Fun Online Poll Results & Bank Bail-outs

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's poll, "Which economic variable do you think most voters care about most?". The results were as follows:

Job security, full employment - 63%
Steadily rising house prices - 17%
Reducing the overall tax burden - 15%*

I'm surprised that only 17% thought that people cared most about house prices, but let's assume that Job security is indeed people's main concern. The way I see it, government's main aim seems to be to prop up house prices, for example by bailing out the banks yet again (or "throwing good money after bad", as it's known in the trade) in the vague hope that the banks will lend this money out to home-buyers.

They say that they are doing this to get credit flowing to business, but that can't possibly be true, can it? If the government wanted to get money to business (and hence improve job security) the most effective way of doing it would be to take less off them in the first place, i.e. to cut taxes, surely? Instead of giving the banks another £40 billion, wouldn't it make more sense to give business a tax cut worth £40 billion, and preferably a tax cut that reduces the burden on employment, i.e. not increasing VAT again and reducing Employer's National Insurance?

So that's the topic for this week's Fun Online Poll. Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

* Also rans: Reducing the government deficit - 3%; Low and stable inflation - 2%; The strength of sterling - 1%; Reducing the trade deficit - 0%.