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General Election - TOMORROW!


Richard

Which way would you vote?  

140 members have voted

  1. 1. Which way would you vote?

    • Conservative
      43
    • Labour
      28
    • Lib Dems
      24
    • Green
      10
    • BNP
      16
    • Other
      6
    • Not voting
      10
    • Spoiling Ballot Paper
      3


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yesh the insurance system in the states really works well eh ?

Second hand information? Nothing like a slice of hypocrisy!

Second hand information is hypocrisy? You have to directly observe everything you accept is true, or you're a hypocrite?

Yes, I can see how that will make for a more sensible approach to life. :?

No, Doctor! I cannot accept your advice about my child's imminent need for an operation until I have spent seven years qualifying myself, and carried out several similar operations to test their likely success.

And I do not accept your suggestion about the probable temperature of the sun until I can fly there myself and test it personally. And so on...

Actually Peter, Ian accussed me of only having second hand information on my view on the UK, stating that I hadn't been home in a while.

Now Ian is having a view on a country he has taken a 2 week holiday in, hence my hypocrisy comment.

Nice attempt at sarcasm though! :crylaugh:

Touche. I should have read the whole thread. :oops: :oops:

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yes

quite simple over there it is the free market model a lot of tories like the same free market that has brought us high food prices, high oil prices and the credit crunch

and yet you support it and moan about high prices,

that is hyprocirsy dear sir

What the ****... you accussed me of only having second hand information, because I haven't been home in a while, and yet you have an opinion on the Medical System of a country you have taken a 2 week holiday in, and it's not second hand info, then you go on babbling about High Oil prices and the Free Market...

see someone who can not take part in a rational debate has no argument

you clearly support the US system from your comment you clearly support the free market in everything

therefore the logical point is to take that into account

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Ah I see, got you know, so your second hand information is OK, yet if I dare comment on a country I spent most of my life in and visited just over 2 years ago, my second hand information is not valid... I get you now... :bonk:

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yes

quite simple over there it is the free market model a lot of tories like the same free market that has brought us high food prices, high oil prices and the credit crunch

and yet you support it and moan about high prices,

that is hyprocirsy dear sir

What the ****... you accussed me of only having second hand information, because I haven't been home in a while, and yet you have an opinion on the Medical System of a country you have taken a 2 week holiday in, and it's not second hand info, then you go on babbling about High Oil prices and the Free Market...

see someone who can not take part in a rational debate has no argument

you clearly support the US system from your comment you clearly support the free market in everything

therefore the logical point is to take that into account

What, you accuse me of something, you then do exactly the same thing, but worse, as you have never experienced first hand the thing you are commenting on, I call you on it, and you babble on about the free market... Bloody hell :crylaugh:

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it is amazing when you challenge free marketers on the obvious hyprocrisy many of them show they just resort to deflection tactics

that is the difference in basic philopshies that they can not reconcile

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not at all this is ageneral election thread and thus will change from policy to policy but is not one of the Troies main planks of polic, in fact is not core to ther own philopshy less state interference and allow the free market to do it's job

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No, you relied to my comment, and moved it to the free market... And yes I do agree with the free market, and I complain about the price of petrol, and the only reason it is so high is due to government taxing the shit out of it, and invading the area it's sourced from.. nowt to do with the free market!

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standard answer of course from a free marketer, when prices go high somehow the market is not at fault

sure there are supply issues but these force the price up

fact is finally it is coming to bear that the world economic situation is changing due to India and China demanding so much as they do have a third or more of the world population

that is what is driving a lot of this up

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Yes market forces have played a part in increasing fuel prices

But so has government fuel taxation, every time the price goes up the government gets more money as a great deal of the taxation is percentage based

Market forces put up the price a bit then the government compound the issue with taxation based on percentages of price which is fair enough in most instances but not in the case of fuel because the increase in fuel prices hits everyone, it puts the price of every commodity up which again are taxed on a percentage.

At the end of the day, there's only one winner in all that and its the government, whichever flavour of shite it happens to be.

