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[KerrAvon]

Same old waffle, shall we start with the rise in billionaires/millionaires since 2010, coinciding with the rise in homelessness and foodbanks, the rise in in-work poverty? hows that for a bit of inequality.

How about making the richest in society actually pay their taxes instead of dodging them, i'm sure there's a few billion right there, every year, i'll let you do the links....

Shall we get to the national debt then, following your party's unfounded skill at all things economic, why is it reaching the 2 trillion mark, more than double what it was when the tories came to power......

Labour arent willing to spend a fortune buying votes, they're willing to spend to mend, the country is rapidly dropping onto it's knees, you don't see it because you don't want to, you're alright, jack, arent you, the poorest in society are being shafted and you don't give a shyte mr lawyer, the NHS is being sold to the highest bidder, bit by bit, but you don't give a shyte mr lawyer, because you're alright jack, the welfare state and the schools are at breaking point, but geuss what mr lawyer, yeh, you're alright, jack.

One more thing we should do to get some cash to mend the country, get rid of trident, and don't spend 100b on a new trident, rather spend it on the things i care about to be honest.

Ok. Start with the rise of billionaires/millionaires since 2010. Have you any figures? Do you disagree with the Guardian article that I linked to? I carefully chose that paper as it is not, apparently, a member of the MSM.

Of course, tax evasion and avoidance are present in every society and not just by the richest - have you never been offered a 'cash in hand job' or a lowered price for cash? I have. The problem that you have is that it costs money to address evasion and avoidance and if it costs £1.01 to collect £1 then clearly there is no net gain (there are, of course, other arguments for doing it regardless). The costs of collection is a particular problem for this country, which is rated as being one of the best in the world at collecting taxes. In other words, all the 'low hanging' fruit has gone.

The Tories are not my party. If you are concerned about the growth in the national debt since 2010, perhaps you could indicate what further cuts you would have made to cut the deficit more quickly?

Labour were willing to spend £7bn per year buying votes with the Tuition Fee bribe. It was there in black and white in their manifesto. How would that do anything to address the ills you describe?

What are your views on Labour planning to spend billions on the bribe and nationalisations whilst declining to reverse the benefits cap on the grounds of cost?

I agree with you on Trident, but Labour policy is to retain it (or at least that's what they told the electorate).

[millmoormagic]

And there's the difference, once again, all you ever do is concentrate your efforts on the monetary, not the poverty, and of course we ALL want the country to prosper, but i want us ALL to prosper, and not leave anyone behind, you seem to be very happy to do so, i'd love for people like you to champion the poor instead of the rich, it's a plain choice though, i suppose there's no kudos in fighting that fight is there?

Since we're quoting the Guardian, a bona fide member of the MSM..

https://www.theguardian.com/business...h-since-crisis

One thing we could do as a country to chase rich tax dodgers is change the emphasis on those doing the chasing, you put the thousands of tax inspectors chasing benefit cheats for a pittance onto the rich tax dodgers, and the few, very few chasing the rich, onto the benefit cheats...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d...graphs-5179901

Indicated my cuts, Trident for a start....

Once again, they're not bribing anyone, they're putting right a major wrong, you're posting this stuff, waffle, but elequent, as a direct result of free university education, the working man gave you that Kerr, people like me, and you're now advocating the denial of that same benefit to ALL our descendants and you should be ashamed, thoroughly.

[millmoormagic]

[KerrAvon]

And there's the difference, once again, all you ever do is concentrate your efforts on the monetary, not the poverty, and of course we ALL want the country to prosper, but i want us ALL to prosper, and not leave anyone behind, you seem to be very happy to do so, i'd love for people like you to champion the poor instead of the rich, it's a plain choice though, i suppose there's no kudos in fighting that fight is there?

Since we're quoting the Guardian, a bona fide member of the MSM..

https://www.theguardian.com/business...h-since-crisis

One thing we could do as a country to chase rich tax dodgers is change the emphasis on those doing the chasing, you put the thousands of tax inspectors chasing benefit cheats for a pittance onto the rich tax dodgers, and the few, very few chasing the rich, onto the benefit cheats...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d...graphs-5179901

Indicated my cuts, Trident for a start....

Once again, they're not bribing anyone, they're putting right a major wrong, you're posting this stuff, waffle, but elequent, as a direct result of free university education, the working man gave you that Kerr, people like me, and you're now advocating the denial of that same benefit to ALL our descendants and you should be ashamed, thoroughly.

And your argument isn’t about the money when you refer to the number of billionaires and suggest that the less well off need more? That’s as silly a point to make when you did it as when Roly did.

