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Compass supporting documentation

Of course the right will argue that higher taxes
will just lead to higher rates of avoidance or the
flight of talent. Research by theWork Foundation
busts the latter myth.60

Interesting. What\’s that research then?

This.

So, is it a paper about the effect of marginal tax rates on effort? On the temptations of income shifting? Maybe it\’s about how many Brits work abroad? Or the number of entrepreneurs who offshore their fortunes? All would at least be relevant to the question at hand. Perhaps it\’s about hedge fund managers or private equity shifting to Geneva?

Actually, no, it\’s the rather banal observation that 86% of FTSE CEO\’s are British citizens.

This is not what is normally thought of as \”busting the myth\”.

In fact, it\’s damn near irrelevant.

More Compass report

Well, I certainly agree with this one:

‘Our long-term objective would be to replace the 10%
band with a personal allowance worth £13,500, so that
no-one below the poverty line pays any Income Tax’

Given that us neo-liberal bastards at the ASI have been chuntering on about this for years of course I would agree with it.

Wonder if we\’ll get any credit for the idea though?

That Compass report

A delightful little typo:

Gross income
pain in all
taxes (%)

That\’s their heading for \”gross income paid in all taxes\” as a percentage of household income by decile.

Polly\’s tax ideas

You can tell that this isn\’t going to work out well, can\’t you?

Compass, the centre-left pressure group, has again come up with the new thinking that Labour\’s high command seems to lack. <a href=\”http://www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=5924\” title=\”In Place of Cuts – whose authors include Howard Reed, the former chief economist of the Institute for Public Policy Research, and Richard Murphy, of Tax Research UK – offers a plan to rebalance the tax system so that the rich pay a fairer share, and enough cash is raised to avoid frontline cuts.

Polly and Ritchie designing our tax system. Ho hum.

A curious paralysis has gripped the country where the mostly idle threats of a few high-fliers to flap off to Zug or St Helier send a frisson of panic down the spines of the nervous. Research by the Work Foundation shows how few would go: most are born and bred here, with families, children in school and elderly parents. Tightening the non-dom rules would mean they\’d have to stay well away or pay tax like everyone else.

Sigh, if you\’re born and bred here then you\’re not going to be a non dom, are you? If you\’re born and bred here, except in very exceptional circumstances, you\’re going to be a dom.

It does hit top-rate taxpayers hard – the cumulative effect of these changes will add 12.6% to their tax bills, most of that paid by the top few per cent.

Well, a little more than just \”hard\” actually. 50% income tax, both sets of NI (yes, they want to lift the limit on NI) and we\’re at marginal tax rates of 75% before you\’ve got out of bed in hte morning. Anyone think that this might put us on the other side of the Laffer Curve? Possibly that this might just be counter productive in the amount of tax raised?

Not read the report yet (later!) but there is one thing that puzzles. Raising the tax rate so that we can keep the public spending engine roaring…..umm, isn\’t that just as fiscally contractionary as cutting spending to the level supportable by current taxation*?

* Please note that while I\’m willing to entertain the idea that there are different multipliers I really do not think that the end result as measured in growth of having Richard Murphy, Neal Lawson and Ed Balls spending our money is going to be higher than if we spend our money. I just cannot imagine a version of the universe in which this could be true.

Mark Lynas: cute really

This really is rather cute:

It is important to understand the significance of this. Scientists are not politicians. They are not used to communicating publicly. They trust in their objectivity, the objectivity of their peers, and the rigour of only citing work published in learned journals. They will have private views, but are very used to keeping these out of their work – indeed the entire scientific method is based on conducting research which can be replicated by peers in order to check its accuracy and objectivity.

This is the specific complaint here. That the research materials have not been made available. That raw data has not been released so that people can check accuracy and objectivity.

As a defence, insisting that those being castigated should have done what they\’re being castigated for not having done really isn\’t all that impressive.

\”Socially Useful\”

It\’s an interesting phrase, isn\’t it?

Lord Turner, a former director general of the CBI, attacked the current head of the employers\’ body for refusing to concede that parts of the City were \”socially useless\”.

Now chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Turner criticised CBI director general Richard Lambert for arguing that politicians or regulators should not decide what parts of society are useful.

It seems to mean that things and actions which are not socially useful are the things and actions which I do not like.

Which rather leads us to the problem with the whole concept. Who is to decide whether something is socially useful or not?

There are those who would insist (indeed, do insist) that my having a couple of pints of an evening is not socially useful. Should I thus be barred from doing so?

