Seven chapters of the Joy of Tax are written.
The eighth is well under way.
There are three weeks left to finish them all if the book is to be out this year.
I am hitting keyboards, hard.
Richard Murphy on tax, accounting and political economy
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Excellent news Richard – looking forward to reading it
I hope there’s a chapter on exponential consumption taxes.
For example: beer duty 50p on your first pint of the day, rising to £3 by the time you’re on your 6th. It doesn’t have to be beer, it can be anything at all with -ve externalities.
There must be a case study from somewhere in the world.
It would also be nice to see a chapter on countries with low taxation as a % of GDP and how it relates to the use of alternate currencies, and a hard one showing how by integrating a consumption function it can be shown firstly that taxation can increase GDP and what ratio of government expenditure to income is best to achieve this effect.
Just some ideas.
You will be disappointed then
I am dealing with the real world of the UK
Perhaps you could do a chapter on raising revenue from the black economy of drugs and prostitution which are part of the real world of the UK. They account for about 2 days worth of annual GDP officially. You could call it the ‘Tax of Joy’.
When discussing these issues with people, the hardest thing to do when trying to explain that the Government can print money is to balance that fact with the reason as to why Government’s also tax (and also tie this into what spending the Government does with this taxation – that is if they are not telling lies!).
When I put this question to Prof. Stephen Hail (who has Youtube lecture on the rubbish surrounding austerity and also introduced me to the delights of Bill Mitchell and Warren Mosler), he gave me this answer:
“Taxation is required in order to create room in the economy for public spending which is non-inflationary”.
Now – unpick that?
If tax is a good thing and printing money and ending austerity is also a good thing too then how the dynamics of these work together must be made explainable to the everyday citizen who is also being fed a constant stream of lies.
So I would say that if your book addresses those issues plainly and simply Richard you’d be doing the world a favour and adding to the long list of your accomplishments.
Thank you for the update. Keep on keepin’ on.
Mark
Welcome back
That is an issue I do unpick in the book
Richard
Not quite, but thanks – I’ll need some good resources for the next part of my journey.