How’s the economy? Graphs for growth, per-capita income and public spending are too depressing to go on reading. But he notes there are twice as many billionaires as a decade ago, and 30% have avoided tax by keeping their cash offshore.
The link is to a piece saying that 30% of the billionaires have gone – with their cash – to offshore. that is, the billionaires are no longer here….
Lowest unemployment rate for what, 45 years? Depressing for Polly.
As I’ve said before, surely there is an amount of income tax that, when paid, one can be considered to have more than paid one’s fair share and therefore no further income tax should be payable. If income tax was capped at, say, £20 million, a lot of the wealthiest would happily write the cheque each year. Mind you, they’d have to eliminate or drastically reduce death taxes as well.
So if they hadn’t gone overseas, there would be 2.6 times as many billionaires as a decade ago. We must be doing horrendously if we can afford to export so many billionaires.
I thought current thinking on the left is that growth is bad and that, to avert climate apocalypse, we have to go de-growth. She should be applauding that things appear to be headed in the direction she prefers
There is still opportunity in Britain. Dammit.
UK GDP growth is pretty good for a mature economy and I have not noticed public spending going any way but up.
I suspect Britain’s GDP per capita numbers aren’t so good, as we keep importing people for McJobs. I trust Polly is firmly against low-wage immigration?
What will the obit of the Great Manatee say?
“She was wrong about everything, and not in an interesting way”?
There are a diminishing number of non-doms too.
The tax rules were changed with the expectation that non-doms would simply stay here and pay the extra tax.They haven’t. And they’re taking what tax they did pay and the spending that they did do with them.
it’s absurdly naive. Like deciding to up the tax rate on people who own black shoes to 90% and calculating how much tax will come rolling in, because so many people own black shoes.Then, of course, spending all that anticipated tax before it is paid. And being surprised when people throw away their black shoes.
Unemployment is down over the last year, but the claimant count has been rising every month.
How is this explained?
It’s the sort of thing a journalist should be doing.
Yeah fine Tim but the 8% per pupil cut is real and that is in absolute terms not a cut to the rate of growth .
The first thing they do is get rid of all the support staff , those are the people who help children who fall out of the main stream Now they arrive at secondary school , already lost .
Now when people bang on about the Nation and all that but are perfectly happy to inflict the sort of excruciating budgets Brexit will bring om the young poor and vulnerable I wonder if they lack some crucial part of Human equipment
The bit that , for example stops you setting light to a cat or sticking pins in a puppy`s eyes .
@Newmania
The spending has only fallen *per child* because there’s been a sudden glut of children. Which in turn is because of mostly low-wage immigration in the last decade and a bit – these immigrants being responsible for a birth boom. Had we had Brexit and a sensible immigration policy since 2000 we wouldn’t
be having a funding squeeze for schools.
@ MC
The graphs are depressing *to Polly* because they show GDP and public spending growth continuing and wage growth exceeding inflation.
For anyone interested in the good of the country instead of Corbyn’s chances of seizing power, they are only mildly disappointing.
As to Polly’s article – it is stuffed with lies. Longevity is not falling, it is merely that estimates are rising more slowly thanks to the effects of obesity [not to mention the errors caused by the 2001 census].
Median gross weekly earnings have risen from £498.5 in 2010 to £569 in 2018 (source ONS) and further in 2018-9 (3.4% in the year to April). The increase in low-paid employment replacing unemployment distorts the figures, and median incomes have grown faster than inflation over the nine years [that’s even before you factor in the rise in pensioner incomes thanks to Cameron’s triple lock].
Is Brexit responsible for your bad breath as well Facepaint?
In case you are too stupid–and you are–to have noticed we are not out yet.
And all forms of socialism inc the corporate socialism favoured by Bliarite scum like you–always end in economic ruin. Your EU mates are getting the results of their evil bit by bit. Although shite like Macron and Mutti work daily to have everything be even worse.
. Had we had Brexit and a sensible immigration policy since 2000 we wouldn’t
be having a funding squeeze for schools.
No we would even worse off because the working people who come here to work contribute much more to the treasury than they take out of it. In fact the cohorts go up and down all the time and the only reason the per pupil figure was even mentioned was because the Conservative party tried to mislead the country by talking about an absolute number
In fact this is particularly sensitive in Conservative areas where , due to their supposed relative affluence , funding has been cut much more .
@mania
A sensible immigration policy would be open to people coming here to earn lots of money and pay lots of taxes. On average immigrants are net contributors but that’s despite there being many low pay low skill migrants (with expensive to educate kids!) not because of them.
