Bolitics The New Condem Government

[peterms]

 

So if you follow their example, listen to what they say, and read their website, it seems clear that they want people to consume less.

 

 

They do want people to consume less.  The basis for this is that the current rate of consumption exceeds the capacity of the natural world to sustain it.  The choice is about how we will consume less, not whether we will, since it is physically impossible to continue consumption at this rate.

 

It seems better to plan a transition to a sustainable level of consumption, than to career mindlessly into the brick wall which lies in wait.

[snowychap]

...it seems clear that they want people to consume less.

They want (overall) consumption to decrease, you mean? Edited January 27, 2015 by snowychap

[peterms]

 

...it seems clear that they want people to consume less.

They want (overall) consumption to decrease, you mean?

 

 

Yes, by reducing the consumption of those who over-consume.  In particular, finding ways of achieving sustainable consumption (eg renewable energy replacing finite fossil fuels).  And moving away from the ethos of a throwaway society.

[MakemineVanilla]

 

 

...it seems clear that they want people to consume less.

They want (overall) consumption to decrease, you mean?

 

 

Yes, by reducing the consumption of those who over-consume.  In particular, finding ways of achieving sustainable consumption (eg renewable energy replacing finite fossil fuels).  And moving away from the ethos of a throwaway society.

 

 

But try and find someone who will actually admit that they over-consume.

 

Just like Natalie Bennett can find reasons to excuse her own massive carbon footprint, most people can justify their life-style.

 

It's always 'the other buggers'. 

[peterms]

 

 

 

...it seems clear that they want people to consume less.

They want (overall) consumption to decrease, you mean?

 

 

Yes, by reducing the consumption of those who over-consume.  In particular, finding ways of achieving sustainable consumption (eg renewable energy replacing finite fossil fuels).  And moving away from the ethos of a throwaway society.

 

 

But try and find someone who will actually admit that they over-consume.

 

Just like Natalie Bennett can find reasons to excuse her own massive carbon footprint, most people can justify their life-style.

 

It's always 'the other buggers'. 

 

 

Yes, and so it will be far easier to get people to make changes by finding ways to consume less resources without reducing the quality of life dramatically.

 

But if for example our electricity is provided by renewables rather than by coal or gas, I doubt most people would see that as a worsening of their lifestyle.  Moving away from conspicuous overconsumption as a mark of status or self-esteem will be harder, because so much is invested in training people to act as over-consumers.

[chrisp65]

 

 

 

But try and find someone who will actually admit that they over-consume.

 

Just like Natalie Bennett can find reasons to excuse her own massive carbon footprint, most people can justify their life-style.

 

It's always 'the other buggers'. 

 

 

I'd suggest that anybody that was able to read your question has over consumed.

 

If you have a smart phone, or a tablet, laptop or old school computer you have to be prepared to allow every single person on the planet, all 7.3 billion, to also have one and a method of powering it. Or you are setting yourself apart as an exceptional over consumer.

 

Anybody truly worried about over consumption needs to work out the earth killing statistics involved in everyone eating meat.

Edited January 27, 2015 by chrisp65

[snowychap]

If you have a smart phone, or a tablet, laptop or old school computer you have to be prepared to allow every single person on the planet, all 7.3 billion, to also have one and a method of powering it. Or you are setting yourself apart as an exceptional over consumer.

I get your point to a degree but it's rather disingenuous. It suggests that people are in control of their own environments (and the 'stuff' that goes with them).

It's a little like the '1%' of the world is anyone who may 'own' an average house in that there London town upwards. That's conkers, frankly.

[blandy]

The proposal is to give the citzens' income and take away the tax allowance. Since the tax allowance system is already being administered, it is an adjustment to an existing system, not a whole new apparatus of collection.

Whether people are better or worse off depends on their income. The Dillow piece I linked gives the example of someone on £14k who would be better off..

it adds in millions of people back into the tax system. Those currently not paying tax.

