The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Genie]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

Hang on. If these policies are a shitfest that means The Tories lose the election, how can it then be unpopular to reverse them? 

“I hate what you've done so I'm voting you out"

"I hate that you've reversed the things I hated so I'm voting you out and bringing back the people who did the thing I hated" 

It makes no sense to think that. 

Tories spending billions we don’t have having one last raid of the public purse and chucking it on the debt pile for someone else to worry about.

Labour come in and inherit the almighty financial mess with tens of billions each month going out in interest payments alone. They have to raise taxes again to fill the massive holes in the budget.

Labour get called the bad guys who don’t want anyone to have any fun.

 

[Genie]

51 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Then leave the tax of the disaffected masses alone and raise the tax elsewhere.  Tax the Oil and Gas companies as they say The Tories should. Tax the higher earners and more than before. 

But I still don't buy chucking people out because you disagree with what they've done then getting angry at the reversal. 

By the time Labour get in I would hope energy is back to normal and there’s no huge windfall money left to tax. It’s long gone into shareholder accounts.

[Genie]

4 hours ago, HKP90 said:

Wait till these measures cause rampant  inflation, which forces the BoE to massively raise interest rates, which will mean people can't pay their mortgages and lose their houses. 

And then they see massive bonuses for bankers, and the Government literally not giving a flying s**t if they are sleeping in a box under spaghetti junction. 

Things could get very ugly, just like in the 80's. 

The BoE should the sue the government who have absolutely mugged them off here. Slashing taxes immediately negates the point of increasing interest rates to lower inflation.

 

[meregreen]

2 hours ago, PaulC said:

Theres a lot of poor older people who care more about immigration than anything else so wont vote Labour. I wonder if things will change after this winter. 

And yet immigration is invariably higher under the Tories. Their paymasters have always regarded a large pool of low paid workers as a desirable state. 

[Panto_Villan]

4 hours ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

Well we will find out how it gets implemented. I see tax cuts and borrowing. Its not how I would grow the economy either but it is one proven way of growing economies. I would have immediately conceded all points to the EU over Brexit and come home from the USA with a trade deal. Obviously I wouldn't have inflicted Brexit on UK business in the first place but we have to grow somehow. The UK's economy is in no way setup to handle a deep recession which is where we are headed.

The problem is that their policies are so financially reckless this will hurt more than it helps. A good friend of mine is a multimillionaire banker (I.e. the sort of person who should like this) and he’s aghast.

Borrowing money to pay for tax cuts is proper hardcore free market ideology. It’s much further to the right of Cameron / Osborne who argued the country needed to spend less on public services to live within its means. I really don’t think these tax breaks are going to increase growth much at all, just decrease revenue. And as others have said - they’ve had years to do this, and they’ve chosen to do it when borrowing costs are shooting up and inflation is out of control?

Truss’ policies have all been like this. People obviously need assistance on fuel bills, but giving an open ended promise to cap gas bills at a certain price for two years potentially makes this the most expensive fiscal policy in history - and then not to put a windfall tax on super profits of generators is absolute madness. Plenty of moderate Tories and business types think it’d be perfectly fair to cap profits at say 300% of normal. There’s no way that’d hurt investment.

It’s going to force interest rates up too. Markets are pricing in rates of 5.5% now (apparently 2.3% was expected at the start of August). Tax breaks are inflationary. Making the pound weaker because you’re not economically credible makes imports more expensive so inflation goes up. And that means higher rates. This is hitting everyone in the pocket.

Like, we went through austerity just to spunk all the money we saved on this shit?

[Panto_Villan]

5 hours ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

Well we will find out how it gets implemented. I see tax cuts and borrowing. Its not how I would grow the economy either but it is one proven way of growing economies. I would have immediately conceded all points to the EU over Brexit and come home from the USA with a trade deal. Obviously I wouldn't have inflicted Brexit on UK business in the first place but we have to grow somehow. The UK's economy is in no way setup to handle a deep recession which is where we are headed.

I guess I didn’t actually cover your point re: business in my previous rant, so just quickly - most of this stuff is aimed at individuals, not companies. Corp tax is remaining at 19% rather than going up to 20%. I run a medium-sized company and that barely registers tbh; it’s not like it’s going to generate more investment because even 20% is a relatively low tax rate.

Generally it’s much better to give tax breaks or incentives for the specific behaviour you want to generate (eg investment in capital equipment, or startups, or training, etc) rather than just cutting tax. That way you know the money is being spent productively rather than just being siphoned off to investors.

But more importantly, someone has to actually buy the things you’re selling. Leaving the EU has made it harder to sell overseas so absolutely crushing the domestic market by making people much poorer (see the previous post) is really bad for business even if they are also handing out a 1% tax cut in corporation tax.

[ciggiesnbeer]

2 hours ago, Panto_Villan said:

I guess I didn’t actually cover your point re: business in my previous rant, so just quickly - most of this stuff is aimed at individuals, not companies. Corp tax is remaining at 19% rather than going up to 20%. I run a medium-sized company and that barely registers tbh; it’s not like it’s going to generate more investment because even 20% is a relatively low tax rate.

Generally it’s much better to give tax breaks or incentives for the specific behaviour you want to generate (eg investment in capital equipment, or startups, or training, etc) rather than just cutting tax. That way you know the money is being spent productively rather than just being siphoned off to investors.

