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Politics is fucking me off
Aug. 11th, 2011 12:55 amYear after year recently the Government has spent more than it actually earns on trying to improve the lot of the poor, by 'investing' in public services. These are not true investments, of course, because none of these extra costs have paid for themselves, nor look like ever doing so. It's just expenditure. But it has gone up nonetheless. Only 4 years of the 29 between 1979 and 2008 saw spending cuts in real terms. Even under Thatcher spending still rose 1.1% a year in real terms. (www.ifs.org.uk/bns/05ebn2.pdf)
And yet still people say, "we need to spend more on the poor, who are increasingly marginalised, so they don't feel the need to riot". How come, when the amount of public spending is at an all-time high, people still complain it's not enough? Every year, more and more has been spent, but still, all that so-called investment has been paid back by people trashing their own cities, with simpering Lefties saying that the answer is to spend even more, because obviously the near annual spending increases for the last 3 decades still aren't enough. When would it end? When the state is spending all the country's money as a Communist nation?
And where would the money come from? "Tax the rich!" they say, as if there is just a pot of money that can be grabbed with impunity. Yet these are often the same people that spend most of the last 2 decades telling us we should join the EU and be friendlier towards our European neighbours - which has just meant that if you over-tax a rich person or large company, they can freely move their headquarters to any other EU country, no visa or permission required, and instead of getting more tax revenue from them you get a big fat zero instead. Good thinking. And these are often the ones who say, "oh, these awful Con-Dems in Government are cutting spending and jeopardising growth" - growth is what the private sector is for but if you tax the fuck out of them then they have no money to invest in growing their business. More good thinking.
By 2015, after the Government cuts (which barely even make a dent in the problem of spending money that we don't have), public spending will be back to 2004/2005 levels. Remember that awful year of 2005, when dead bodies didn't get buried, rubbish piled up on the streets, inflation was 26%, etc? No? That's because 2005 was actually just fine, thank you. However if you look back at 1978/1979, all those things did happen, and that was after years of trying to help matters by taxing the rich with a top rate of 83%. It doesn't work. It just punishes the people who make jobs.
I don't know what the solution to preventing further riots is, but I am 100% damned sure it is not just about pledging to spend even more money on initiatives that are plainly having little effect. The country needs to stop pretending that the solution to our social problems is to throw cash at it. The issues are more fundamental than that and neither borrowing nor taxing more are ethically or economically sound ideas anyway.
And yet still people say, "we need to spend more on the poor, who are increasingly marginalised, so they don't feel the need to riot". How come, when the amount of public spending is at an all-time high, people still complain it's not enough? Every year, more and more has been spent, but still, all that so-called investment has been paid back by people trashing their own cities, with simpering Lefties saying that the answer is to spend even more, because obviously the near annual spending increases for the last 3 decades still aren't enough. When would it end? When the state is spending all the country's money as a Communist nation?
And where would the money come from? "Tax the rich!" they say, as if there is just a pot of money that can be grabbed with impunity. Yet these are often the same people that spend most of the last 2 decades telling us we should join the EU and be friendlier towards our European neighbours - which has just meant that if you over-tax a rich person or large company, they can freely move their headquarters to any other EU country, no visa or permission required, and instead of getting more tax revenue from them you get a big fat zero instead. Good thinking. And these are often the ones who say, "oh, these awful Con-Dems in Government are cutting spending and jeopardising growth" - growth is what the private sector is for but if you tax the fuck out of them then they have no money to invest in growing their business. More good thinking.
By 2015, after the Government cuts (which barely even make a dent in the problem of spending money that we don't have), public spending will be back to 2004/2005 levels. Remember that awful year of 2005, when dead bodies didn't get buried, rubbish piled up on the streets, inflation was 26%, etc? No? That's because 2005 was actually just fine, thank you. However if you look back at 1978/1979, all those things did happen, and that was after years of trying to help matters by taxing the rich with a top rate of 83%. It doesn't work. It just punishes the people who make jobs.
I don't know what the solution to preventing further riots is, but I am 100% damned sure it is not just about pledging to spend even more money on initiatives that are plainly having little effect. The country needs to stop pretending that the solution to our social problems is to throw cash at it. The issues are more fundamental than that and neither borrowing nor taxing more are ethically or economically sound ideas anyway.
