BRANDED
2:31 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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There are different kinds of left and right. Most Western countries have a healthy dose of socialism in them.
Rampant capitalists can be the most ugly humans you'll ever find.
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Hammer and Pickle
2:28 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Point is the Left assumes that business magics money out of thin air and it is only a matter of politics to help oneself to it - the creation of public debt, employing loads of non-profit making labour in the public sector and taxing business to fund it being just one of the wheezes the Left comes up with.
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BRANDED
2:17 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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I'm hardly suggesting the Guarding would throw light on the whole picture but for anyone to argue with just part of the data would be wrong.
Businesses bring in the money in many many different ways but they don't do it without some assistance.
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Nurse Ratched
2:16 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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I'm gonna slash your throat, Bobbymoore. Jackson Pollock you all over the pavement.
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Westside
2:11 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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The Guardian article refers to "tax breaks" of £44 billion, that business spend on plant and machinery etc. A plumber will get tax deduction for his tools, why shouldn't a bigger business get a tax break for the sums it spends on it's tools of it's trade? Some businesses are staff heavy rather than asset heavy. Is the Guardian suggesting that staff costs shouldn't be tax deductible? That's the logical extension if your capital expenditure isn't tax deductible.
Of course the article also ignores Employers National Insurance contributions. For 2014/15 total National insurance receipts were £109 billion for the government. Well over half this amount will be paid by employers, not employees. The employer rate is much higher than employees and open ended an not capped like employee contributions.
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neilalex
2:04 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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In fairness to Marx he predicated his views on controlling both supply and demand, so it would probably work out in those circumstances. Investing now to satisfy a future predicted demand is the primary source of capitalist risk.
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Hammer and Pickle
2:00 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Marx was an amazing social theirist but he made one basic error - he assumed that profit was an mechanical result of joining labour with the means of production and paying the labour less than the market value of the produced goods. His mate Engles, who paid for his labour, could have told him that profit was anything but mechanical and was saddled with enormous risk, especially that generated by politicians who screw up the currency by creating debt to gain short-term popularity.
Nothing has changed on the Left since then it would seem.
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BRANDED
1:59 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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It also depends on what the shedload is spent on. In my area its mortgages/rent, private schools, after school activities, holidays in Cornwall, expensive cars, eating out in local restaurants, shopping from local independent shops stocking British produce, investing in British companies, drinking British craft beer, etc.
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bobbymoore
1:58 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Nurse Ratched 11:49 Tue Aug 18
Re: Austerity
everyone knows it's scone / bone
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neilalex
1:56 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Overbyer - the fact that someone takes home what you describe as a shedload doesn't make them fair game for whatever level of tax you want to levy. It's all personal I guess, but I regard 40% as fair whereas I regard 60% as unfair. In actual fact all it prompted was a lower level of tax take as I sought specialist taxation advice that I wouldn't have sought if it had all been taxed at 40%.
In a nutshell I think I pay my whack, and the suggestion that somehow the less well off are being unfairly targeted to 'my' benefit doesn't seem to be borne out by the facts relating to where revenue is raised, what it is spent on, and the proportionality of contribution.
Child benefit for higher earners I agree is a nonsense, didn't even consider it.
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BRANDED
1:55 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Infidel 1:07 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
Not sure of the veracity of this but the Guardian reckons the UK government spends £93 billion a year. Even if half true your argument is total bollocks.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/07/corporate-welfare-a-93bn-handshake
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Infidel
1:52 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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overbyyer
It's a bit rich for a Leftist, nanny-state dirigeist like you to throw at me the system of grants and tax breaks for businesses.
It is precisely because meddling socialists think they can steer the private sector into doing things it doesn't want to do that we have this mess in the first place.
People on the right like me would happily scrap all the tax breaks and grants. If businesses want to set up their headquarters in the South East then let them - don't try to bribe them with taxpayers' money to set up in Wales instead.
You are in the curious position of arguing that the benefit of these grants and tax breaks to businesses should be clawed back via higher taxes.
Has it not occurred to you that if you claw back the benefit then the incentive itself would disappear, entirely negating its effectiveness?
All you would have done is create a very complex system in which grants are given with one hand and then taken back with the other. This is in fact more or less what we have now - huge complexity for no real benefit.
When are you socialists going to learn that the job of government is to stop meddling and just create a very simple low tax, low red tape environment, step back and let the private sector do its job?