@ Newmania
You have fallen for the habitual spoof of pro-immigration liars. [I am pro-immigrants myself, being descended from a variety of immigrants over the period from the last Ice age to the Georgian era but care about the truth].
ALL working people contribute to the Treasury, those with seven children living in a Council house receive more than they contribute, regardless of race, religion or place of birth.
The con that you have fallen for is to exclude the impact of the inflow from Eastern Europe on unemployment of indigenous Britons and on the cost of Housing Benefit due to the housing shortage caused by immigration and Blair’s policy of wanting 50% of 18-21 year-olds to live away from home. The net benefit to the Treasury is, at best, small positive – IMHO it is significantly negative.
.Thanks John an excellent example of the “ Some of my best friends are black” genre also known as “Things racists say” .
Anyway we are enjoying fantastically high levels of employment ( its about the only thing that looks good )and immigration has a marginal effect on housing.
Since the 60s the population has increased let’s say 10m or so while in hot spots the price of house has gone form one times salary to ten times. The rate of house building may have been too slow but it has easily outstripped population growth.
House price inflation has been drive by the societal shift to low it and credit but you have misunderstood entirely anyway
The problem with housing s not the demand it is the fact that supply does not respond to pricing .
This is because Councils give planning permission and those same Councils are elected by people who not want a load of houses nearby. It isa market malfunction not a plague opf swarthy folk comin over and taking our “ Jobs houses women bla la bla”
One obvious benefit of immigration is that the growth it created enabled the country to sustain its high borrowing .Without it there will be an immediate effect on budgets for services.
Then there is the outright net boon to the exchequer ..and much more , everything in fact that is associated with not having a population aging as rapidly as it would have been , the curse of the developed world
@mania
Neglects that when you have inelastic supply (like housing) relatively small rises in demand can produce big, painful, price increases.
Also neglects that a migration policy favouring low skill low pay workers is stupid. If you think it’s great to have migrants paying lots of money to the exchequer, net positive, then design a policy that does so. Though I’m not the only person who thinks social cohesion should be taken into account too at least that wouldn’t be a crazy policy. Allowing literally unlimited legal right of low wage migration to millions of people plus providing government services and benefits to them while also tightly restricting migration of high skill high wage people based on which continent they come from is genuinely crazy. One higher rate taxpayer might easily pay more tax than a dozen low wage ones, and be worth a hundred or more of them once we look at net contributions to the exchequer. Maybe infinitely more if they’re net negatives. What’s the breakeven point for someone to be fiscally neutral, especially if they have kids?
This cannot possibly be true. The UK’s leading tax expert says that no-one moves for a lower tax bill.
Newmania, what about the impact of non-working people who come here?
@ Newmania
Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
When we lived for a few years in Scotland my big sister and I were subjected to anti-English racism. I don’t know whether *you* have ever been on the wrong end of it but if so you haven’t let us know. If you don’t know what you are talking about, just shut up instead of demonstrating how ignorant and wrong you are. I am not and never have been a racist.
Now on to some simple facts – the number of people born outside the UK resident in the UK increased by THREE MILLION between the 2001 census and the 2011 census (and that is net of deaths so immigration was quite a bit more than 3 million). It should be obvious that affected the supply-demand balance for housing. That wasn’t the only reason, nearly a million more students living away from home was also but far less important as you get half-a-dozen of those in each house.
The rate of housebuilding outstripped *natural* population growth (which was pretty small so that wasn’t hard) but it certainly wasn’t enough to cope with immigration under New Labour. Average household size is 2.4. 3/2.4=1.25 New Labour certainly didn’t increase housebuilding by 125,000 over the rate needed for natural population growth and replacement of 60s tower blocks that were unfit.
House prices in the south-east are driven by shortage – prices keep rising until enough would-be buyers are squeezed out of the market to reduce demand to equal supply. Anyone saying different is deceiving themselves.
<a href="Why didn’t the experts warn us about the Remain Recession?"
Yet MPs keep telling us they are preventing Brexit to protect the economy and prevent uncertainty – lying cnuts
Then they and msm say Trump is a moron and damaging USA economy.
Why didn’t the experts warn us about the Remain Recession?
I seem to recall Belgium went without a government for three years and their economy did alright. Our government has spent three years re-running the referendum campaign to the exclusion of all else and the economy is fine.
How do we get government to do nothing after we have left?
“The spending has only fallen *per child* because there’s been a sudden glut of children.”
Nope ; it’s the decision to move the costs of the unfunded teaching pension (partly) into schools https://www.aoc.co.uk/news/teacher-pension-contributions-increases-in-2019-12-april-update (for example) that is buggering up the budgets.