Perhaps what\’s missing from the debate about taxing the rich is a dimension that examines ways of encouraging the wealthy to lavish their money on things more worthwhile than FSTE shares or offshore bank accounts. Perhaps it would be a good idea to offer tax breaks for investment in skilled craft, for example, whether as an individual investment or as part of, say, a building project that included the input of stonemasons rather than cladding-panel manufacturers, or commissioned the integral inclusion of unique and artistically valuable features.
I realise that the idea of bribing the wealthy to surround themselves with lovely, valuable things sounds hard to take. But it\’s the making of lovely, valuable things rather than the owning of them, that is really important to humans and humanity.
Eh?
It\’s the back breaking, the sweat, that is important, not the product of it?
Why don\’t we ban tractors and go back to hand hoeing the wheat crop then? Would certainly make terribly \”artisanal\” bread, wouldn\’t it?
Oh a guardian writer. Is she stupid. Yes.
Move on now nothing to see.
Why did I instinctively know this was in the Guardian before even hovering over the link?
“David Cameron and George Osborne may be more comfortable referring to the Laffer curve – which illustrates the theory that lower taxes generate greater government revenue – but New Labour were similarly obsequious to it in their policy-making.”
Or ‘rational’, as non-Leftists might call it.
I think you are being slightly harsh here. I understand this to be the, making of _more_ lovely things (more lovely things as well as things that are more lovely) to be important. Which is entirely in line with the neoliberal capitalist baby-eating bastard aim of everyone being stinking, filthy rich, isn’t it?
I think you’re missing the point JamesV.
“But it’s the making of lovely, valuable things *rather than the owning of them*, that is really important to humans and humanity.”
The starred section implies that if we made them and then destroyed them we would still keep the benefit.
“But how that wealth is spent matters too”
Maybe it does.
But since the money is not yours you have no say in how it’s spent.
I loved the bit about government allowing you to accumulate wealth…..oh thank you! But she gets to tell you how to spend it.
Fuck off.
JamesV
I think you are being slightly harsh here. I understand this to be the, making of _more_ lovely things (more lovely things as well as things that are more lovely) to be important. Which is entirely in line with the neoliberal capitalist baby-eating bastard aim of everyone being stinking, filthy rich, isn’t it?
Watches, blown glass, furniture, fine china, cars: most of it is now made by robots, and that’s what’s kept the price down, and therefore given us lots of lovely things.
On the other hand, things like nail bars barely existed in the 1970s. So, with all the money we’re not spending on tables (because they’re all made in factories), we can now afford to get vajazzled. And isn’t the vajazzling technician an artisan?
An indent or italics are needed to indicate the quotation.
Will the money Gérard Depardieu saves on tax really make him happy?
I hope so, anyway, its making me happy.
John Gibson
>It’s the back breaking, the sweat, that is >important, not the product of it?
Indeed. Arbeit mach frei.
(The Nazis made this so easy).
“Why don’t we ban tractors and go back to hand hoeing the wheat crop then?”
The problem with this kind of argument by absurdity is that there are many on the left, particularly in the ‘Green’ wing, who want to take us back to Year Zero. They’ll just nod their head and say ‘yes, you finally got it’.
Of course they expect to be the ones in the Zil limousines telling everyone else what to do, not the ones doing back-breaking work in the fields.
Well you guys (and maybe Ms Orr) are a lot brainier than me.
Is she arguing?
1. the Laffer curve is true or not?
2. do you have the right to change domicile, even nationality, or not?
3. are higher taxes good, or not?
4. does mistreatment of your druggie son entitle you to special indulgence, or not?
5. there’s something in there also about “issues around” sumptuary laws but like the rest it went right over my head. What’s she on about?
I couldn’t make it out. Can anyone help?
Perhaps it would be a good idea to offer tax breaks for investment in skilled craft, for example, whether as an individual investment or as part of, say, a building project that included the input of stonemasons rather than cladding-panel manufacturers, or commissioned the integral inclusion of unique and artistically valuable features.
Oh I so agree. Because we used to have a lot of people who provided just this service to the nation – and for free! They did not like cheap cladding and tended to give a lot of work to stonemasons. And carpet makers. Even some rather good artists.
They were called the aristocracy.
Perhaps it is about time this social democracy stopped taxing them to death and thanked them for making Britain as interesting and culturally enriched as it is?
Why don’t we ban tractors and go back to hand hoeing the wheat crop then? Would certainly make terribly “artisanal” bread, wouldn’t it?
I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to Ms Orr. Who is generally one of the least dim of the dim sisterhood that haunts the Guardian.
