大象传媒

Typical New Labour: let's "modernise" taxation - by taking it back to where it was in 1694!

This proposal is proposterous at a time when the Lib Dems are thinking of putting up capital gains tax as a means of redistributing the wealth. Being a socialist I have even started emailing David Cameron about recycling. I would be surprised if even he would take such a step as it would create a new aristocracy. Not all people on low wages are lazy, and I don麓t think that Tony Blair could do the job of a factory worker, he would be so bored he would go insane. Everybody has their strengths and they should be rewarded for them and the only way to do that is the redistribution of wealth.

Apparently over 50% of the worlds entire wealth is shared by just 2% of the population it麓s incredible. Policies like this just make things worse and worse. If it happens in 20 years time people will just forget about the poor and it will be back to the slums of C19 for a lot of people.
Exactly the same happened with the end of the culture of Guilds and the industrial revolution.

Stephen Byers is ridiculous. Are there any true socialists who believe in equity and redistribution of wealth left in the "Labour" Party? They've all sold out.

Yes, rich people should pay considerably more tax overall, as current inequalities mean our society is a far from civilised one.

I've no personal interest here, but Inheritance Tax is a ludicrous tax. Like dogs licking their you-know-whats, they only do this because they can. You can't defend taxing people as they give their stuff to their children. If it's OK at death, why not before - why not tax anything parents buy for their children, say?

The value of a person's estate is already "after tax". To pay tax on it again is ridiculous, and merely invites people to fritter their money away instead.

Labour should abandon this ludicrously unfair tax at the same time as progressively hiking income tax to more than make up for it.

The Death Tax is iniquitous and arbitrary. It can also be avoided if you have a good tax accountant. It penalises the thrifty and industrious but has no impact on feckless spendthrifts, the Royal Family being a case in point.

Byers is talking sense. His hypothetical example adequately makes the point that Inheritance Tax is simply an historical anomally. Environmental taxes are we we should be looking next as a mean to fund public services. Forget all this "redistribution of wealth" socialist nonsense. The trouble with it is it might be a (even "the") moral thing to do but it's a policy that doesn't live in the real world.

Inheritance is the means by which a ruling economic class perpetuates itself. All this nonsense about fantastic riches being needed as a spur to (ahem) hard work is one thing - to reward people for having rich parents seems even more absurd.

The stuff about Laffer sounds like some Googled-up half-memory from a first-year PPE course. The Laffer curve was a curiosity which showed how, under imaginary and staggeringly oversimplified conditions, some individuals might be prompted to work more when tax rates fall, to the extent that they could even end up paying more income tax (note it wasn't even intended to apply to other taxes).
Eagerly seized on by Reagcherite proponents of the self-serving 'trickle-down' or 'crumbs from the banqueting table' model, it was treated as a general theory of aggregate market behaviour, and even more ludicrously, one that actually happened to apply to net taxation in the US. Apart from the theoretical bankruptcy of this Laffable approach, just one of many obvious realities ignored in the wish-fulfilment fantasy was the massive govt subsidies to various big businesses.

The description of Ramsey's views sounds more honest. He seems to have been interested in growth - apparently for its own sake - and didn't care in the slightest that only the super-rich stood to benefit much from so-called 'supply-side economics'.

As for IHT being a tax on 'after tax' wealth (Arturo Perez's remark #5), that's ridiculous. Money and goods circulate, and the tax is applied as it does. Almost all tax is levied on money which has come from some previous taxable transaction. I agree however that if it were not possible for people to build up vast wealth (yes, at the expense of others) during their lifetime, inheritance tax would not be required or appropriate - but then the current inheritance tax regime would have little impact anyway.

Alan (#6) - spendthrifts have been propping up the economy for some time. Are we to discourage spending because of some sort of post-protestant disapproval of people enjoying themselves? Most saving goes into pensions, which - guess what? - cease to provide benefit on death. So inheritance tax doesn't in general stop people saving. And if they are really keen to make sure their children will be millionaires when they die, they'll just have to 'work' even 'harder' (perhaps a couple more non-executive directorships would offset the tax 'burden').

#7 (Andrew Lloyd): environmental taxes are designed to alter behaviour so as to discourage destruction of shared resources. If they do their job, they should eventually provide no tax revenue.
Admittedly, if an 'acceptable' level of environmental degradation could be decided on, the taxes could be used (if constantly fine-tuned) to implement a wealth-based rationing scheme, but in my opinion such a scheme is neither achievable nor just.

