Having blogged about the fact that I am about to start work writing 'The Joy of Tax' it was good to note this in the FT this morning:
The favourites to win next month's general election in Sweden are planning to reverse course on the current government's economic reforms by limiting private equity involvement in the public sector, raising taxes and boosting spending.
The Swedes have, it appears, run out of enthusiasm for the right, who never seemed to fit their social culture but who have, nonetheless formed the government since 2006. As the FT puts it:
Sweden's centre-right government has gained a reputation for tax cutting and increasing competition in the public sector, which has proved popular with business but voters appear ready for a change as polling data suggests they are more concerned about education, jobs, health, and elderly care.
The reasons are obvious: the policy has not worked. Quality has fallen and that has clearly begun to trouble people. The fact is that it's worth paying for education, health care, care for the elderly and providing decent jobs. They are the foundation of a good society. And that's worth paying for, and tax is the way to do that, and the option the Swedes appear to be going for.
If only more people would say and do so.
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I don’t know much about Swedish politics but the concerned voters are going to be sorely disappointed if they only have a Nu Labour type opposition-business as usual??
There are some real left in Sweden
I am always amused by how Sweden is held up by those on the left as an example of higher taxes bringing greater social well being etc.
The fact is that in taxation terms it is only achieved by heavily taxing the middle class and all those in employment. Not the rich or the neoliberals!
For most of the last decade Sweden has had a lower Corporation tax rate at 26% than the UK and has no Inheritance tax at all…..
How does that fit with all your inequality articles and making Corporates pay! The Swedes obviously know that any attempt to tax the wealthiest would be economically self defeating.
But Sweden has a great benefits system
Odd how you ignored that
It’s the total fit that works
“The Swedes obviously know that any attempt to tax the wealthiest would be economically self defeating” Do you say this because you think (a) the wealthiest should be taxed but are able to avoid it, or are you (b) saying that taxing the wealthierst shouldn’t be done?
If it’s (a), you need to join with people like Richard in campaigning to get much tougher anti avoidance rules, and clamping down on, or preferably closing altogether, all tax havens. By tax havens, I include the City of London which, while it may not technically be one itself, channels money to them and champions the low regulation neoliberal model which tries to justify them.
If it’s (b), I suggest you start looking into economic models other than the intellectually and morally bankrupt libertarian one you believe. You might learn something.
“If it’s (b), I suggest you start looking into economic models other than the intellectually and morally bankrupt libertarian one you believe. You might learn something.”
I did look at other economic models………….and from history they have failed to improve the standard of living for the poor, brought misery to millions and utterly failed to bring all the supposed wonders you claim other then causing the wealthy to leave.
Which is why the vast majority of the World runs Capitalist open market economies with tax rates under 50%. If you want to convince me you will need more than the self righteous moral superiority you show here……….show me where it has worked!
Sweden has one of the highest standards of the living with one of the most satisfied populations in the world
Your claims are just absurd
They do not in any way stack with the evidence
It’s ridiculous to equate tax rate with tax take! Sweden may make a 26% headline rate but I imagine most companies pay that. The UK may have had a higher rate in the past but thanks to tax evasion and avoidance and incentives (sometimes procured corruptly) the effective rate for the biggest companies is not anywhere near the headline rate!
So – evidence of these claims about Swedish companies can be found where?
You tell us
What is the evidence to suggest that the alleged tax gap is worse in the UK than it is in Sweden?
Officially they say it is bigger than the UK admits to http://www.skatteverket.se/download/18.15532c7b1442f256baeae28/1395223863738/The+development+of+the+tax+gap+in+Sweden+2007-12.pdf
So you’d be in favour of increased taxes in the middle classes and lower taxes on companies,…??
I have not checked your claims
I accept nothing you ay at face value
Rates and base are not the same thing of course
You ignore such important details
‘You tell us’
Er – I’m not making any claims. I haven’t said ‘I imagine that…’ I’m just asking for some evidence as it seems important to the claim.
Similarly, where is the evidence that the ‘biggest companies’ are not paying the correct amount of CT on their taxable profits? Where is the evidence of evasion by ‘the biggest companies’ (Evidence doesn’t mean (e.g.) Private Eye says so)
Have you read anything on tax in the last few years?
Yes
It’s not for me to provide evidence that the claims made are wrong is it? I haven’t asked for anything but evidence.
I could say ‘I imagine that most of the companies in Sweden don’t pay anything like the headline rate’ – and you would ask me for evidence, wouldn’t you?
You are wasting time here
Please don’t call again
The trouble is the Left always seem to equate spending with obtaining value.
