There is a debate going on in parliament right now on the devolution of powers to Scotland. According to the Guardian:
Sir Tony Baldry, a Conservative, says he hopes these plans will lead to “healthy competition” between London and Edinburgh to set the lowest rate of tax.
Carmichael (Secretary of State for Scotland) says that could be one of the consequences.
Giving the Scottish parliament power over taxation could have a “transformative effect”, he says.
Let's be clear: all competition is based on the notion that participants can fail. There is no way we can afford failed government, but that's what these fools want.
Second, the Scottish power over tax is only over a tiny range of rates. To suggest that this will be transformative is absurd: it will definitely muddy political waters and let each and every fool with a high horse of bigotry and right wing ideology to ride gallop forth but more than that this will achieve nothing, most especially for the people of Scotland.
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Absolutely on the nose. Shafted again.
‘Fraid so
The trouble is it’s more responsibility, not more power and Westminster still holds the purse strings. Brown, Darling et al walked into a trap set by the Conservatives. Once they saw it falling apart, they were like rats leaving the sinking ship. the spin by the Unionist media about more powers is nothing short of dishonest and disgraceful. No doubt the disgusting Jim Murphy will be portrayed as some kind of saviour and will be elected Manager of the Scottish Branch of Labour.
We had the option of voting for complete power over our own affairs and bottled it, due in part to connivance and deceit by the LibLabCons.
Competition between states is necessary – if it wasn’t for devolution English people wouldn’t be pointing to Scotland asking why they get free University and Prescriptions – if the only narrative was the one that a single monopoly of Government let be known then it’s harder for the people to imagine something better.
I’ve moved country 4 times in the last 10 years for work and I’ve seen a huge difference in quality of state provisions – one country in particular was high tax, yet you still needed to contribute extra for decent health and education – another one is low tax with outstanding health and education. As a free individual I like a choice of state.
95% of us don’t move
I consider the majority
I also consider the majority:
“If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check.” Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom
You seem to think that states having more control over their population (and their ability to get a better deal elsewhere) is a good thing – I think a captive audience leads to complacency in any organisation (never mind the illiberal implications that my life and labour are the property of the state to be used for the utility of the majority).
Sorry – quoting Friedman does not make an argument
Nor, come to that do your comments reflect a reality I recognise
“95% of us don’t move
I consider the majority”
95% of people don’t have savings or dividend income, either. So why use it as an excuse to impose the will of Scottish MPs on English voters?
You’re wrong
Look at HMRC data and most people have some savings
Maybe not much
But some
Would you be so kind as to name the countries you speak of above at all?
The problem with your statement is that you seem to work in an area of the economy where you can move around for one reason or another. Good for you. The majority of people however can’t really do this – their jobs are tied to their location for a number of complex reasons. People are people; they are not just numbers on a balance sheet.
Any changes to a country’s public services and tax regimes to attract people like you may have a negative effect on those who already live there. Your highly indivdualistic view is legitimate but is also highly contestable. Your personal freedon may come at a cost to others not so able to ‘surf the world’.
As for your comment below, this is just dogma. Britain has a fair number of skeletons in its cupboard but has never really been like the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian states that seem to have spawned people like von Hayek and Friedman (from a Jewish immigrant background). This is the neo-liberal view that government is evil or evil waiting to happen. I do not recognise the state they speak of as one that I live in (thank goodness).
My experience tells me different things. It is markets (pretending to be free when in fact they are rigged) that have caused the greatest harm to people in the last 30 or so years and the results of that have been recession after recession caused by Governmnets not doing enough – never mind doing too much.
As for your mate Friedman – Thatcher tried his monetarist policies in this country in the early 1980’s. It was a disaster and led to the destruction of our industrial base from which we have never recovered. So the Thatcher government did evil things using Friedman’s economic rubric and destroyed millions of people’s economic lives in this country. Try getting your head around that.
What is also a disaster is how economics and politics (some say they are both the same theses days) have been sucked into believing that there is only one way to do anything and that the neo-liberal way is an absolute law (like Friedman’s monetarism) , when in fact life is very complex and requires people to compromise and achieve some sort of balance. So, I defend your right to say what you have said here but I’ll uphold my right to contest it. Somewhere between our two views however, there may be a better answer for all of us. Thanks to people like Friedman, von Hayek and Buchanan, we’ve just forgotten how to find it and are all poorer as a result.
