Cycling UK Forum

In view of the gloomy autumn statement, can anyone help out here?

Answers on a postcard please to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, senior economists, and in particular the Governor of the Bank of England.

One bonehead commenting in the Daily Fail has the answer

Get us out of the EU & UN, then issue our own debt free money. PROSPERITY SIMPLES!
- cornelius , Liverpool, 05/12/2012 13:40

Not really, as to succeed in the goal of never ending growth will only hasten the arrival of the day when we have consumed everything up or fouled the planet enough to wreak havoc.

Failure to get the economy up and running and allowing us to produce and consume more unneeded crap and to waste more fuel buzzing around "making growth" is doing us a favour in the long term.

I just wish the people, politicians and newspapers would realise it was time to start aiming for something other than never ending growth.

I am always bemused by the whole concept of getting us to buy tat, i.e. spend, in order to make us all rich.

Much like the concept of breeding to save the nation.

I may in my weakness for 'things' fall for the 1st, but never the 2nd...

I dont know about saving the nation but breeding has to rate as my number one pleasure in life.
Also biologically speaking, my only reason for being here in the first place.

meic wrote:I dont know about saving the nation but breeding has to rate as my number one pleasure in life.

I think that practising is the most pleasurable.

As for the Chancellor I remember this from an old song

"It's the same the whole world over it's the rich what gets the pleasure it's the poor what gets the blame".

Without hearing the speech (rather give myself an enema) I would be surprised if the above was wrong.

My answer would be to stop the tax evasion and close the avoidance loopholes (fat chance)

Edwards wrote:"It's the same the whole world over Ain't it all a bloody shame it's the rich what gets the pleasure it's the poor what gets the blame".

You missed a phrase.
As it happens I have just found "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" by Ha-Joon Chang in the Oxfam shop.
You could say it is about why free enterprise does not work.
One chapter which rings a loud bell with me is about what Ltd. means. That is, limited liability. I used to be a sole trader, liable for all my goods if I went bankrupt. Capitalists are able to walk away from the wreckage when the company goes a over t.

Agreed about the practice point...

So he's (Gorge Frogspawn) cut corporation tax. Is that to encourage them to actually pay some?

Of more relevance to us, is that he's cancelled the new duty on road fuel intended for January apparently. So it seems the motoring lobby really has got friends in low places. Read mention (yes on the Guardian's online presence) of 4 major road related projects also; don't know what they are, but do you think they'll be cycle friendly? I suspect big multi-lane jobbies if anything.

I'm not sure what a "free enterprise economy" is, but it might be worth a try.
Our present "system" doesn't seem very good to me....I worked all my life, I get a pension....some never work at all....they get benefits I pay for.
(and before you all jump down my throat, I was typing as Edwards was posting...I don't expect people who are ill or disabled to go to the workhouse)

As for tax avoidance, long ago I used to work for an international company that made stuff in the UK and sent it to Botswana to be packaged,,,it was supplied to Botswana at cost, so the huge profit was made and taxed in Botswana.....Now they have closed that UK factory, there is awful unemployment in the area, and people can't move to find work because their houses are un-saleable....it was a thriving area with above average earnings....I know which choice I prefer.

I was a sole trader, too. I don't think its difficult or expensive to change to a limited company, if you want to.

A man sets up a company....without him the company wouldn't exist. Twenty years later, the company provides a living for a hundred local families, who all pay tax and send their kids to the local school, the local candle stick maker takes on an apprentice.
Who should get more money, the man who set up the company, the man who runs the company website, or somebody who has never worked in his life?

531colin wrote:I was a sole trader, too. I don't think its difficult or expensive to change to a limited company, if you want to.

I know and always did know that. I was making a point about capitalism.

531colin wrote:A man sets up a company....without him the company wouldn't exist. Twenty years later, the company provides a living for a hundred local families, who all pay tax and send their kids to the local school, the local candle stick maker takes on an apprentice.
Who should get more money, the man who set up the company, the man who runs the company website, or somebody who has never worked in his life?

Well, this a question about the nature of capitalism.
Does there have to be that choice?
It seems to me that those 100 employees who invested their their working live in helping to build the company have a greater claim to any profits than those who invested only money, and that for a term as short as they feel is going to make them a quick profit.

Simple, copy the Germans. Encourage businesses in the hands of families and long term private owners. Train youngsters in PROPER apprenticeships and traineeships. Work hard. Have a cash economy only buying when you have saved up. Keep businesses out of the hands of accountants and asset strippers - locusts as the Germans call them.

It's very simple really but no-one listens.

Al

You could start by reading John Maynard Kenes

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

Nick

Or Milton Friedman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman