The 2010 General Election Thread: Week 1

Originally Posted by Osem

I'd like to know how they intend to separate the 'good' immigration from the 'bad' and how they'd go about ensuring that the 'good' migrants go and stay where they're told....

yeah i wondered that to

[Will21st]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

That would be horrendous. Income tax is a progressive tax so takes account of some ability to pay while VAT does not. Increasing VAT too highly would reduce consumption of goods and services so people spend less and would potentially reduce overall tax take due to a combination of this reduction in consumption along with increased tax evasion. People buying less would also harm the economy a great deal too. No purchases mean no jobs needed to supply the goods and services in the first place.

Sorry,I disagree.
It's much better to tax consumption than work.After all,I'd like to see work and entrepeneurship being rewarded again in our beloved country. 15 % flat tax on all income,next to no benefits and 25% VAT,I could live with that!

Oh,and by the way,my voting power is 0.858 Hove,East Sussex

---------- Post added at 13:24 ---------- Previous post was at 13:20 ----------

Originally Posted by Osem

I'd like to know how they intend to separate the 'good' immigration from the 'bad' and how they'd go about ensuring that the 'good' migrants go and stay where they're told....

well,only let those immigrate who are a clear benefit to the country,well-qualified,with money,and the willingness to do something with their lives when they are here.

Originally Posted by Will21st

Sorry,I disagree.
It's much better to tax consumption than work.After all,I'd like to see work and entrepeneurship being rewarded again in our beloved country. 15 % flat tax on all income,next to no benefits and 25% VAT,I could live with that!

but that would only impact the low paid

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

Whoever wants to win this election needs a plan B.

Plan "B":

Promise the electorate that if you are elected you will expunge everyone's credit history for the past six years and that you will, in doing so, force banks to honour their promises to lend to homebuyers, businesses and individuals.

In order that the electorate might keep you to your word it will be a legal requirement for the banks to publish monthly statistics on their lending and borrowing activties, both commercial and personal.

Have clearly defined guidelines in relation to loan application assessments and make illegal any "automated decision making processes" in relation to same.

If they did that they would get my vote.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Will21st

Sorry,I disagree.
well,only let those immigrate who are a clear benefit to the country,well-qualified,with money,and the willingness to do something with their lives when they are here.

Do you think the LibDems would change our laws to do that? I don't get that impression. We have virtually no control of immigration from the EU and I really don't see the Lib Dems getting tough on migration from elsewhere. If I'm wrong about that I'll be delighted to read their proposals on how they'd aim to achieve Clegg's aim.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

"Don't buy Toyosan - they are going to cut their quality control staff in the future, and will put you and your family at risk!".

[Osem]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

And it's hacking people off - Labour are damaging themselves by all this negative campaigning, which we've seen on TV, newspapers, and on this forum.

All parties should be selling themselves on the benefits, not on how bad others are - could you imagine car ads being like that? "Don't buy Toyosan - they are going to cut their quality control staff in the future, and will put you and your family at risk!".

Yes and after all the success they've enjoyed over the last 13 years you'd have thought New Labour and their supporters would be armed with a myriad of reasons why we should vote for more of the same...

[Will21st]

Originally Posted by Osem

Do you think the LibDems would change our laws to do that? I don't get that impression. We have virtually no control of immigration from the EU and I really don't see the Lib Dems getting tough on migration from elsewhere. If I'm wrong about that I'll be delighted to read their proposals on how they'd aim to achieve Clegg's aim.

No,they probably wouldn't.None of the mainstream parties would,as they don't want to be 'racist'. I would call it sensible and looking after oneself,but that's just me....

---------- Post added at 13:36 ---------- Previous post was at 13:34 ----------

Originally Posted by Osem

Yes and after all the success they've enjoyed over the last 13 years you'd have thought New Labour and their supporters would be armed with a myriad of reasons why we should vote for more of the same...

well,ummmm,well,aahh,well.... I give up

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Will21st

well,ummmm,well,aahh,well.... I give up

So have they I reckon....

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Will21st

Sorry,I disagree.
It's much better to tax consumption than work.After all,I'd like to see work and entrepeneurship being rewarded again in our beloved country. 15 % flat tax on all income,next to no benefits and 25% VAT,I could live with that!

