Roue le Jour raises an interesting topic

Here

Mark, I've suggested before (only partially tongue in cheek) that what the state is really doing is propping up wages by taking surplus labour out of the market. White collar workers are employed and blue collar workers are put on benefits. Surely the numbers are now so large that putting even some of them back on the market would collapse wages?

OK. Big picture. There are 32 million 'workers' in this country, including 4 million superfluous public sector and at least 2 million in private sector dealing with all the compliance crap. That gives us 26 million productive workers (including productive public sector workers) sharing a tax bill of £600 billion per annum (with a shed-load of borrowing on top!) = average tax bill/burden of £23,000 each.

So what happens if we simplify/scrap all the regulations and quangos, getting the total tax bill down to £450 billion (thirty per cent of GDP, as a benchmark) as a bare minimum - and that's including a Citizen's Income-style welfare system? Let's assume that half of those non-productive workers find productive jobs, so there'd be 29 million productive workers sharing a tax bill of £450 billion = average tax bill/burden of £16,000 each.

NB, those figures of £23,000 and £16,000 are total figures. Maybe half is 'below the line', so the average person is aware of it (income tax, Employee's NIC and Council Tax) and half is 'above the line' (VAT, corporation tax, Employer's NIC, Business Rates).

Absolute worst case, the wages pot paid out as salaries to the 26 million now has to be shared between 29 million, giving an 11% fall in salaries, but even if workers only got a third of the per-worker tax saving, they'd be no worse off. But with dynamic effects and everything (taxes are borne by the least mobile factors of production, i.e. land and ordinary labour), and remembering that there is a long-run equilibrium with other Western European countries, workers would still end up rather better off (before housing costs).

Further; with lower wages and taxes (and liberalised planning laws, this is key to the whole thing) the UK would become more attractive to inward investment and house prices would fall as well (to maintain the long run price-earnings ratio, as well as the impact of new supply. Let's replace Council Tax, Business Rates, Stamp Duty, Inheritance Tax etc. with Land Value Tax to keep a lid on house prices while we're at it; receipts from which could be used to cut income taxes even further).

What's not to like?