Admittedly all these issues are more complex than these remarks can do justice to - but that doesn't seem to stop anyone else.

I'd be interested to hear a bit more about why this announcement was made at this time. Rather a lot of column-inch-hogging announcements seem to be designed either to distract attention from something, to raise the announcer's profile, or to offer subtle signals about allegiances and positioning, aimed over the heads of us mere mortals at other members of the Titanic political class.

Examples: Tony Blair on nuclear power (distraction from the peerage-selling scandal). Reid's latest terror scare (Tony stayed away in this, er, national emergency, to let Reid position himself as PM material). Countless coded attacks on Brown from Blairite muppets eager to prove 'loyalty' - a very dubious virtue in a democratic representative.

So can we please have some proper anaysis from the 大象传媒? Even non-boat-rockers are getting sick of seeing the politicos spin rings round the media. It shouldn't only be political sophisticates who are allowed to know about the real situation. Let's raise the standard for everyone, please - almost anyone could be a political sophisticate, given the right information. Then we might see an end to 'dog-whistle' politics and doublespeak.

The inheritance tax should be lifted to a more reasonable amount.Example 拢1.million pounds.The average house in the South.Especially London cost around 拢400.000.
I am working class and through hard work, rise in house prices, and not living off the state.Will be eligable for the inheritance tax.
I am coming up to retirement.My attitude now is I am going to blow the lot, before I am incapable of doing so.I have calculated I will be better of having no assets.Because the government will take care of me anyway regardless. if I have no money.I can't take it with me.Have no dependants.Why should I leave it to the goverment."Has long as there is enough to bury me"There is just no incentive to save under Mr.B.liar's government (Play on words regards the spelling of Blair)Yes! will leave money to charities But! not to any goverment.

Dear Mr Mason, this is off topic, but as you seem like a thorough sort of journalist, could you have a word in the Newsnight office about the recent slide in reporting quality?

Booster seats - I assume there is some reason for the EU regulation - perhaps that seat belts are designed for people of a certain height? You would not, however, discover this from tonight's piece.

I can see it is a quiet news period - but standards are standards.

To Andrew Lloyd

Look I am sorry about this but why do we
ALWAYS have to create a politics which works around abstract principals such as economics, right wingers create this myth of every truly socialist principal as "not working".

The whole point of socialism is that it really took off in England in 1945 when people from all different walks of life had fought together and survived a real threat. That is most likely what moved people after the war to join Labour: "anyone who is prepared to give up their lives fighting side by side with me deserves respect".

It created a society in which the government really listened to the people. It meant that ordinary citizens became involved in politics like they never had done before. It paid the people who had served this country in the war by giving them more money and more say in what was done. (This I mean not in a moralistic sense but paying people literally for what they had done and making sure we had no repeat of what happened in WW1 when people were sent to war on the command of fat generals living a wonderful aristocratic life behind the lines). You麓d certainly think your morals were attacked if you didn麓t receive your salary or if no-one listened to your suggestions at work any more I am sure of that.

Democratic Socialism is not a big duffer, at it麓s best it creates a better feel good factor and at it麓s most extreme it is just as terrifying as capitalism this does not mean that it should be ignored. In some ways it has been successful it is ludicrous to suggest otherwise.

To Mr Lloyd...Democratic socialism performed the same function in 1945 as Margret Thatcher did in 1979 it solved the problems of the time. It麓s amazing how much one sentence has destroyed an entire culture "Labour麓s not working".

If you deconstruct this sentence however, it is in the present continuous . The present continouous is only relevent to a tempory time with "now" as it麓s centre. The "now" centre you are referring to and Mrs Thatcher was referring to can only be the now of 1979!! I don麓t think she even thought "Labour will never work again" this is a complete myth.

Now I麓m all for seeing things from different angles but Mr Beyer麓s statement is extreme and if he want麓s to implement such a policy why doesn麓t he defect to the conservatives. Classic labour supporters, whose votes which the government relied on in safe seats in the last election did not vote him in
on the premise to implement right wing views. Or are you suggesting that our politicians should become 100% machiavellian get voted in and do what the hell they like? Where do you draw the line at what is morally correct?

I am looking for a Film you put on a while back called Look Who's Laffing.
If there anyway I can git this it would Help the disabled vets at the VA hospital I go too.

Thank you