I\’m sure we could find people who would insist that my (very bad, I agree) habit of actually reading propaganda reports and pointing to what I perceive as being their flaws is not socially useful: should I be barred from doing so?

We might even find that there are those who deride my decision to not maximise my income (and thus the tax take that can be had from it) in favour of my own personal work life balance: should I be barred from doing that?

Who among us is wise enough, sufficiently omniscient, to decide what all the rest of us may or may not do?

My own take on this is that \”not socially useful\” is simply a fig leaf for, as above, \”things I don\’t like\”.

Harsh but fair

The family of Jean Charles de Menezes are to receive reduced compensation because they are so poor.

The limited financial support they could have received from the Brazilian electrician – shot dead by police marksmen – will also count against them.

Harsh because it seems so: why should the poor receive less compensation than the rich?

Fair, because it isn\’t \”compensation\”, it\’s \”loss of earnings\”.

Some perspective

Horrible:

In the first half of this year, 1,175 people died in pits across China, a fall of 18.4% compared with the same period last year, the state administration of coal mine safety said.

That\’s more than have been killed by all nuclear power plant accidents everywhere, everywhen.

Yes, including Chernobyl.

Quelle Surprise

All children should be taught in mixed-ability classes to boost standards and self-esteem among all students, according to a report.

Uhn hunh……where does this come from?

The study, by Teach First, which recruits top graduates as trainee teachers in tough inner-city schools,

Hmm….and of course \”top graduates\” who go off and work in inner city schools are not going to be ideologically driven lefty gobshites, are they?

Oh no.

Sigh

Two men in a car containing the device drove through a barrier at Clarendon Dock, near the offices, at about 7pm on Saturday. The car then appeared to catch fire and the two men ran off.

The attack was blamed on dissident Republicans, who are also thought to have been involved in a gunfight with police at Garrison, County Fermanagh, near the border with the Irish Republic, on Saturday night.

This has been roughly the situation for a century.

One group or another (usually calling themselves some variation of the IRA: the Official IRA, The IRA, The Real IRA etc etc) does terrorism. They get what they want/enough to keep them quiet/captured/shot/elected….and they stop the terrorism. But there\’s always one group out there on the edge that carry on.

Don\’t see it stopping just yet unfortunately.

Geoffrey Lean: Twat

But in breaking news, the Torygraph has supplied the void with \”The flooding in Cumbria is part of a pattern of weather which shows that global warming is occurring faster than anyone expected, says Geoffrey Lean.\” Oh lordy, that last one is pretty awful. I was hoping not to have to see it, but now I have. It sez Three factors cause heavier storms as the climate heats up. As it gets hotter, more energy is injected into the climate. There is a sharper contrast between land and the sea (which warms more slowly), causing stronger winds and greater instability. And as the seas do heat, more water evaporates from them – and comes down as heavier rain. Can you see the obvious problem? Yes that\’s right: if it was correct, there would be an enormous seasonal cycle in rainfall, with far more in the summer than winter. As it happens, there are places where this is true – Cairns, for example, according to [[Wet Seaason]]. But the UK isn\’t like that – there is more rain in winter, as we all knew. Which immeadiately tells you that the primary driver of rainfall in the UK is not temperature. Global warming might produce more rainfall in the UK – but it might not.

The Stoat.

Watch out for the reporting of this one!

The average female board director took home £178,246 in salary, bonuses, benefits and pension contributions in the 2008-09 financial year, while the average male director received £357,358.

So they\’re getting 66% of men\’s pay, or 50% less than men.

I think we can all draw up the list of the usual suspects who will blare this little statistics around the country, can\’t we?

And I think we can also draw up the little list of those who will fail to note the next point:

The Reward Technology Forum (RTF) which compiled the study claimed that part of the explanation was that the majority of women on company boards were non-executive directors who are paid less than executives.

Of the 218 female board members in the FTSE 350, 83pc or 181 of them are non-executives.

\”Executive director\” and \”non-executive director\” are two entirely different jobs. The former is a full time insider in hte company, running at the very least a division of the company plus sitting on the board. The latter is a part time outsider, brought in to provide some oversight on the board. They\’re really not comparable in any manner.

For men and women doing the same jobs:

RTF said the average salary for female finance directors last year was £357,588, whereas male FDs were paid £353,044 on average. Similarly, female chief executives had an average salary of £612,000, compared with £563,968 for men.

Quite, our humongous gap disappears (aslthough there is a further discrepancy in favour of men in the allied benefits packages).

Liklihood of point 1) appearing in CiF or Polly or the like, near 100% I would think. Of 2), under 50% and of 3) near zero.