One only has to look at the procurement process in the UK MOD (experience over many years) to know they are almost the polar opposite. I have no problem exposing the abuse of private enterprise, but in my dotage I can assure everyone, like Democracy, it is the least worst system on offer. There never was a Golden Age of Public ownership.
I remember donkeys years ago being told by an NHS employee that the NHS would fall apart if they had to pay the voluntary overtime hours being done, another employee telling me that their buying function system was inept and that Consultants had be dragged back from their private practices or golf courses.
And all that was years ago
Shall we live in the now?
There is not a consultant on earth who works like that now, and the rest is just as much baloney as that
“There is not a consultant on earth who works like that now, and the rest is just as much baloney as that”
I know at least two consultants who work like that now, and I don’t even work in medicine.
Actually, nothing changes – Stephen’s last paragraph is probably as true today as it was 30 years ago.
Respectfully, I suggest you are not telling the truth, or they are not
This simply does not happen now, not in the NHS
“Sweden has one of the highest standards of the living with one of the most satisfied populations in the world”
Sweden is effectively a one party state, albeit supported by a couple of shadowy industrialist families, it’s one of the largest arms exporters in the world, has youth unemployment higher than the UK and the EU average, is more racist than most countries, has a high suicide rate, but other than that, is not a bad place…
If it was a one party state why has the government switched political colour in recent years? And is likely to do so again soon?
It is very good news that the Swedish people have finally ended their flirtation with the neoliberal right, and I hope that will be confirmed in the Election result. Current opinion polls show Social Democrats at 35%, Left Party at 8% and Greens at 8% (the ‘Red-Green’ Coalition thus having 51% of the vote for 51% of the seats in the Riksdag on the PR voting system), whereas the Govt. Coalition Parties, the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the Liberal People’s Party and the Christian Democrats – the ‘Alliance’ – are on 37%. Sweden had always been a paradigm of how social democratic societies could work, and work well, prior to about eight years ago (the General Elections of 2006 and 2010 were won by the Alliance, with Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party becoming Prime Minister).
What saddens me is that, since Blair, we no longer have a genuinely social democratic/democratic socialist Party here! If Labour are elected next May, they are committed to cutting social spending, not raising corporate taxation on Big Business or personal taxation on the wealthy (their 50p top rate of tax will have only a marginal impact on the top 1% of the income/wealth distribution, due to their ability to avoid/evade tax), spending £100 billion on Trident and its replacement, and generating a wholly unnecessary budget surplus by the end of the Parliament, when the simple expedient of taking back control of the Bank of England and monetary policy by repealing their own ludicrous 1998 Bank of England Act would enable them to pay the entire National Debt, if they chose, without making a single spending cut. (It would be an interesting economic experiment!)
Instead, we are told that Labour is no longer about taxing and spending, when it, like any other Party of the left, is a tax-and-spend Party or it is nothing. If it ceases to be a tax-and-spend Party, it loses its entire raison d’être, and becomes completely otiose. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see this, but not Ed Miliband or Ed Balls. What does _that_ say about their mighty Oxbridge-educated intellects?
“I did look at other economic models………….and from history they have failed to improve the standard of living for the poor, brought misery to millions and utterly failed to bring all the supposed wonders you claim other then causing the wealthy to leave.
Which is why the vast majority of the World runs Capitalist open market economies with tax rates under 50%. If you want to convince me you will need more than the self righteous moral superiority you show here……….show me where it has worked!”
I’m afraid this reads like a typical response from the right, where any attack on the supposed ‘wonders’ of the failed neoliberal model is countered by shouting about the failures of Communism, as though the only possible forms of economic and political organisation are these two extremes. This is the kind of thing only fanatics and the simple minded believe.
All the Nordic countries, not just Sweden, are market economies, but they have a significant degree of wealth redistribution through the taxation and social security systems. Denmark, for example, is one of the most equal countries on Earth, and frequently comes top in surveys of national well-being.
As for bringing misery to millions…..what about the depression of the 1930s, brought about by the kind of capitalism you seem to think is so wonderful. What about the situation we’re in now, where we’ve only avoided another colossal depression by bailing out a failed banking system at enormous cost to the rest of society? This banking system failed because those running it thought the same way you do.
By the way, expecting that those with wealth and power pay their fair share in taxes and actually show some thought for the welfare of others in this world is not self righteous moral superiority, except to those who think that selfishness and egotism are the best qualities in a human being.
As I said before, you really do need to start researching economics and politics more. I suggest Ha-joon Chang’s ’23 things they don’t tell you about economics’, or ‘Freefall, Free Markets and the Downfall of the Global Economy’ by Joseph Stiglitz, just for starters.
Thanks
Good comment