Whose Money Is It?

[BalancedBear]

Tax avoidance is totally legal, and I don't think any politician is going to be able to stop it. Tax evasion is what they can tackle, and it should not be confused with avoidance.

[Game_Over]

Socialism explained for the intellectually challenged.

Some guy gets off his fat ass and builds a factory employing 200 workers on 20K a year.

The factory owner pays himself 200k a year.

The workers see this guy earning 200k and say to each other 'look at all the money this guy pays himself, if we take over the factory we can all be rich'

So the workers shoot the owner and take over the factory

They then cannot understand why they still only earn 21k a year

And after a short while the factory goes bust and they all then earn 0K a year.

This is why Socialism hasn't worked anywhere - EVER.

[CrashConnoisseur]

Rather ironic when the Telegraph is owned by a pair of tax exiles...

'David and Frederick Barclay':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Frederick_Barclay

The brothers are tax exiles, and give their address as Le Montaigne, 7 Avenue de Grande Bretagne, 98000 Monaco.

[Laughing Gnome]

He was writing for the telegraph correct? And it surprises you that he addressed the readership of that paper directly?

Making something of nothing for moronic political poking. Seriously this board used to be so good.

Seconded

[Laughing Gnome]

Socialism explained for the intellectually challenged.

Some guy gets off his fat ass and builds a factory employing 200 workers on 20K a year.

The factory owner pays himself 200k a year.

The workers see this guy earning 200k and say to each other 'look at all the money this guy pays himself, if we take over the factory we can all be rich'

So the workers shoot the owner and take over the factory

They then cannot understand why they still only earn 21k a year

And after a short while the factory goes bust and they all then earn 0K a year.

This is why Socialism hasn't worked anywhere - EVER.

I don't know where to start.

You might consider reading Marx for an analysis of capitalism, many do, whilst rejecting his proposed solution.

Get your head around theory of added value, the fetishism for gold, capital concentration and the alienation experienced by working

hard and thus forging a weapon against oneself.

If you can rubbish these propositions, do so. If not then propose alternative solutions.

Capitalism has raised the standard of living of billions, Marx has NEVER denied it's potent progressive nature.

But massive overproduction periodically hits a wall. This can only be overcome by increased consumption which itself

depends upon people demanding more wages. We are in a world of trouble and simplistic ideological abuse will not get us out of it.

[Game_Over]

I don't know where to start.

You might consider reading Marx for an analysis of capitalism, many do, whilst rejecting his proposed solution.

Get your head around theory of added value, the fetishism for gold, capital concentration and the alienation experienced by working

hard and thus forging a weapon against oneself.

If you can rubbish these propositions, do so. If not then propose alternative solutions.

Capitalism has raised the standard of living of billions, Marx has NEVER denied it's potent progressive nature.

But massive overproduction periodically hits a wall. This can only be overcome by increased consumption which itself

depends upon people demanding more wages. We are in a world of trouble and simplistic ideological abuse will not get us out of it.

Neither will simplistic claims that if we took all the money off 'rich' people and shared it with everyone - everyone would be rich

What would and always happens is that the masses would be about 10 quid each better off

then the whole economy would completely die.

The reality is - the worst Capitalist recession in 70 years still delivers a better standard of living than Socialism manages in its best years.

Every Socialist government we have had in this country has ended up bankrupting the country

[needsleep]

Sure if you are some PAYE-only wage slave you can plod home knowing you are paying the "right" ammount.

But what if you own a business, do freelance work, earn money from investments or a combination of these. You as a PAYE bod pay the minimum ammount of tax you have too, why should the people you so gleefully expect to be "dealt with" be any different?

Oh yes, petty minded jealousy because they are better off.

You don't know what I do, what I earn or what my financial circumstances are

But anyway this is to do with Danny and the heavy mob, backed up by £900m of additional funds to track down the avoiders and evaders. And, need I say it, any accountant worth his salt (ahem) would tell you that not everything labelled as tax avoidance is legal. The label is oftem mis-applied to schemes that are very definitely not legal - that is where Danny comes in.

[HPCatlast.]

He was writing for the telegraph correct? And it surprises you that he addressed the readership of that paper directly?

Making something of nothing for moronic political poking.

Seriously this board used to be so good.

How true.

I discovered this site early 2007, and eagerly checked it's contents morning AND evening.

However most of the contributors who I respected are no longer involved, and the quality of reasoned, sensible discussions is not what it was 3 years ago.

Reflection on the current UK society I guess, not how I remember it being.

[Pope Benedict XVI]

How true.

I discovered this site early 2007, and eagerly checked it's contents morning AND evening.

However most of the contributors who I respected are no longer involved, and the quality of reasoned, sensible discussions is not what it was 3 years ago.

Reflection on the current UK society I guess, not how I remember it being.

Any forum is only as good as its contributers so it's up to members to improve it.

[tinker]

Very cosy piece on Osborne in the Daily Torygraph yesterday

Osborne piece in Torygraph

but the bit that caught my eye was

Well, they've got it now, and Mr Osborne clearly thinks that they're ones who deserve to keep it.

