Two ways to cut the cost of living for everyone instantaneously:
End charging for owning a television; those who wish to watch BBC can pay as they go.
Slash the duty on petrol and diesel; the Labour government is taking far too much off drivers and road transporters under the current high supplier prices for oil.
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15 comments:
Agreed, especially the bit about double taxation of fuel. You might also add house purchase stamp duty and tax on insurance policies to your list.
On a technical point, just WHO is constantly pushing up oil prices? I don't think it is the actual producers (governments and oil companies) so that just leaves the middlemen traders bidding each other upwards. Is this right? And if so are such practices not controllable? If not, this is the dogma of market forces gone mad. As far as I know supply is adequate and despite Chinese and Indian demands will remain so (although there remains a shortage of refining capacity at present). So somebody somewhere appears to be making a killing!
Lots could be added to the list, I was just opening the batting, Nomad.
I don't subscribe to the world oil supplies running out any more than to global warming must be met by a miserable standard of living for most of us views. There's oceans of oil.
Nick Drew is the man for the expert view, but I think people would rather have oil than dollars. As for prices being controllable, they are, all the government needs to do is move the tax take down (I wouldn't like by the merest word to encourage them to move it up.)
Popped in to see what you were making of Italian Matters HG and I enjoyed your illuminating thoughts .
I understand your concerns about fuel and twansport costs,Miss Hatfield. As a superhewo, I am blessed with certain powers and, although I can jump quite high in the air and startle people, I cannot fly as such. I must make use of transport to get about and wight wongs and neutralise anger and nastyness.
As for TV, I do not have one. I think it makes for a nicer life.
Kind Wegards
Captain Nice
(dictated to web via state-of-the-art voice wecognition technology)
The point is, HG, that we have a socialist Government in all but name - high inflation and taxation goes hand in hand with it.
The tax is to pay for government non-jobs, pointless wars and the underclass.
There's oceans of oil
Yes indeed, HG: already-discovered reserves, equivalent to around 6 times as much as has been produced to date, are economic at $80 per barrel. And it gets added to all the time ('oceans' literally because a lot of it is under the sea) - see for example this report which has only just been noticed by the media (the discovery was made some while ago).
And plenty (= decades' worth) would be economic at even $40 - so why is today's price >$100 ? As Nomad asks, just WHO is constantly pushing up oil prices?
The answer lies in access: an ever greater proportion of remaining reserves lies in territories whose governments restrict access - for a variety of reasons, we might guess. Their sovereign right, for sure, but them's the facts.
'Middlemen traders' cause only froth on the top. Without them, the resources that are available would be much less efficiently allocated.
HG is of course right that a high percentage of (e.g.) the price of delivered petrol in Europe is tax of one sort or another (much less so in USA, however), and so could be lowered significantly at a stroke. Conversely, however, in many Asian countries oil products are heavily subsidised.
A complex picture.
Slash the "duty" on employment - 40.6% marginal (income tax/NI 'ee/NI 'er) on 5-figure incomes. Work is taxed almost as highly as alcohol, tobacco and petrol, presumably for similar reasons, i.e. to discourage it.
N, you have an outstanding ability to write with, so to speak, your hair brushed neatly, hands clean, pleasant smile, shortly before unleashing a raging torrent of destructive analysis, if not invective. I do hope you are reading the latest Economist on Mr Berlusconi, which says it all better than I can, and are thus the true target.
As for the Northern Leagues, I take back not a word, they are an unpleasant, racialist sect to be condemned out of hand.
ND. Thank you for giving your expertise. And confirming that it is wholly within Darling's remit to ease the rising costs of living.
I think they will be forced to do some of these easy tax cuts very soon anyway, as people are driven into penury (and fury) for aims they don't support. Apart from all of us being well aware that in Scotland the government is managing so much better, despite the Westminster attempts to prevent the delivery of less tax and decent services.
Hatfield girl,
It isn't so easy to cut inflation. It would require higher interest rates and that would kill our overvalued and bloated housing market. Today, homeowners, banks, and estate agents are all powerful advocates for higher inflation.
Alice
Yes,the wedge between what labour costs the enterprise and what workers take home can be seen as a tax on employment.
Prodi reduced the wedge significantly; the reduction was regarded as a concession to companies and, in part, he lost the elections because workers had no improvement in their take-home pay.
Perhaps it is time demands for wage flexibilty ended and attacks are made instead upon imperfect competition and monopolistic competittion in the market for products. Monopoly means even if wages are lower than the marginal productivity of labour measured at market prices, firms will not employ labour because the marginal revenue obtained form the extra product obtained from employment has a marginal revenue much lower than prices, possibly zero, or even negative.
Perhaps it's time to unleash competition in the product market rather than exclusively in the labour market.
But then Angels isn't right of centre, S.
Once and for all effects are very welcome Alice, even if inflationary trends resume.
Mr D: Many thanks for taking the time to explain so clearly. So all we now have to do is persuade those "awkward" countries to be a little more cooperative (as well as forcing Darling to cut - and simplify - the UK's taxation rules of course)... Don't hold your breath.
In the mid 1970s, when the Arabs quadrupled the then price of oil,there was a huge effort to exploit other sources of energy eg shale sands etc. Good prgress was made with solar cells and electric batteries and the like, but regrettably the momentum and dynamism of that effort seems to have dissipated, although George Bush's recent call for renewed research into alternatives is a small step in the right direction again. The wrld will be held to ransom for a good while yet.
I think there should be a complete abolition of means-testing, because of the myriad traps it sets. And how much would be saved on bureaucracy? And saved on the nasty advertising of what the State will do to you if you dare to try to earn a bit while still stuck in the benefit trap?
I know Wat Tyler at Burning Our Money is in favour of a Citizens Basic Income, received regardless of work status, though he hasn't worked out how to make the figures stack up. There must be a way to pay benefits according to need, not income, and remove any obstacle to earning. Worklessness is so destructive in so many ways.
I have a bee in the bonnet about the tax/NI thing, because it is so dishonest in its presentation - wage slips don't show the full deductions. If ordinary people realised they were all 40% taxpayers, maybe there'd be a bit more pressure for value for money. There must be a way to eradicate all the complex, dodgy Brown-type schemes for disguising the true state of taxation and public spending.
By the way, do you think I'm right of centre? I only ever voted Tory once, after the first Blair term, as a protest against a narcissistic vandal. And as you know, my vote counts for zero anyway - safe seat here, ruled by a Party man whose heart and backside stays in London.
P.S. I've tried, however inadequately, to sketch out the relationship between freedom and law (aka passion and reason) on my blog. Perhaps you can do better.
'There must be a way to eradicate all the complex, dodgy Brown-type schemes for disguising the true state of taxation and public spending.'
Eradicate Balls?
Frank Field's the man for tax and benefit puzzle solving, not that German Democratic Republic-style Party thug.
When Angels set out a year ago, S, it was to end the political categorisation of right and left in favour of right and wrong. So, as you ask, you are right not worng, and on the side of the Angels.
(I once voted for Robert Rhodes James but I plead innocent as the opponent was Shirley Williams and when it's brain or no brain, who would I be to go for the no-brainer?) There was a much better quality of candidate once upon a time, wasn't there?
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