But more importantly, someone has to actually buy the things you’re selling. Leaving the EU has made it harder to sell overseas so absolutely crushing the domestic market by making people much poorer (see the previous post) is really bad for business even if they are also handing out a 1% tax cut in corporation tax.

Insightful post thank you.

Interesting numbers, the USA federal corporate tax rate is 21%, I work for a Swedish company where the corporate tax rate is 20.6%. I wouldn't have expected Sweden to have a lower corporation rate than the USA tbh. 

 

Edited September 24, 2022 by ciggiesnbeer

[LondonLax]

7 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

You misunderstand me. A lot of the poor people still vote Tory because they think that’s what rich people do. The working class sees Tories as being hard on immigration and benefit fraud and all that nonsense without realising they’re shooting themselves in the foot. 
 

They don’t admit they’re poor and they aspire to vote Tory because that’s what non poor people do

Maybe that’s true for some but I think a lot of working class Tory voters could also be what we in Australia call ‘the little Aussie battler’.

In these peoples minds they know they are not rich despite slogging themselves at work. The way they see it, a big chunk of their ‘hard earned’ wages are being taken and given to the ‘bone idle’ / ‘economic immigrant’ (take your pick) neighbour down the road while they consider that they ‘never asked for a handout in my life’ and ‘the government does nothing for people like me’ etc etc

They vote Tory because they perceive leftist parties as prioritising taking pity on minorities or championing ‘fashionable causes dreamt up by student unions’. They see leftist parties taking from ‘hard working battlers’ to help ‘leftist vanity projects’ instead. 

[NurembergVillan]

8 hours ago, PaulC said:

Theres a lot of poor older people who care more about immigration than anything else so wont vote Labour. I wonder if things will change after this winter. 

Hard to vote Tory when you're frozen onto the sofa.

8 hours ago, sidcow said:

It's not like that though. You just go back to where we were. It's not going to cost anything, in fact it will raise money. 

It's illogical to throw out a party because they've done something you disagree with then throw out their replacements for reversing the same policy. It's either a shit policy or it isn't. 

The British voting public, famous for their deployment of logic and critical thinking.

[bickster]

This says everything you need to know. Thats how far to the right the Tories have gone and how much they've lost their minds

 

[Panto_Villan]

4 hours ago, ciggiesnbeer said:

Insightful post thank you.

Interesting numbers, the USA federal corporate tax rate is 21%, I work for a Swedish company where the corporate tax rate is 20.6%. I wouldn't have expected Sweden to have a lower corporation rate than the USA tbh. 

 

Yeah, the headline US tax rates are a little misleading. There’s so many deductions that in practice large companies or wealthy individuals rarely pay anything close to the official tax rate, so in practice Swedish companies probably do pay more tax.

But none of the rates are anywhere near high enough that a company would refuse to do business in that country because it just wasn’t worth their time. A few percentage points here or there really just affects multinationals when deciding where to put there headquarters - which is why the EU got so pissed with Ireland and their 12.5% corp tax rate, as they were basically enriching themselves at the cost of everyone else in the bloc.

Anyway, I’m veering off topic now. Sunak has relatively orthodox financial views but Kwarteng and Truss seem to hold fringe views even among the right.

[HKP90]

11 hours ago, Genie said:

Tories spending billions we don’t have having one last raid of the public purse and chucking it on the debt pile for someone else to worry about.

Labour come in and inherit the almighty financial mess with tens of billions each month going out in interest payments alone. They have to raise taxes again to fill the massive holes in the budget.

Labour get called the bad guys who don’t want anyone to have any fun.

 

I think the way to deal with that is on the first day in office provide a comprehensive explanation showing just how messed up the finances are, and what caused it. Name names, provide high levels of detail, no sugar coating. Do it in a 'covid style' public briefing to the nation, with graphs and diagrams, and independent financial experts. Leave it 6 months and the chance will pass. 

[sidcow]

26 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

I think the way to deal with that is on the first day in office provide a comprehensive explanation showing just how messed up the finances are, and what caused it. Name names, provide high levels of detail, no sugar coating. Do it in a 'covid style' public briefing to the nation, with graphs and diagrams, and independent financial experts. Leave it 6 months and the chance will pass. 

Or read out a note they've left behind saying the moneys all gone. 

[Genie]

1 hour ago, HKP90 said:

I think the way to deal with that is on the first day in office provide a comprehensive explanation showing just how messed up the finances are, and what caused it. Name names, provide high levels of detail, no sugar coating. Do it in a 'covid style' public briefing to the nation, with graphs and diagrams, and independent financial experts. Leave it 6 months and the chance will pass. 

Exactly, they need to repeat it over and over. The Tories finance disaster. Every day for 4 years. 

[choffer]

 

[Xann]

8 hours ago, NurembergVillan said:

The British voting public, famous for their deployment of logic and critical thinking.

 

[tinker]

Does the national insurance raise being dropped mean the NHS isn't getting the extra money it needs to survive? 

[NurembergVillan]

10 minutes ago, tinker said:

Does the national insurance raise being dropped mean the NHS isn't getting the extra money it needs to survive? 

*Insert Brexit bus here*

[foreveryoung]

 

[Rds1983]