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overbyyer
1:39 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Infidel - why the obsession with Corporation Tax, why does the benchmark of business pay-back have to be based on its Corporation Tax payments - not exactly the most transparent way of determining it is it?
Businesses that have thrived from Public grants and subsidies and now make billions in profits and siphon off millions in dividends should now contribute more to help the country balance the books. Or at the very least commit to investing in the workforce of the country. Instead of constantly bleating about skills shortages - why not provide real apprenticeships that train people in the skills they need and take hundreds of thousands of people out out of benefits straight away.
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Westside
1:25 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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When talking about evil business and what they don't pay in tax, don't forget the swinging payroll tax they pay to the government, just for the privilege of employing somebody, 13.8% of an employees gross salary. Or put another way, for every 8 people a business employs, the pay for a ninth, for no benefit.
Not to mention the cost they have for now compulsory pension schemes and the administrative burden of PAYE, VAT etc.
Ultimately business and the private sector pay for everything a government spends. Well apart from what it borrows.
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overbyyer
1:20 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Bit of a rant there Infidel - but why do you only provide partial responses?
If you take your south east blinkers off you would know that up and down the country there have been Government quangos handing out billions of incentives to businesses over the years. Regional Development agencies have handed businesses huge amounts in grants over the years - grants to subsidise jobs, grants to relocate to specific regions. Great idea if it helps fledgling businesses start-up and prosper, but it also attracted huge multinationals to the trough - effectively giving free money to very successful and profitable businesses.
So regardless of partly political point scoring and hysteria that you've just spouted - it is perfectly reasonable to expect the same businesses that have benefited and thrived from such help to now give a bit back to the hand that fed it.
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Infidel
1:07 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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overbyyer
OK,now I understand.
Your argument is that businesses have been 'protected' from the deficit reduction program by not having their taxes increased?
In 2009-10, ,the last fiscal year before Osborne came in to No. 11, total government receipts from corporation tax (including the Bank Levy) were £42.1 billion.
Want to know what they were in the most recent fiscal year (2014-15)?
£44.8 billion.
No, really, surprise me with a brilliant argument to show that far from being evidence of the tax burden on businesses increasing it is in fact solid proof that the out-of-touch Bullingdon Boy toffs of this evil Nazi Tory government are just looking after their fat cat friends in business whilst the poor are left to eat their own babies to ward off starvation.
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overbyyer
12:46 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Infidel wrote...
Re: Austerity
Overbyyer
"This mantra that business must be protected at all costs sticks in the gullet of a lot of people"
Really?
Tell me, how much of government spending goes to business?
I knew the government spends money on public services like the NHS, education and welfare but I wasn't aware that there was a government department sending money to businesses every month.
Do enlighten me as I have clearly been operating under a misconception all these years.
Why do you assume it relates to Government spending? Austerity should be tackled by raising funds from the businesses that have made billions through investment grants, relocation incentives, tax loopholes etc. It doesn't have to be recovered solely from reducing Government spending.
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Hammer and Pickle
12:46 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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"Labouring" under a misconception and "operating" a deficit, innit?
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Infidel
12:39 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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Overbyyer
"This mantra that business must be protected at all costs sticks in the gullet of a lot of people"
Really?
Tell me, how much of government spending goes to business?
I knew the government spends money on public services like the NHS, education and welfare but I wasn't aware that there was a government department sending money to businesses every month.
Do enlighten me as I have clearly been operating under a misconception all these years.
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overbyyer
12:32 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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New Jersey wrote...
Re: Austerity
neilalex - agree the 'rich' pay more than their fair share. Also add in the loss of child benefit if your earn over £50,000 or a higher rate tax payer,
Anyone on that level of salary that bemoans the loss of Child Benefit needs a take a look at themselves.
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overbyyer
12:29 Wed Aug 19
Re: Austerity
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neilalex wrote...
Re: Austerity
'everyone needs to be seen to be sharing the pain, even if doesn't raise that much in revenue.'
Where does this notion arise that the better off are not sharing the pain and somehow the 'burden' is all lumped on the less well off? The top 1% of earners contribute, according to HMRC figures, about 30% of the total tax take. This is up from 20% a decade ago.
What would the right rate actually be? At the moment on income between £100k and £121k the rate of tax and national insurance is actually 62%. So if you earn that £21k you take home less than £8k of it.
A bit misleading don't you think?
Your still taking home a shed load of money from the overall £121k.
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