The state causes inequality. Expansions of the state cause expansions in (statistical) inequality, justifying expansions of the state. Spotting that tautology, and knowing why it’s wrong, has never been more essential.
You may not like what Dubai has to offer, but don’t tarnish those who do with the brush of ‘tax exiles’ and ‘washed-up old footballers’. If we were able to attract their like and their ambition, instead of scaring them away, we would all feel the benefits.
Remove the handbrakes. Stop punishing ambition. Trust that if we let people keep more of what they earn, they’ll create the growth Britain desperately needs. This is how Conservatives win back the strivers who should be our natural supporters
This Budget is, without doubt, an attack on workers. It is socialism arriving without disguise. The fight for fairness, personal choice, and aspiration begins. The battle with socialism is no longer theoretical – it is here.
This is money the state can ill afford, which would have to be found by borrowing or even greater taxation. A large portion of that would be paid to people who do not really need it.
The Tories might have an easier time delivering cuts to working-age benefits, but those don’t even rank in the top three spending areas pushing tax as a percentage of GDP endlessly upwards.
Our deputy editor joins the New Statesman’s Rachel Cunliffe on Sky News’ Press Preview.
The reality is that if you want to raise a lot of tax, you need to raise it from a lot of people. Given our predicament, one of the larger taxes is likely to be necessary.
I want us to have a Government which understands, as all Conservatives do, that opportunities for our youngsters depend on business leaders, entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists and all manner of people outside the scope of the public sector.
We are likely to be in for further taxes on capital, high earners, and on businesses. This will impoverish us further, and chase away the very people we need to create and grow the businesses that employ the people that pay the taxes that fund public services.
When people choose to use their hard-earned money to avoid drawing down on public services and seek alternative provision, it should be supported and encouraged as an act of solidarity with our country, not denigrated or disparaged as elitist.
If the people who start businesses, innovate, and create jobs feel unwelcome, they won’t stick around. They’ll leave — taking their ambition and innovation with them.
Simply comparing current tax rates with either historic conditions or other countries gives a woefully incomplete picture of the country’s actual taxable capacity.
The Labour Government seems unbothered that the UK is losing its biggest taxpayers but capital exodus is contagious and will harm the whole country, including the middle class and the poor.
A tax holiday and two new bonds could turn a geopolitical crisis into the domestic investment story of a generation. It is the simplest most elegant most patriotic economic policy a government could announce.