'Spreadsheet' Phil bores for Britain

And a jolly good thing, too, because I like my Chancellors of the Exchequer to be boring.  Exciting Chancellors can be the stuff of nightmares!  So his proposals in today's budget, in so far as I could understand them, appeared to be modest and minimal, although I doubt that 'SoD' will think so because taxes on the self-employed will rise.  Still, when I explain to him that some of the money will be used to increase budgets for social care for the elderly - er, that's me, by the way - I'm sure he will be totally content!

So the good news is that it was a modest, not to say, minimal, budget but the bad news is that there is to be another one in the Autumn.  There-after we will return to just one budget a year - thank God!  Traditionally, it is reckoned that the hardest job for any leader of the opposition is to stand up and give a response to the budget speech even if he has only glimpsed it briefly just before it's delivered.  In this ever-changing world it is a relief to report that some things never change and thus 'Jezza' was his usual hopeless, hapless self.  He launched off into a tirade of gloom and misery that would have you convinced that Britain was no better than, er, well, that socialist nirvana, Venezuela.  "Woe is me", he cried, over and over again and then over again several times more.  There was hardly a dry eye in the House, perhaps because most of them were firmly closed!

 

 

Comments

[Bob]

David, your conservatives and ours have never seen a way to benefit the rich and belabor everyone else they didn't love. You can pretend 'Jezza' is the sum total of the opposition all you'd like, but according to Brit news outlets the left parties are beginning to coalesce and the more centrist Lib Dems are outperforming Labor at fundraising.

[Whitewall]

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.”
― Frédéric Bastiat

[TheBigHenry]

The state lives at the expense of everyone productive middle-class taxpayers. ― TBH

[Bob]

Yet more proof the right is reduced to sloganeering platitudes.

[Whitewall]

Fredric Bastiat, 1801-1850...these platitudes stand the test of time:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/89275.Fr_d_ric_Bastiat

[David Duff]

Bob, all that Bastiat pointed out was an early forerunner of the excellent American saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch!

[Bob]

All the quotes from Bastiat are standard boilerplate. They lack any depth or explanation and are only assertions.

-

David, do government subsidies for corporations and tax cuts for the upper income brackets buy any lunches?

[David Duff]

Bob, I don't know of any subsidies for corporations 'over here' but I do know for an absolute certainty that tax cuts for the rich produced record levels of incoming taxation funds.

[Bob]

David, there's this great thing called "Google" on the internet! If you go there and enter "british business subsidies" you'll find:

UK Government 'pays £6bn a year in subsidies to fossil fuel industry'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-government-pays-6bn-a-year-in-subsidies-to-fossil-fuel-industry-a6730946.html

And "Taxpayers are handing businesses £93bn a year – a transfer of more than £3,500 from each household in the UK":

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/07/corporate-welfare-a-93bn-handshake

As just a few examples.

[David Duff]

Bob, I mis-spoke, or mis-wrote! Of course there are government subsidies for various companies and the Greenies are the greediest, its just that I wanted to put you right (or Right) by pointing out that often tax cuts produce greater returns of tax into the government coffers - an idea that Lefties seem unable to understand.

[Bob]

David, that theory has been proven wrong so many times it's kind of amazing even the most loyal rightist can believe it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics#Criticisms

Note what happened here after Reagan primed the pump with tax cuts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States

GHW Bush and Clinton brought the debt back down by raising taxes, after which GW Bush cut them again and broke the economy. Obama drove it back up with stimulus spending to avoid a second Great Depression.

Sure, tax cuts can increase revenues in the short term, or at least stimulate investment, but they always cause the debt to increase. At some point servicing the debt outweighs the benefit.

[David Duff]

The debts increase, Bob, mainly because the pols cannot stop spending it like drunken sailors - mostly at the behest of (usually) Left-wing agitators and a dumb electorate!

[Bob]

David, if you were to ask Americans on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veteran's benefits, public pensions, or corporate or farm subsidies to give them up you wouldn't find many of any political persuasion that would agree. Only the most wealthy would because they'd gain more in tax savings.

[David Duff]

You are entirely right, Bob, but that doesn't make the Ponzi scheme any more admirable. That politicians continue to bribe people with their own money says everything you need to know about both classes of people!

[Bob]

I don't know about the UK, but we, in theory, have a pay as you go system and not a Ponzi scheme. The problem is that politicians can't resist telling Americans they can have better benefits cheaper or giving the military/industrial/law enforcement complex more than they can spend productively.