Just out of curiosity, why, on numerous news outlets (including the BBC and guardian) are the Conservatives described as having the biggest spending plans in recent Conservative history while Labour have the greatest borrowing plans in recent Labour history. Both will be borrowing and both will be spending, so why is the spin lopsided making the tories sound generous while labour sound irresponsible?

so why is the spin lopsided

It’s an interesting question. I noticed that the Tory that accused Labour of spending their way to a 1.2 trillion pound debt (or was it billion? Doesn’t matter either way because it was based on nothing)
Wasn’t pulled up for not having anything to back up the claim. Further, when pressed on his own partie’s spending plan,, which he might know something about, and whether that might also run up a large deficit, he stated he wasn’t going to bandy figures about. And was allowed to get awat with it.

What we need is to stop Brexit, and use the positive financial benefits of that, increase income tax and corporation tax, inteoduce wealth taxes that can’t be avoided by buying an island or living on someone else’s, and invest in Britain.

Wouldn’t hurt. 2nd week maybe have a look at fixing inequality.

If we push inequality back to the 3rd week we could abolish the notion of money the 2nd week. By 3rd week everyone will be working for the good of each other instead of personal reward.

Shackleton

Subscriber

why is the spin lopsided making the tories sound generous while labour sound irresponsible?

I can’t possible imagine.

outofbreath

Member

If you could simply borrow and spend your way to a successful economy, every nation in the world would be rich.

Well, of course it’s not simple. You have to borrow wisely and spend well, it requires at least fiscal competence which all too many political parties lack. It also requires the ability to pursue a plan past the next local/eu/general election. And it’s easier to break than it is to sustain, if another party comes into power- and by breaking the process midcycle they can ensure it fails to reap the rewards and depict the policy as a failure. (just as it’s far harder to build a national public service than it is to sell it for a quick buck) And of course, not all countries have the access to cheap borrowing that we do.

So aye, it’s not simple, hardly anything worth doing is. Just about the only spending policy that is simple, is slashing away like a maniac without a care for damage. I think we’ve had enough simple.

cromy ^^^ every tory who’s been on the media today trotting out the £1.2 trillion labour spend lie has been directly challenged by the programme host on the number and how it’s been calculated.
No credible answer from any of them.
Are you referring to Kwasi Karteng on Sky? He was directly challenged by Sophie Ridge on both points; first, being unable to stand up the £1.2trillion; second, refusing to discuss tory spending plans and deficit impact.
All other tory politicos have been equally challenged every time they attempted to make that spurious claim about labour spending plans.
What programme were you watching or listening to?

re you referring to Kwasi Karteng on Sky? He was directly challenged by Sophie Ridge on both points; first, being unable to stand up the £1.2trillion; second, refusing to discuss tory spending plans and deficit impact.

Yeah, probably. I saw a fair bit in fits and starts so it all started to bleed together. If it was, I thought she let the “not going to bandy around facts and figures” go rather than point out that he had done exactly that in slagging off labour but was now refusing to engage. She did challenge him a bit throughout but I thought failed to go after that bit of hypocrisy hard enough.

For it to genuinely work, I think we have to change attitudes, which is the other half and much harder.

Maybe, but maybe not. I think most people dislike “fat cats” and think they should pay their fair share. I also think most people also don’t like “big multi-national corporations” avoiding paying their taxes. These two things are opposite to what Tories want – the problem is convincing people to vote along those lines. But people say things like ‘oh well I don’t trust Corbyn’ or ‘1970s/Venezuela blabla’, without ever having really considered it. We’re tribal first, gullible second and rational a distant last. This is the real problem. The best policies don’t win, the best PR image wins. This is an absolute travesty, and completely ruins democracy as you cannot vote well on things you don’t understand.