You can compare societies with aristocracies with societies without. Japan and Britain on the one hand, with China and America on the other. Societies with aristocracies tend to be better in every way. They especially tend to be better in the Fine Arts. You only have to look at the cheap junk that places like Jingdezhen turns out now with the stuff they used to turn out when China had an Emperor.
We want to be more like the Japanese and less like the Americans when it comes to life style. We want more Great Country Houses and fewer Milton Keynes. Well that is not fair. I rather like MK. But I don’t want Britain to be that and nothing else.
We ought to be encouraging more artisan production. Preferably, of course, by letting people spend their own damn money how they damn well please. Artisan bread? Sure, why not? Compare what we could do with the CAP and what we do do. We give huge subsidies to large landowners to destroy the environment and despoil the landscape, while destroying what is left of Europe’s rural society. We shouldn’t be paying for production output, we should be paying to defend the way of life and the countryside as it has evolved over the past 2000 or so years. We should be paying for hedges and for small farmers – we should be paying even more for small farmers who plough with horses.
Because it makes Europe a richer and more interesting place. It protects the environment as well. And there’s that masculina prole argument too. But let’s not go there.
‘we should’ , ‘we ought’ – says it all really
john malpas – “‘we should’ , ‘we ought’ – says it all really”
Oh this has to be good. Why, John?
“we should be paying to defend the way of life…….”
No should about it, you can fuck off. I’m not paying for some ponce artisan to overcharge for shit bread. I’ll go for cheap from china thanks and save my cash.
And stuff the small farmers as well, survive on your own or go bust Giles.
Andy – “No should about it, you can fuck off. I’m not paying for some ponce artisan to overcharge for shit bread. I’ll go for cheap from china thanks and save my cash. And stuff the small farmers as well, survive on your own or go bust ”
Well I am with you about the ponce with the bread, but as for the rest, you’re going to have to pay for it anyway. Assuming that there is not a libertarian revolution or a military coup. You know, we can pray. Perhaps we even ought to pray, but I don’t think it is going to happen.
So you will pay ever higher taxes for people with marginal skills. Which would you rather them do – sit at home watching porn, when not out stealing your car, and producing children like Baby P, or actually working and doing something useful for the environment?
Unless you have some great scheme to get out of paying for the CAP and welfare. Do you?
Although, to return to my original point, the best way to do anything is to stop taxing the aristocracy to death. Allow people to spend more of their money as they choose. Even on sh!t bread.
The problem with Guardian writers is that their knowledge of commerce seems to come from the shops they know, what they have seen on TV, or the jobs they remember from Trumpton. They have no idea about modern workplaces.
This is just laughable:
“This encourages mass production, with its economies of scale, which may be no bad thing for the ordinary consumer, but tends to generate boring, repetitive jobs for the ordinary producer”
30 years ago, maybe. but very few jobs are boring and repetitive because there are people constantly looking at ways to replace those with a robot or a computer.
As a result, we created a load of specialists. Car companies don’t have lots of blokes on the line fitting widgets – they have lots of blokes doing things like materials testing or designing engine management software.
Ahhh yes, change will not happen and if you don’t pay violence will follow.
Don’t think so and no I will not be paying.
SMfS
You are a romantic sort and I quite like that, I’m not dissimilar myself but my head keeps butting in and taking over from my heart. I’m afraid your vision of a New Albion with small farmers, horse ploughing and the like is hopelessly unrealistic. I expect you know that yourself really but just in case not consider this. The way of life you describe was already in deep trouble and rapidly on the way out long before the EU, subsidies and Death Duties. have you not heard of the great agricultural depression of the nineteenth century ?
Thornavis. – “I’m afraid your vision of a New Albion with small farmers, horse ploughing and the like is hopelessly unrealistic.”
No I agree that is dead. But consider how small the agricultural industry is. How few people are involved. How trivial it is to the economy. But on the other hand how much people like the countryside. How important things like hedgerows are to the environment.
What I am proposing is in some ways worse than industrial agriculture – that farming ought to become part of the Heritage industry. Run for tourists and the urban middle class. So we ought to fund traditional production. Not the destruction of what is left of the countryside. We replace paying people per ton of production by per metre of hedge, by acre ploughed by horses even, by some other measure that keeps the countryside looking like the countryside.
SMfS
An interesting point of view and one I’ve encountered before. I can think of quite a few reasons why it wouldn’t work but here’s the most likely. Subsidies have unintended consequences, it’s highly likely that what started off as a noble plan to restore the countryside would end up as the usual game of subsidy farming ( literally ) and constant rows about funding and who and what should be receiving it. Who would make the decisions about what constituted the ‘correct’ or most pleasing landscape ? Quangos would proliferate, money would leach away from projects on the ground and gravitate towards managers salaries and pensions, in other words all the usual stuff we get from state intervention. Nice idea but it wouldn’t work.