Ok. So your first link indicates that the number of billionaires in the UK is growing primarily because of the arrival of entrepreneurs from outside the UK. What would you like to do – ban them? One assumes that having arrived they at the very least employ local people and consume within the UK such as to generate tax revenues. Abramovitch, who is mentioned in the article, is a case in point. You may not like what he is doing at Chelsea (or Chealsea as the proof readers at The Guardian would have it), but the fact remains that he is injecting cash into the club, which then goes on to employ people.

James Dyson is mentioned in the article. I don’t believe that he had a particular privileged upbringing and recall reading that he had to re-mortgage his house and live on his wife’s salary from teaching whilst he developed the vacuum cleaner that made him rich. He came up with a good idea and took a risk to develop and sell it. What do you want to do? Take his wealth away.

Of course, other people’s wealth has risen through the rise in property prices and the rise in other asset values that has been driven by Quantitative Easing. As a house owner you will have benefitted from the former and as a person with an interest in a pension fund, you will have benefitted from the latter. It remains open to you to give both away if you feel that the growth in your wealth is wrong.

And what is Labour would do about the growth in billionaires? I don’t think nationalising the Royal Mail or the tuition fee bribe is going to have any particular effect upon them (save, of course, that injecting a minimum of £176bn into the economy by way of nationalisations will further drive up asset values).

Did you actually read the second article that you linked to? It explodes some of the common myths surround tax and benefit enforcement, including the notion that tax avoidance is a huge problem within the UK.

The article suggests that HMRC has 300 or so people working in its Affluent Compliance Unit – investigating people earning £150 000 plus. The fact is that you don’t need many people doing that work, because they aren’t many people earning such amounts. In addition, if you set aside your prejudiced assumptions for a moment , it’s not clear that there is a significant problem within the £150 000+ earning group; the major route of tax evasion is by the non-declaration of earnings. Yes, some of that might well fall within the £150 000+ group, but it has to be equally likely to arise through plumbers, taxi drivers, builders and the like not putting work through their books (which, by the way, is devilishly difficult to prove).

Benefit fraud, on the other hand, is committed by a larger number of people (that must be the case given that the amounts involved are often relatively small and yet £1.2bn per year is going down the tubes) and so a larger number of investigators is required. You may be happy with the notion of this sort of thing not being investigated, but I don’t think may people would agree with you: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-...wales-31837534

The notion that you could swap the benefit investigators into high end tax investigations is slightly bonkers by the way. The skills required are very different – high end tax investigation will require forensic accountants and lawyers.

The tuition fee bribe is a bribe no matter how you dress it up. I’m guessing that the ‘major wrong’ you are talking about is that people used to get free tuition, whereas now they don’t? That ignores the fact that far more people go to university now than used to (in part, because the income from tuition fees makes it possible to offer more places). And if it is a ’major wrong’ for people to be treated differently why is Labour so vague about what it will do about pre-existing student loans (saying hat it would be ‘dealt with’ during the election campaign, but then being ever so coy afterwards about what that actually meant).

And if Labour is so keen to address ‘major wrongs’ through different generations being dealt with differently, why is it proposing to impose VAT on private school fees? Wouldn’t it be a ‘major wrong’ that parents of children attending such schools would have to find 20% more after a Labour election victory than parents of children who had been privately educated in the past?

You missed my question by the way: What are your views on Labour planning to spend billions on the bribe and nationalisations whilst declining to reverse the benefits cap on the grounds of cost? Put another way, how do you think a food bank user would feel about Labour rejecting the notion of lifting the benefits cap on cost grounds whilst planning to give £7bn a year to predominantly middles class kids to go to university? Do you think he might consider that a ‘major wrong’?

[KerrAvon]

I don't think you understand the graph that you put up. The clue is in the use of the word regions.

The graph comes from a study of regional variations in wealth between different geographical areas. One assumes that the wide variation in the UK reflects the fact that wealth has become concentrated in the South East, where much of the high value employment is and that there are areas in Scotland where hill farming is the only real industry.

Start a new thread if you want to talk about geography. For my part, I think the government was wrong not to push Osborne's 'Northern Powerhouse' ideas.

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

At least these carefully selected, meaningless graphs put a splash of colour on the page.

[gm_gm]

I do like a graph....but this only illustrates that our poor are better off than most other countries, but our rich are super rich.

Inconclusive in the very least

[KerrAvon]

This is the article from which the graph comes:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2...the-rich-world

It's an interesting read, but has nothing to do with the point that I assume MMM is trying to make

[welovebooth]

first one to stop this thread out of mmm and kerravon will be classed as a loser and banished from this board forever.

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

I do like a graph....but this only illustrates that our poor are better off than most other countries, but our rich are super rich.

Inconclusive in the very least

But a bit of a crutch if you're lamely following the politics of envy