“Any changes to a country’s public services and tax regimes to attract people like you may have a negative effect on those who already live there. Your highly indivdualistic view is legitimate but is also highly contestable. Your personal freedon may come at a cost to others not so able to ‘surf the world’.”
This could have come straight out of the mouth of Nigel Farage when he talks about the impact of EU immigration on what he (and you) would no doubt call “locals”.
Only with a very particular lens on, I think, and when read out of context
Ed Ryan
I am not talking about the poorer immigrants who come over legitimately looking for a better life – I’m referring to those of better means who decide to settle down here for ‘tax efficiency’ reasons so please keep that detestable character Farage out of it please. My views have nothing to do with his.
They are empowering them for the wrong taxes.
Don’t target IT or CT for obvious reasons, it is ridiculously easy to move. In the states the Texan Governor claims to be facilitating economic lift-off but, in reality, his low state taxes are only shifting jobs from other states. It helps the USA not a bean but it increases the urgency for all states to reduce spending & pile tax (via sales tax) on the poorest people.
Even more insane is empowering them to change APD. A tax designed to reduce carbon emissions that cause global warming.
So, Scotland isn’t part of the globe anymore!
The RIGHT tax to localise is property tax. Those penthouses in Edinburgh will not be moving to Newcastle anytime soon.
c
In reply to eriugenus about APD.
APD is not a tax designed to reduce carbon emissions. Ion its current state it actually does nothing to encourage airlines to reduce carbon emissions. APD is and has always been a levy based on class of travel and distance flown. It was originally introduced by Ken Clarke in the early 1990s to raise revenue (please Google – if Richard allows me to use this word!!! – this if you don’t believe me) nothing more because aviation was undertaxed. In addition, the 2007 White Paper on Aviation (I may be wrong on the date here) said that APD was the worse sort of tax to levy if you want to reduce carbon emissions from aircraft.
The current and previous versions of APD do NOTHING to encourage airlines to reduce carbon emissions. To illustrate this, you will be charged the same amount of APD for a seat in the same class on an aircraft that is 20 years old as you would in an aircraft that is a year old and significantly more fuel efficient than the older aircraft. Also, APD does nothing to encourage airlines to maximise yields so that you have a more efficient flight along the lines of a full bus is more environmentally friendly than a half full one.
Also, APD does nothing to encourage airlines to invest in new aircraft that are lightyears more efficient than older aircraft even though it may be significantly cheaper to acquire and run the older aircraft.
In short, devolving APD raising powers to Scotland may be a good thing from the environmental aspect because the Scottish government may actually design a tax to encourage responsible environmental behaviour. Alternatively, they may realise what a cash cow APD is (the easiest tax for HMRC to collect by far) and just change the rates to be more competitive with England!!!
Please check your facts and reality before making non-sensical comments about APD.
Richard
There is a huge difference between not accepting that market forces should determine our lives, & not accepting that there are such things as market forces. There plainly are such forces. If you make air travel more expensive, fewer people will undertake it & the environment will suffer less harm. Therefore, saying that APD is pointless is just silly.
You’re probably right that it could be “tweaked” to encourage more environmentally friendly travel but I don’t think that is on Holyrood’s agenda. They want to play to the public gallery by assuring them that global warming is a fraud dreamt up by a cabal of scientific communists.
I’ve got to say I have not noticed that attitude from thje SNP but I may have missed something
Richard (M)
The SNP have certainly not, unlike UKIP, suggested that they don’t accept the scientific consensus re man made climate change but Alex Salmond previously stated that the SNP would reduce fuel duty & they have strongly intimated that they’ll scrap APD. So the SNP need to be challenged whether they
a) don’t accept the scientific consensus or
b) think their election more important than mankind’s future on this planet.
Fair comment
P Reid
I genuinely don’t know what to say to you.
Has it occurred to you that the natural consequence of that quote is that only wealthy suburbs will have health care, education, & culture?
If that has occurred to you, do you think thats OK, I mean, would you want to live in a world like that?
What do you think about Ferguson?