Apologies for the odd title, but that figure happens to be the number of words in the final version of the full Taxing Wealth Report 2024, which I turned into a PDF for publication last night.
Shorter versions will be available.
The whole thing should be launched on Friday unless something strange happens between now and then.
It has been a bit of an effort. Just doing final formats yesterday was a ten-hour screen-based slog. There will be more like that today.
I remind myself of one thing, which is why I began this. Lucy Powell MP said last summer that "there is no money left". It is the Labour Party mantra, and it is not true. The Taxing Wealth Report 2024 exists to show that Labour's claim refers to a choice that it made. There is money left. Labour is just choosing not to access it, which is precisely why I am so annoyed with them.
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I have never felt so politically homeless nor experienced such despair about the parlous state of the UK’s politics and politicians.
Richard, yours is the voice of sanity which cuts through the madness, thank you.
Thank you
Excellent report. Should be required reading for every economics, social and political studies student and every aspiring politician. We live in a critical time facing combined ecological, economic, social and political melt downs. To prevent mass global poverty, resource depletion, irreversible global warming and major social unrest we must get to grips with alternative thinking that you advocate.
My feelings exactly, Jayne and I echo your thanks to Richard for all his efforts to spread the word.
Thanks
Thank you for your work
seconded
I have mentioned it on the Guardian CiF. It was on CiF I first heard of Richard’s work.
Thanks
I’ve been posting links to this site on CiF for years. Good to know someone noticed!
Thanks
Well done & thanks.
The intention is to use extracts to brief independent candidates – to give them talking points for use on the doorstep.
I hope that is OK?
Of course
We plan to do quite a lot of videos on this – targetting twitter, Instagram and TikTok
The drip-drip of the ideas is planed to go on for some time
Fantastic work.
Now the challenge is to get it read widely – well at least the summary.
You are right
A lot of work will go into that
It will be a sair fecht (hard fight) to change the minds of the usual suspects. Somehow is it possible to target the young?
I just dropped a link to this blog post onto Lucy Powell MP twitter feed
Should give her something to ponder over I hope
🙂
Many thanks.
Echoing Jayne, yours is one of very few voices of sanity.
Thank you for your tireless work Richard. You provide evidence based critique and evidence based solutions. You have referenced Robert Reich a few times. He has a similar approach. Yesterday he offered a very interesting insight as to why like you he posts every day…….because it matters.
I read it
I recognised much of what he said
On the assumption that MPs, and many of the public would like to know about government economics, I’d like to see some YouTube videos that explain it.
Since everyone is different, there would have to be videos of varying lengths. Many people will dip in for just 60 seconds, but some will have more time available, especially as they get “into it”. I can see the Taxing Wealth Report and this web site and glossary underpinning those videos.
The BBC has produced some videos, though they all look out of date.
See: The Best of Analysis: Economics, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01hshtp
This is exactly what we intend to make
Once we are up and running the aim is to produce a lot of them
This is the lazy and childish nonsense, or Thatcherite lie, Labour now stand for:-
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-lucy-powell-angela-rayner-george-osborne-conservative-b1095010.html
Attlee will be turning in his grave!
This is what the Taxing Wealth Report 2024 is a response to
Our local Green Party members often say “Tax wealth”, to which I respond “If you want policies please read” – The Taxing Wealth Report 2024 [1].
So far none of our members have specifically voiced opinion from your 28 points in ‘The Taxing Wealth Report 2024: recommendations to date and their suggested value’, they will though as the pennies drop.
RM, you are one of the few sane and comprehensible voices.
[1] https://taxingwealth.uk/2023/09/13/the-taxing-wealth-report-2024-recommendations-to-date-and-their-suggested-value/
Thanks Tony
There are new summariues all out on Friday
The report is in three formats, summary, short and long. All are now done (phew)
Can I suggest one more format: A visual picture representing the simple reality of MMT. I found one such picture online once, but I have lost the link. It showed a bathtub being filled with water from the tap, (Government money spent into the economy), and draining out via the plug hole, (taxation). Not allowing the bathtub to overflow (inflation) is a very obvious necessity to anyone viewing the poster, even if they have absolutely no clue how economics work. I wish I could find this visual of MMT again, but it could be easily replicated. A really bold visual presentation designed for billboards could be put up by the ‘Led By Donkeys’ team.
When I try to correct the gross wrong thinking of the ‘No Money Left’ BS, I use an incredibly simplistic example that is well known and understood by the majority of people. I ask them if they have ever played the game of Monopoly. I then ask what is the first task before the game can get underway? The answer is, that one of the players is designated the banker and doles out an equal amount of money to each of the other players. This replicates the exact same fact that our Government must spend money into the economy, before they can extract taxes. If no money was allocated right at the start, the Monopoly game could not proceed.
