poor and still give it back to them in welfare), it's a naive way of doing mathematics. "It’s still £30 out of the public pot, from which the person on £100 a week would derive more benefit than the one on £1000" The tax policy is neutral, so even if only £1bn went on the poor that is still (assuming the poor don't own mansions, take advantage of lax inheritance taxation laws, have huge capital gains or fly to their UK destinations) a £1bn redistribution of wealth away from those that are easily richer to those that are poorer. You can present it as much as you want as £16bn being spent on the not-poor, but when the not-poor are paying for that £16bn and then some it becomes a highly redundant point. Are the highest paid going to be 4 times absolutely "better off" than the poorest under Lib Dem proposals? Maybe they are, from the narrow perspective of income tax alone. Does that matter? Not one jot. If I have only one cookie and someone gives me another I'm 100% better off in cookie glee. If my neighbour has 1million cookies and they get 4 more cookies then in the grand scheme of things they are still going to be needing a crane to get them in and out of the bath; especially since the cookie increase is paid for by taxation on an individuals body fat content. Basically it's £30 out of the public pot for the person on £100 a week, and £30 for the person on a £1000, but only after the person on £1000 has put £60 in. And yes, MikeSC, you *CAN* try and muddy the waters by saying that if you put all the money in to one big pot then it doesn't really matter if the poor tax saving comes from other tax rises, as they could be perceived to have come from public spending cuts. But the reality is this isn't happening, and it's fairly insulting for you to try and browbeat your way past this point when people have very thoughtfully explained it for you. You say: "Is that then completely neutral because they both happen to be the same amount?" Oh sneaky little bugger you. I'd repeat MatGB's calls for you to name one spending cut that Lib Dems have stated that will specifically take money away from the poor. To go with your woeful analogy, what is really happening is that a guy is taking £10 a month out of his booze budget to spend £10 on his child's clothing, while at the same time he is also raising £5 to spend on his kid's school text books by cutting his £5 monthly subscription to the Labour party in an effort to stop the creep of authoritarian policies that will erode his child's rights ;) The reality is completely that "who benefits" is the poorer person. They get a tax break with no frontline public service cuts, while richer people see their tax bill redistributed into other areas of tax (with middle England being nicely catered for by a smaller tax break paid for still by the abundantly rich). It's hard to admit it, MikeSC, I know, but you're just quite patently wrong on this issue. "If you can make savings without harming public services- then good, this should be done anyway, you can then spend those savings on better public services rather than wasting them fruitlessly" But unfortunately this is the mentality of a Labour supporter isn't it? You've let your party screw over the poor for so long that you've forgotten that you could already have cut the waste but your party is ingrained in the practice of funding middle management and needless strategic and advisory third parties. We *COULD* spend the savings on more public services, but how is that exactly going to tackle the debt that continues to grow in our name? Continue to ignore that the Lib Dem policy is to increase spending in key areas such as education, welfare and pensions, while cutting things that this country does not want or need. Continue to ignore that the only way the taxation changes are funded is by richer people paying different tax and slightly more of it. Continue to ignore that the Lib Dems have made no statement whatsoever that they're going to cut frontline services or welfare, in fact they've stated very much in an opposite direction. But ignorance on a subject doesn't make you anywhere near correct.



43. Bob B posted on Contra Stimulus!
    What matters with QE is whether aggregate monetary demand is rising much faster than the capacity of the economy to produce more goods and services. Plainly, it isn't. In 2010Q4, business investment was running 25% down on a year before. Bank lending has slumped, as this PwC brief shows: http://www.pwc.co.uk/pdf/ukeo_mar2010_banklending.pdf The immediate main concern is the possibility of a double-dip recession - especially since the Eurozone economy - our main export market - is fragile. With public spending being cut back and consumers being urged to save more to pay off debts and build savings balances, where is the boost to demand going to come from?