Better make sure you read the right newspaper, or the Chancellor will take your money away and give it to those who do.

db

When I was a kid, the Sun did this promotion during the summer holidays of giving a fiver away to people with a copy of the Sun, all you had to do was find the Sun dolly birds wearing their sashes as they roamed the prom.

Maybe we should chase wee Georgie waving a copy of the Telegraph.

[@contradevian]

How true.

I discovered this site early 2007, and eagerly checked it's contents morning AND evening.

However most of the contributors who I respected are no longer involved, and the quality of reasoned, sensible discussions is not what it was 3 years ago.

Reflection on the current UK society I guess, not how I remember it being.

[deeplyblue]

Tax avoidance is totally legal, and I don't think any politician is going to be able to stop it. Tax evasion is what they can tackle, and it should not be confused with avoidance.

As someone else points out, the lines are occasionally rather blurred. You are obviously correct that tax avoidance is [a] legal and inevitable, but you can also say that how vigorously a government checks and closes the loopholes which allow for some of the more egregious tax avoidance schemes is one way of telling how much its heart is in getting in more tax revenue from the rich.

I suspect that The Treasury under Osborne is not going to be very gung-ho on that one.

db

[deeplyblue]

How true.

I discovered this site early 2007, and eagerly checked it's contents morning AND evening.

However most of the contributors who I respected are no longer involved, and the quality of reasoned, sensible discussions is not what it was 3 years ago.

Reflection on the current UK society I guess, not how I remember it being.

I'm one of those who have tried, on many occasions to inject sensible reasoned debate into many threads - sometimes to the derision of those reading them, the most comprehensive being, something along the lines of, "Guardian-reading bleeding heart liberal nazi leftie." The exact order of the words escapes me. On many other occasions, said contributions have been ignored. I don't mind that - when you contribute to a forum you don't have any right to a readership. Sometimes, something strikes me as funny or ironic and I post that here. That too may be ignored - OK. But I think if you check my posts you will see that I have not avoided sensible debate, it's just that there is also room for humour.

I saw this particular phrase in the Daily Telegraph and thought it unintentionally revealing - rather like that picture of George Bush standing in front of the word "Count" on a banner, but with his head obscuring the "o".

Had Osborne said "it is the people's money, like the people who read the Telegraph." I would simply have thought that he sounded like a toady - that sort of thing should be confined to the The Sun, or at any rate The Mail. As it was, he said something which could logically be rephrased as, "the country's money belongs to the people who read The Telegraph." Suppose Ed Milliband had said, "the money belongs to ordinary people, Guardian readers," he would have been pilloried - and looked like a pillock. I wasn't a huge fan of George Osborne to start with, and he isn't improving on acquaintance. I'm still withholding judgement about Cameron.

db

[aussieboy]

I don't know where to start.

You might consider reading Marx for an analysis of capitalism, many do, whilst rejecting his proposed solution.

Get your head around theory of added value, the fetishism for gold, capital concentration and the alienation experienced by working

hard and thus forging a weapon against oneself.

If you can rubbish these propositions, do so. If not then propose alternative solutions.

Capitalism has raised the standard of living of billions, Marx has NEVER denied it's potent progressive nature.

But massive overproduction periodically hits a wall. This can only be overcome by increased consumption which itself

depends upon people demanding more wages. We are in a world of trouble and simplistic ideological abuse will not get us out of it.

Thing with Marx was that he forgot to work out that capital has a cost attached to it, which plays havoc with much of what he wrote.

[aussieboy]

Neither will simplistic claims that if we took all the money off 'rich' people and shared it with everyone - everyone would be rich

What would and always happens is that the masses would be about 10 quid each better off

then the whole economy would completely die.

The reality is - the worst Capitalist recession in 70 years still delivers a better standard of living than Socialism manages in its best years.

Every Socialist government we have had in this country has ended up bankrupting the country

The problem with this forum is that we see a thousand motherhood statements like those above each day which are impossible to debate - what is the basis of the debate?

This impossibility of debate is compounded when the poster chooses an avatar which provides a clear signal regarding their willingness to amend their position - what is the point of the debate?

Given the choice, I think I prefer comments regarding the shitness of someone's avatar. At least there's a basis for a discussion.

[deeplyblue]

At least there's a basis for a discussion.

If you want real discussion, then you are going to have problems with any online forum with a wide audience. Most discussions on this sort of forum tend to get taken over by dogmatic statements by those with a hobby horse to ride.

If you want to have discussions where the points made are solidly backed up by argument and referenced data then you have another problem. Even if you can stop the thread being swamped with "all this is socialism=evil" or "the problem is immigration", you still have the time problem. That is, forums like this rely on threads which have a rapid addition of posts (particularly in the main forum). It takes to think through an argument, get it written down in clear English and make sure that you can substantiate all the more contentious statements. By the time you have done so, the thread has moved on three pages, or been lost in list of also-rans. No one is interested in what you have to say, because that was yesterday's discussion.

Many people also do not want to read a post as long as this one, let alone one which develops an argument at some length. I do not know how you would create a forum which simply excluded megaphone posters, and I am not sure that I would want one which never descended into humorous one-liners.

Do you have any suggestions?

db