Thursday 21 March 2013

Another Millionaires Budget


Cutting income tax make no sense to me at all, it is one of the few truly progressive taxes, the more you earn the more you pay. (That is until you get so rich you just avoid tax). The cut also gives employers an excuse to persistently refuse to increase wages in line with anything approaching inflation.

Osborne has chosen to cut income tax. This may seem like a good idea so I went on the BBCs budget predictor and put in my pay: I save £300 in income tax this year. Great you might think, not me... I then lied to the BBCs predictor to find out what would happen if I was a hedge fund manager instead of a Lecturer. I put in a salary of a million quid,  just for a laugh. It wasn't funny. Osborne's budget would grant 'millionaire me' a £42000 tax cut. That's enough to give every child  in my daughters primary school free school meals for a whole year.

Because the economy is not growing, such lavish tax cuts have to paid for: Osborne has told each 'government department' to cut an additional 1% on top of the cuts he has already inflicted. When terms like 'government department' are used it makes people think that it has no effect. What we are talking about here are public services. The Tories are giving the rich a tax cut and paying for it by cutting services that the rich can afford not to utilise.

This Chancellor is stubbornly sticking to plan A and this budget promises more of the same: More Champagne for him and his millionaire chums. The rest of us just have to make do with the pain bit.

Liam Carr

2 comments:

Syzygy said...

Brilliant idea and expose of Osborne's real intent to redistribute wealth... Upward and offshore!

Anonymous said...

When Consett originally grew it was because hard working people actively moved to the area for work rather than face hardship. This is also why eastern Europeans flock to the south east to look for work. So perhaps it is because whilst it is tough in Consett at the moment, it is not tough enough to lead to the migration and taking up of new opportunities elsewhere that the original Consett immigrants were motivated to do. I don't blame Consett inhabitants for this. I agree with some of your previous posts that it is infrastructure to make the area more productive and competitive that is required. As the alternative solution of a currency revaluation is not possible as we share the pound with the rest of the UK. Imagine we (Consett / Durham) was a little country in the Euro. It would be dependent on subsidy and would now be forced to either do massive debt restructuring or to leave the Euro, devalue its new currency so as to make it more competitive with the rest of the UK.