What about if things happen and you are forced to use the social security safety net that has been reduced to 'next to nothing'.

Smacking VAT up like that will reduce consumption. Reduced consumption means less jobs.

I'm as much for rewarding hard work as you are but for those on lower incomes the above system would hurt in a huge way. The social harm it would cause would be quite extensive and a balance has to be struck.

Originally Posted by Will21st

Sorry,I disagree.
It's much better to tax consumption than work.After all,I'd like to see work and entrepeneurship being rewarded again in our beloved country. 15 % flat tax on all income,next to no benefits and 25% VAT,I could live with that!

Lumping the tax take onto VAT is a highly regressive measure that piles the burden of paying for Great Britain plc unfairly onto those with low incomes.

25% VAT may not be of any consequence to you if you have a large disposable income because you can just soak that increase up. But what of someone living well below the average wage? Paying VAT already eats up proportionally more of their income than it does yours (I'm assuming you're not a low earner). Increasing VAT simply magnifies that problem.

[TheNorm]

Originally Posted by Chris

Lumping the tax take onto VAT is a highly regressive measure that piles the burden of paying for Great Britain plc unfairly onto those with low incomes....

Not at all - those on higher incomes spend more money on VAT-able items, which makes it a progressive tax.

Again, people should be encouraged to save. A combination of low income tax and higher VAT does just that.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by TheNorm

Not at all - those on higher incomes spend more money on VAT-able items, which makes it a progressive tax.

Again, people should be encouraged to save. A combination of low income tax and higher VAT does just that.

Make VAT so high that it becomes viable for me and people like me on higher incomes to make large purchases outside the UK and import them I'll do just that and there's nothing the government can do about it, so by trying to charge 25% instead of 17.5% of that 1k LCD TV the government gets nothing while another country in Europe gets 20% along with an export to the UK harming the UK's balance of trade.

Encouraging too much saving isn't wise. Excessive saving cools consumption and slows the economy. Instead of money being spent on goods and services and providing jobs and economic growth it is sitting in people's savings accounts doing nothing. There was a savings glut in Japan which had some rather serious effects on their economy.

Interest rates would end up sitting very low to try and persuade people to consume and if people were to consume and inflation rise for any reason the primary instrument to control it, interest rates, is gone.

People saving drops the government's income as it's relying so heavily on sales taxes, sales taxes have to go up again to try and compensate, consumption reduces and/or goes into importation and/or grey/black markets as increased rates of taxation cause increased evasion as it becomes more worthwhile and round and round it goes.

Purely from the economic point of view it's really not a hot idea.

The idea was mooted in the US and shot down:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...dding-fairtax/

EDIT: Re: Regressive nature of this proposal:

A regressive tax means it impacts people with lower incomes more than it does those with high incomes. For example: People who earn a poverty-level wage are likely to spend all of their wages every year, so they are taxed on 100 percent of their earnings. Rich people, though, might only spend a fraction of their annual income, and are only taxed on that portion. So the wealthy person pays a lower tax rate than the poor person.

[Jimmy-J]

Yep, there's definitely a GE round the corner....

"Labour will force foreign workers to speak English"

I wonder how?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7094911.ece

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Product 13

Yep, there's definitely a GE round the corner....


I wonder how?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7094911.ece

Well their strategy seems fairly clear. Throw mud at the opposition and fire bovine excreta at us with no regard for fiscal responsibility.

Labour will offer guaranteed levels of public service with rights of redress where they are not met. It will pledge to let patients go private if they are not treated by the NHS in time and to double paid paternity leave to four weeks.

Mr Brown will insist that Labour is offering “no big new spending commitments”, making a virtue of the necessity imposed by the deficit. Labour has attacked Tory proposals for tax breaks for married couples and a scaling back of the planned rise in NI as economically irresponsible.

The first paragraph is hysterical in the context of the second one.

It will also promise to increase the minimum wage and outline new measures to tackle youth unemployment.

Both of which will evidently cost nothing significant. Minimum wage increase and increase in paid paternity leave are both quite strongly anti-business measures. Brown appears to have sloughed off any pretence at being centrist now and is pushing a populist and potentially harmful left-wing socialist agenda with total ignorance to the costs of his bribes both to the public and private sector.