44. Alix posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "Just because they align numerically doesn’t mean that there is any link between those two individual policies." I'll say it again. To say a tax proposal is "revenue neutral" means that it raises taxes in one area and lowers them in another, so that the net tax take to the government remains the same (about 39.2% currently). I'm sorry, but I didn't make this definition up. You're really letting yourself getting hung up on a semantic point. "and they have chosen badly." Again, that's an ideological judgement. As I said on the LFF thread, you want a bigger safety net/more public services, I want to rebalance the tax system. What you should be saying is "I disagree with this revenue neutral proposal to make the tax system fairer. I want to raise taxes and spend them on public services instead.". Instead you're trying somewhat pointlessly to argue that "revenue neutral" means something other than what it does. Mind you, at least you have quickly come down to the ideological brass tacks of this, which I welcome. The LFF piece was silly because it tried to apply the term "regressive" to a proposal that tackled regressiveness and because it failed to understand that a tax cut can only benefit people who pay tax. I'd have been much less inclined to comment to the extent that I did if they'd just said, like you are, "We think there are better ways of spending that money." Ok, think that. Just don't expect people on low incomes (like me, for instance) and/or people who want to see the balance of taxation shifted from income to wealth (again like me) to agree with you.



45. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    About to watch a film, won't be able to comment again tonight- I do understand that raising the amount of disposable income of the poor is a good thing. But, as LFF notes, poverty and social exclusion aren't just a lack of income- they are the result of what that income implies a person has to do without. It says above that the tax cut "has the *effect* of lifting low-earners out of poverty." No it doesn't, you're looking at an extremely simplistic view of poverty. Because this is a policy that would spend a small amount on giving the low-paid more disposable income compared to the overall cost of it- it has the effect of hurting low-paid workers compared to the public services that money could save. Your simplistic view of poverty as merely disposable income would see a person on £9000 (and the NHS) considered less well off than a person on £9001 (without the NHS).



46. MikeSC posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    "MikeSC, “revenue neutral” when used with regard to tax (if that’s what you mean by budget neutral) is a phrase with a specific definition. It means one area of the tax take reduces while another rises to compensate. Google it. That has been the accepted definition for a good twenty years to my knowledge. You are right to suggest that raising the overall tax take could be used to fund more public services instead of offering a tax cut. On that we have a perfectly respectable ideological difference. But the term “revenue neutral” is being used correctly on this thread and you’re not helping your argument by attempting your own redefinition. " I'm perfectly aware, of course, you've missed the point- in a metaphor using an individual rather than a state it would make no sense to talk tax- the income derived from smoking less was the tax increase, the income lost on booze was the tax cut. Just because they align numerically doesn't mean that there is any link between those two individual policies. It is a complete non sequitur. I'll rephrase the metaphor- a party has a £10 deficit to sort out, and they choose to deal with that deficit with £10 worth of cuts. They also raise £5 from green taxes and the like. They decide to spend £1 of that on (some of) the working poor and £4 of that on the rich- increasing inequality and stopping themselves from being able to reduce the cuts by £5. The poor lose the lion's share of £5 in public services in exchange for £1 in cash. There is no natural alignment between the tax cut and the tax rise just because they are of the same amount. The Lib Dems could choose what to spend that £17billion on, and they have chosen badly.



47. Bob B posted on How apprenticeships cut youth unemployment
    If the minimum wage is set at £1/hour there isn't an effect on aggregate employment levels. But it's absurb to believe that there won't be any effect on employment if the wage is set at £10/hour or more.



48. rob tennant posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    Claude, they will. It's their USP at the moment, just like their opposition to the war and tuition fees were in 2005. I am not their biggest fan but this policy ticks all the boxes on my progressive test. And as a low wage worker, it would make a massive difference to my life. God Bless Those Lib Dems!



49. claude posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    I think it's a good move. Raising the starting threshold at which people pay income tax is one of the most progressive policies to be pushed forward at this specific moment in time. I just hope the Lib Dems stick to it though!



50. Alix posted on Who benefits from Lib Dem tax cuts?
    MikeSC, "revenue neutral" when used with regard to tax (if that's what you mean by budget neutral) is a phrase with a specific definition. It means one area of the tax take reduces while another rises to compensate. Google it. That has been the accepted definition for a good twenty years to my knowledge. You are right to suggest that raising the overall tax take could be used to fund more public services instead of offering a tax cut. On that we have a perfectly respectable ideological difference. But the term "revenue neutral" is being used correctly on this thread and you're not helping your argument by attempting your own redefinition.