Words
of wisdom and hope from The Independent.
“It’s
OK if you are one of the 13,000 millionaires in this country.”
Let’s
take him at his word and do what the trade unionists and respected charity spokespeople
in this report might suggest as good ideas.
The
UK
That
“someone or other” is the banks who would otherwise be lending to employers and
people who make useful stuff and who want to keep on employing people and
making useful stuff and paying taxes for our existing welfare state….and the
taxpayers and their children who would otherwise be spending their taxes on
themselves and their children.
Just
on servicing the debt.
Just
on servicing the debt.
Let’s
tax the rich!
Assume
there might be as many as 100 billionaires [wild guess] in the UK
Let’s
call them ‘the obscenely rich.’
That’s
£100,000,000,000 they own.
Call
it £100 billion.
Let's
assume that the middling millionaires’ total personal assets (including those
of lucky footballers and scrap merchants and car dealers and factory owners and
farming combines) amount to say an average of £50 million each.
Let’s
call them ‘the filthy rich.’
That’s
1,200x 50,000,000 = £60,000,000,000 they own.
Call
it £60 billion.
In
total let’s assume the obscenely and filthy rich between them own £160,000,000,000.
Call
it £160 billion.
Let’s think small here.
Let’s
increase capital gains tax on the combined rich [a tax on how much more their assets
are worth each year from investing them in businesses that produce trivia like jobs,
food, medicines and medical supplies, and essentials and basic human rights
such as holidays, reality TV and beer], because how much would you get if you
taxed that lot at, say 100% of growth.
So
the combined filthy and obscenely rich never get richer.
Even
assuming an [unrealistically high] 10% per year capital growth rate that’s 100%
of £160,000,000,000 per year to help with the deficit.
Which
equals £16,000,000,000. Call it £16 billion.
That’s
five weeks’ increase in the interest the government pays on existing debt.
Which
is increasing.
Bother.
Let’s think big here
and
confiscate all those assets and sell them to Gulf oil billionaires and the
Chinese industrialists and Russian mafia because nobody’s left in Britain
That’s
our [The People’s] £160 billion now.
That
will pay off the annual increase in the deficit [the increase of the difference
between the government’s annual spend and its revenues – not the debt itself,]
for 1 year and 4 months.
So
we nick everything the combined rich own right now, sell it abroad, and what
the government owes does not increase from April 2013 to August 2014.
The
rich have stopped paying their existing taxes because they’re all on Jobseeker’s Allowance
and Council Tax Benefit/Support and Housing Benefit now, because they're renting...
Which
just leaves the little guy to pick up the bill for £43billion each year in
existing interest charges on what the previous government officially left us.
Yey,
the little guy!
We
could abolish the armed forces and take a year’s holiday from debt interest
repayments for a whole year.
Just
on servicing the debt.
I
wonder who’d be running our national defence by the end of that year?
Only
asking.
What
the government now owes does not increase from April 2013 to August 2015.
Except
it’s increasing.
Bother.
Now
that the rich and all the squaddies and jolly jack tars and the RAF and the
Marines are claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, New Labour’s annual interest
repayments amount to (assuming 60 million folk here in Albion’s sceptered isle)
is 43 billion divided by 60 million, which equals £716.66 per year that each
human being has to find each year just to pay interest on New Labour’s debt to
stop it increasing.
New
Labour’s (and the Coalition’s!) debt is increasing by approximately £121
billion per annum, however, so it won’t stay that low for long.
That’s
us little guys paying government debt interest via:
public
charges, tax, VAT, reduced government expenditure on benefits, education/NHS/
transport spending; not those people spending on food or fuel or luxuries or
Christmas or travelling to school/relatives/hospital/the shops.
Just
on servicing the debt.
Except
debt is increasing. Bother.
It
doesn’t buy us anything good.
And
of course the UK national debt that has to be paid back to someone or other is
£1,347,000,000,000.That “someone or other” is the banks who would otherwise be
lending to employers and people who make useful stuff and who want to keep on
employing people and making useful stuff and paying taxes for our existing
welfare state, and the taxpayers and their children who would otherwise be
spending their taxes on themselves and their children.
Just
on servicing the debt.
Of
course, quite a lot of those folk are children or sick or old or retired, so if
you don’t take it from them, assume that you take it from working stiffs:
including taxi drivers and farm labourers and nurses and trade union officials
and teachers comprise about 50% of that.
That’s
a tax bill of £1,400 per working stiff per year just to pay the interest on the
previous government’s laptop for skoolkids giveaway scheme.
Just
on servicing the debt.
It
won’t buy them a sonnet’s worth of English tuition or a single ‘free’ school
meal, or pay a penny’s worth of rent or Council Tax, or for an hour of a copper-on-the-beat’s
valuable time.
Would
this perhaps be a good time to ask the trade unions to refund the £20 million
per year New Labour gave them to improve their IT systems?
Guess we're gonna need a bigger millionaire class.
Let's conjure some up, shall we, from nowhere? Like New Labour's 'fragile recovery...'
Guess we're gonna need a bigger millionaire class.
Let's conjure some up, shall we, from nowhere? Like New Labour's 'fragile recovery...'
Let’s tax the other rich!
Let’s
sell the property of everyone who owns £49,999,999 and less (including their
houses and pension plans and two cars and their children’s education funds) in Britain
Let’s
call these ‘the moderately rich.’
These include: some doctors, shop owners, independent pharmacists, people who set up and run pension schemes, some academics, dentists, TV producers, most celebrities, film stars, Ray Winstone (if he’s still in Britain by then) lesser Premiership footy players, best selling novelists and rap stars, web designers and IT executives, road haulage company proprietors, gym owners, travel agents, clothing shop owners, etc.
These include: some doctors, shop owners, independent pharmacists, people who set up and run pension schemes, some academics, dentists, TV producers, most celebrities, film stars, Ray Winstone (if he’s still in Britain by then) lesser Premiership footy players, best selling novelists and rap stars, web designers and IT executives, road haulage company proprietors, gym owners, travel agents, clothing shop owners, etc.
Assume 10,000 of them? – that’s £499,999,990,000 to expropriate –
if we can find
buyers for their property.
Hmmm.
Which leaves a national debt of only £847,000,000,000
for the little guy to pay the interest on.
Yey, the little guy!
Because there’s no-one else left.
And remember, the deficit is actually going up…
And remember, the deficit is actually going up…
Picture from here.