The only other guarantee is that the government will waste a vast proportion of the money on the tools of war like trident, yeah like we needed an independent nuclear deterrent in this day an age

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obviouly you refer to VAT Bicks which applies to mosyt goods if they go up

however a good Idea I think I heard a tory float was when the price goes over a certai level for every amout the government gets in tax through VAT teh duty is reduced by teh same amount

would I think I heard his say bring down the price of unleaded down from around 110p a l to 105 a l

but oil now gone to $125 a barrell based to supply fears in several locations, thats the market, a few analysts now think oil could hit $200 a barrell

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and Bicks am I not right in thinking every buisness can reclaim VAT so only the public pay the extra ?
Only if your VAT expenditure is higher than your VAT income in which case you are not in business for much longer (or are committing carousel fraud)/
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not at all this is ageneral election thread and thus will change from policy to policy but is not one of the Troies main planks of polic, in fact is not core to ther own philopshy less state interference and allow the free market to do it's job
Not that the zaNU labour party have been active against the free market a lot have they, PFI etc.
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Yes obviously I'm referring to VAT which would be fine if the fuel duty escalator hadn't also been in place for 7 years or so (from both flavours of government), its a tax on top of a tax. Surely you can only tax a commodity once before it goes on sale, either have a fixed amount of fuel duty OR a percentage not frigging both

Here's something I didn't know, Local bus companies get a fuel rebate on their diesel, train operating companies don't. Is this what we call an encouragement to use the whole of the local transport network and stop using our cars?

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Having quickly read a bit in your link about the Libertarian party I find it strange that you should be, in a way, torn between them and the Lib Dems. From the little I've read about the Libertarian party it seems to me like your torn between chalk and cheese.

Note that I specified Orange Book LibDems... I'm not too keen on the LibDems with a more Social Democratic background. I hope that the LibDems manage to reclaim economic liberalism from the Tories.

Hmmm shall I vote for the party that wants to make the tax system fairer by re-distributing wealth to pay for public services such as the NHS. Or, on second thoughts shall I vote for the party that wants to scrap the fairest system of tax there is (income tax) and scrap the NHS in favour of an insurance-based system.

Actually, I advocate a taxation form that's even fairer than income tax ever could be:

Asset-based taxation.

The productive, those who produce things and services of value using comparatively little assets, shouldn't pay that much tax. The idle rich who sit in a mansion on a five thousand acre lot doing hookers and blow while earning meager returns from conservatively managed portfolios so they never have to do anything should pay much more tax. And of course, the act of keeping that five thousand acre lot off the market drives up housing prices for everyone else.

Moving to a system where each year you declared your assets (real estate, cars, anything really) and what their cost basis was and then paid some percentage of their aggregate value in tax would have many benefits both philosophical and practical.

I generally hew to a minarchist philosophy. As such, I believe that the only entirely legitimate role for the state is the defense of property rights. Everything else is at least at some level illegitimate (though the level of illegitimacy varies from case to case... I try to strike a balance between natural law-based justifications for minarchism and utilitarian justifications).

As such, in a perfectly minarchist state, that is to say one that essentially mediates disputes over property, it obviously follows that the level of benefit received from the state is roughly proportional to how wealthy one is. Thus any system of funding the state that does not tax on wealth is rather likely to be somewhat redistributionist: someone who doesn't have much doesn't have much to lose and therefore the government's provision of services to protect their property isn't worth that much.

A further philosophical advantage to this approach to taxation is that it in theory allows one to opt out of taxation (in which case, is it really a tax?). For instance the law could be constructed so that you would not be able to use the government to protect a given object unless a) the putative value was less than, say, 500 pounds (obviously taxation of every pencil is absurd and the accounting requirements for tracking each pencil would be stunning) or B) you reported owning the asset back to when you had acquired it and paid the proper current and/or back taxes on the asset. Thus, you could decide not to claim ownership of your house and thus not to pay tax, but you would be unable to use the police or the courts to evict squatters from the house or land. Perhaps you would decide that your security system or contract with a security service is sufficient to make recourse to the state unlikely and thus not worth paying the tax.

It is also quite possible to be redistributionist through asset-based taxation without requiring the unproductive to be subsidized by the productive (quite the opposite, really). Designate a portion of the aggregate collections for redistribution in the form of a non-refundable tax credit. For example, say that the tax rate is 5% per annum of claimed assets. 80% of that tax could be allocated to the state. The remaining 20% would be divided by the number of filers, with everyone's tax bill reduced by that amount (but with the amount owed never being negative). Thus the poorest n% of society would not pay any tax at all, regardless of their income.

As far as the NHS, the Orange Book (which Clegg contributed to, though not the relevant essay) at one point puts forth the idea of going to a Continental social insurance scheme as opposed to a tax-funded NHS. And I believe that it's possible to have a health system that preserves patient choice (and thus makes providers actually accountable to their patients), allows those providers who provide superior service to be superiorly compensated, while ensuring that the poorest in society have access to top-class medical care. Singapore, the Netherlands, and Massachusetts are all, IMO, moving towards such a system. I also believe that a similar approach can be used in education.

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