There is a pretty simple solution. If people don’t really understand poltics we can teach them in school. We don’t need GCSEs, just a few small modules explaining the basics. Politics, so people know the difference between left and right; economics, so people understand stuff like like free trade, labour movement or fiscal policy. And philosophy, so people can hear ideas about what government should be aiming to do. No-one gets taught these things so it’s up to us to teach ourselves (which most don’t) or glean things from the news. And as we know, the news can be nothing more than a mouthpiece – which is where we get “I just don’t trust ‘im” in place of a rational thought process.

You cannot tax the rich and corporations to a ‘fair’ amount because they will simply spend their money on tax minimisation.

Simply whacking up corporation tax or income tax – yeah, it’s problematic. It’s been tried, after all. That’s why we need new ideas. It won’t be easy though, not when people with the money are appealing to people’s base instincts. That’s why the bottom line is education – it always is.

On thing that would help greatly on tax evasion is to beef up the tax inspectors. they recover more money than they cost.

You can tax people and corporations much more and more fairly.

Having the will to try would certainly go some way but no matter how draconian you are willing to be, if you want to have some sort of economy you are going to have to be pragmatic, sadly.
Your best chance probably lies with public opinion. If you can get people to demand it and embarrass the companies into behaving better, that’s your best chance. It has worked to some degree in a small scale.

It’s pretty well established what those levels are and that taxing beyond that will be counterproductive

Go on… actually, no, don’t bother… take it to the Laffer Curve thread.

You have absolutely no idea whether increasing the highest rate of income tax and the level of corporation tax for larger companies by a few % points would be counterproductive at all… you’re just guessing… it isn’t an absolute, and depends greatly on what else is going on at the time. Which is why I started with stop Brexit before mentioning tax levels. Make Britain a better county to do business with and from, and use tax and investment to ensure that benefit is shared.

I was rather hoping to have a candidate here

The worry is, that Farage’s Brexit Party are dropping to a campaign focused on Labour voters in areas where that might help the Conservative Brexit Party, and quietly downing tools in seats that might negatively effect the Conservative Brexit Party vote.

We have data

Take it to the Laffer Curve thread.
You can not claim from that data what you seem to be claiming.

As I said, and I repeat, I am not advocating just increasing those tax rates, I am advocating government takes an action to boost the economy (stop Brexit) and increases taxes slightly on larger companies and high earners (to take advantage of the improvement in the trading fortunes of those who most immediately benefit from an announcement to stay in the EU) to ensure all benefit.

You can tax people and corporations much more and more fairly.

It’s more complicated than that. There’s a limit to what people consider fair, and that is based on their attitudes towards taxation and public spending. In say Scandinavia, governments spend more, but they can get away with promising to spend that much because people value the idea of taxation and public spending and are prepared to vote for it.

Public attitudes dictate government, to an extent – that’s democracy. However, people in the UK whinge about public services AND whinge about taxation. The media has managed to plant seeds of excuses in people’s minds – ‘I’d pay more tax but they just waste it’ is something that you hear.

They are regressive though.

True, but you could for example increase the indirect tax rate paid on the fuels used in private jets and helicopters, but reduce the indirect tax paid on those things you consider are purchased more by someone “on the breadline”…

…or more simply, use our direct tax and benefits systems to help those “on the breadline”, and invest in the services that they need.

Cool. Just a reminder that direct taxes can be regressive (some of our NI rules and rates are) and indirect taxes can be progressive… it’s not a simple rule that the opposite is always the case.

I don’t think turnover tax and VAT are equivalent. The buyer pays VAT, but the vendor would pay turnover tax. And some things like services may not be subject to VAT?

My *guess* is it’s due to double taxation

Fuel duty is a form of taxation but we also pay VAT on it.

Fuel duty is a form of taxation but we also pay VAT on it.

Maybe it’s something else then or maybe there’s a reason that isn’t double taxation. Like you I’d love to know the reasoning.

Businesses turnover comes exclusively comes from their customers

Does it?

Interest on loans to other businesses? Return on investments of other businesses, perhaps in different jurisdictions? Sale of stock? Sale of assets to other companies? Transferral of leases? License revenue? I’m not an expert in corporate affairs but it seems to me that a large company will have a lot more going on than simply selling stuff.