While these strategies may seem almost insultingly simplistic, it will soon become very obvious to the general public that the current ridiculous excuses offered by Rachel Reeves represent a grotesque manipulation of reality to support a political agenda of permanent austerity and inequality. We could achieve a grand exposure of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ Fiscal Rules straightjacket that most of the mainstream media would be unable to combat with their continuing propaganda. Let’s challenge Reeves to explain how she will manage to drain water out of that empty bathtub! This is the type of pragmatic picture that the press cannot possibly resist printing.
I will also be posting links to your Taxing Wealth Report 2024 on Bright Green, our Green Party website. I am very confident that our party will fully endorse your changes to the taxation system, abandoning an old relic of monetary policy that Richard expressed concern over. Your tax changes will be key to justifying the policies announced at the Green Party campaign presentation this morning, that will require significant government investment. While setting out the Green Party’s expansive campaign of redistribution and equality that once again includes essential rent controls, there was zero mention of that controversial word ‘Socialism’.
Thanks, Kim
Appreciated
Well, since you took the trouble to count the words, I looked up the number 126,245 in David Wells’s book Curious and Interesting Numbers (highly recommended to those of a mathematical bent). Sadly it wasn’t there, but the number nearest to it, 111,777 is apparently the lowest number which requires nineteen syllables to pronounce it, in English at least.
I should probably get out more.
🙂
This is one of my favourite websites for curious and interesting numbers and just facts about any integer really
https://www.numberempire.com/126245
Perhaps, I should get out more too
I was struck by the simplicity of a table in your ‘The Taxing Wealth Report’ (Tax and money flows within the economy) where it is demonstrated in simple terms how a expenditure of £100 by the government would generate £253.30 within the economy assuming tax was paid at 30%. Given that many politicians use the ‘There is no magic money tree’ argument to do nothing could this type of example be used to demonstrate that actually there is a magic money tree and it is called the money multiplier. I know it is rather simple but because the water industry is a prime example of what we are told we cannot afford I put examples of recipients to your table. Just imagine what a future Labour government could do spending £100bn on a new nationalised water industry.
Recipient Government Spend Net Receipts Tax 30% Net Spend Saved
1.National Water £100 – £30 £70 –
2. Suppliers – £70 £21 £49 –
3. Contractors – £49 £14.70 £34.30 –
4. Consumers – £34.30 £10.29 – £24.01
Total £100 £153.30 £75.99 £153.30 £24.01
Aggregate Total £253.30 £75.99 £153.30 £24.01
Ooops it seems the format of the table in my last posting did not carry through, but I guess you take my meaning. Cheers
I did
Thanks
If you put the following together surely it’s not unreasonable to argue there’s a sort of “Maoist” intellectual black hole at the heart of British society when it comes to understanding money:-
“Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell said on Tuesday that there is “no money left” for the party to roll out all the reforms it would like to if it wins the next general election.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-lucy-powell-angela-rayner-george-osborne-conservative-b1095010.html
“The truth is that individually, man is thrifty; collectively he tends to be spendthrift, and Governments in general, and Labour Governments in particular, simply love spending other people’s money.”
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104011
“Almost 10 million people across England could be waiting for an NHS appointment or treatment, 2 million more than previously estimated, according to a survey by the Office for National Statistics.”
“The survey found that the delays were most prominent among 16-24-year-olds, one in five of whom said they had experienced waiting times of more than a year.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/03/almost-10-million-people-in-england-could-be-on-nhs-waiting-list
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/03/netflix-3-body-problem-trauma-china-liu-cixin-tv-cultural-revolution
Thinking further it seems as though with a country like the UK fixated on the need for austerity in regard to it having public goods and services the terms “Monetary Maoism” and “Monetary Maoists” would not be inappropriate!
Is there not still time for a final edit to remove 2,789 words?
No…
The Lucy Powell comment Richard is quite simply just playing politics. Whether she actually understands the monetary system is anyone’s guess but this type of patronising rhetoric is commonplace from all parties….so not just Labour.
The real challenge is how to overcome this embedded falsehood to the masses….not preaching to the converted like us; the subject needs somehow to become part of the mainstream media conversation; people like Peston, Andy Haldane, Mazucatto, BBC Newsnight need somehow to take this onboard and challenge politicians re their understanding of the nations money flow, then and only then will this stop being a tool. If you recall in the latest MMT film “Where’s the Money?”, they challenge one of the US Govt senior monetary politicians and after a lot of ummms and arrrs he admitted to not understanding it!!!
This is the challenge to the converted………….
Let’s see what happens
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/04/03/126245/comment-page-1/#comment-962926
Kim Sanders-Fisher’s comment:
“Can I suggest one more format: A visual picture representing the simple reality of MMT. I found one such picture online once, but I have lost the link. It showed a bathtub being filled with water from the tap, (Government money spent into the economy), and draining out via the plug hole, (taxation).”:
reminds me of the Phillips Hydraulic Economics Calculator. I first saw one in the Science Museum in Kensington (https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/how-does-economy-work) and loved the way the water, much like the economy, would ebb and flow for some time in response to an external change before reaching equilibrium…much like the economy.
https://youtu.be/iUrhENgn_m0