I met Kwasi Kwarteng once briefly back in 2006 or 2007, when I was doing my infamous Tax Simplification proposal for The Bow Group. The link to their site is www.bowgroup.org, if you're interested, but it doesn't seem to be working right now. This is where I first mentioned merging all existing taxes on land and buildings etc into a flat-rate property tax, more or less as an afterthought.
[I didn't see this as a biggie, but everybody picked up on the LVT bit. The dozens of spurious KLNs it provoked were what really set me on the road to full-on Georgism. Had people just said, fair enough, nice and simple, winners and losers average out, does what it says on the tin, then I might well have forgotten all about it.
The other four Bow Group chaps I met were genuine thinkers, and all went on to Greater Things. So I won't mention names, but in case anybody stumbles across this: AB was the nicest and most helpful; SG was the greatest PR/press officer of all time; RH has a sense of humour and saw the bigger picture; AL was a bit prickly but liked discussing things on an intellectual level. It was never clear to me whether AL supported LVT or not; I think he did in a hyper-detached way in principle but would never really be pinned down one way or another. He certainly opposed it politically i.e. worries about losing Home-Owner-Ist votes.]
As usual, I digress...
But KK was a big fat full of himself public schoolboy whose contribution boiled down to "You are wrong because I say so" and walking off again.
So it was gratifying to see him fall flat on his face when he got the golden opportunity to actually do something positive and instead come up with a crock of crap which was political suicide and mightily unsettled the financial markets. And got him promptly sacked. He is now blaming his former boss, of course.
Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 43:24-34
9 hours ago
8 comments:
Fascinating. I wondered why he cocked up - my theory was he was another clever idiot.
Hmmm, well due to the almighty fuss that resulted, I thought he had proposed a flat tax of 19 per cent. When I finally got time to look into it a few days later, I realised that earnings over £50,000 would still be taxed at 40 per cent.
It still seems like a massive over-reaction to relatively modest proposals to me. His main error was not realising that British governance has a culture of proceeding cautiously, as in "don't scare the horses".
Obviously you were not the only one he impressed.
I often found that my opinion on somebody's twatishness was shared by many others.
But we only shared our opinions once we truly trusted each other.
I believe by omission that KK was happy for earnings over 100k to still be taxed at 60% (or 68.5% if the two types of NI are included).
My comment to Mrs L when Truss Kwarteng got power that the most likely scenario to frustrate any real reform was a (confected) Sterling Crisis...
L, he is exactly that.
RT, maybe it was an over-reaction, but it was entirely predictable.
Dh, I know the feeling. Somebody's got to point out the Emperor's New Clothes...
AC, good example of something with a higher priority. He could have slipped that through in the small print and I hope nobody would have minded.
L, hmm, do you think T-K were in on a conspiracy to spike their own guns? The $ crisis was in response to the planned massive deficit, not the way it was achieved.
MW. Nah, don't think they were / are that smart, or rather politically adept. Their policies on tax cutting are exactly correct, combined with heavy spending cuts (which are easily achievable - scrapping HS2 pays for the tax cuts, roughly. But that needs a lot of 'politics' to sell. The rent seeking Tories that are back handing their construction industry mates and contributors will hate it. So that requires huge political capital which they could have achieved. Everyone knows that HS2 is a giant boondoggle).
And the facts of the 'sterling crisis' were massively over-blown by the Blob, the meeja and T-K's enemies in their own party - the rent seeking managerialists crony corporatist remainer tories.
If T-K had said (a) we are cutting these taxes, and (b) we are raising these taxes - a bank asset tax - which will raise £x and (c) we are cutting this spending, they'd've been fine. But that needs excellent political messaging and determination and they'd still have to fight The Blob.
Rank naive political incompetence.
L, agreed on HS2. The Tories are blatantly kleptocratic, it must be said.
As to tax cuts, what's important is capping the max marginal rate suffered on earnings, let's say to 50% for a start:
In order of number of people affected, this would be:
- welfare claimants
- people affected by Child Benefit clawback
- people earning between £100k - £125k
- employees paid over £150k a year (45% + 2% + 15.05%)
- possibly people earning over £50k repaying their student loans?
Post a Comment