As everyone earning at or above the amount in the worked example you quoted would benefit - they'll all lose 2800 in extra tax and gain the 3600 in CI then that's another massive cost which needs to be paid for by another means. Snowy talked about PAYE being basically a no cost way of dealing with all the extra people now paying tax. But a lot of low paid work isn't PAYE. A lot of people changing jobs and now paying tax on them means more admin.

Despite snowy reckoning that I'm maintaining my original stance whatever evidence is put in front of me, it remains the case that the policy is clearly a daft way of trying to solve a problem. It's one that through universality brings millions more people into the tax and benefits system. It's one that by its universality would need to be set at level where top up benefits aren't needed, in order to make savings from replacing all the other benefits, or else the savings aren't there. Its daft. Or to put it another way, as the people who advise the Green party on it did

However, Torry argues almost regardless of the level at which the citizen’s income is set, the poor cannot be compensated for withdrawal of both the personal tax allowance and means-tested benefits without the scheme becoming too expensive.

 In today's Grauniad

[chrisp65]

 

If you have a smart phone, or a tablet, laptop or old school computer you have to be prepared to allow every single person on the planet, all 7.3 billion, to also have one and a method of powering it. Or you are setting yourself apart as an exceptional over consumer.

I get your point to a degree but it's rather disingenuous. It suggests that people are in control of their own environments (and the 'stuff' that goes with them).

It's a little like the '1%' of the world is anyone who may 'own' an average house in that there London town upwards. That's conkers, frankly.

 

 

I disagree. If you believe you have the right to drive a car and use a phone you either have to accept everyone else does, or you accept that you are somehow special and have rights over them. If everyone has a car and a phone, we kill the planet. That's not disingenuous, that's fact.

 

China is rapidly expanding and wants cars, milk, pork etc.. When India does the same, followed by Pakistan and Malaysia etc., we are in real trouble. But all they want is what we already have. So if that can't be safely provided, then the logic is that we must be over consuming as either a privilege or a right.

[MakemineVanilla]

 

 

If you have a smart phone, or a tablet, laptop or old school computer you have to be prepared to allow every single person on the planet, all 7.3 billion, to also have one and a method of powering it. Or you are setting yourself apart as an exceptional over consumer.

I get your point to a degree but it's rather disingenuous. It suggests that people are in control of their own environments (and the 'stuff' that goes with them).

It's a little like the '1%' of the world is anyone who may 'own' an average house in that there London town upwards. That's conkers, frankly.

 

 

I disagree. If you believe you have the right to drive a car and use a phone you either have to accept everyone else does, or you accept that you are somehow special and have rights over them. If everyone has a car and a phone, we kill the planet. That's not disingenuous, that's fact.

 

China is rapidly expanding and wants cars, milk, pork etc.. When India does the same, followed by Pakistan and Malaysia etc., we are in real trouble. But all they want is what we already have. So if that can't be safely provided, then the logic is that we must be over consuming as either a privilege or a right.

 

 

You provide a perfect example of Kant's categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law".

[peterms]

 

The proposal is to give the citzens' income and take away the tax allowance. Since the tax allowance system is already being administered, it is an adjustment to an existing system, not a whole new apparatus of collection.

Whether people are better or worse off depends on their income. The Dillow piece I linked gives the example of someone on £14k who would be better off..

it adds in millions of people back into the tax system. Those currently not paying tax.

As everyone earning at or above the amount in the worked example you quoted would benefit - they'll all lose 2800 in extra tax and gain the 3600 in CI then that's another massive cost which needs to be paid for by another means. Snowy talked about PAYE being basically a no cost way of dealing with all the extra people now paying tax. But a lot of low paid work isn't PAYE. A lot of people changing jobs and now paying tax on them means more admin.

Despite snowy reckoning that lots of evidence has been put before me and im unwilling or unable to accept or understand it, it Remains the case that the policy is clearly a daft way of trying to solve a problem. It's one that through universality brings millions more people into the tax and benefits system. It's one that by its universality would need to be set at level where top up benefits aren't needed, in order to make savings from replacing all the other benefits, or the savings aren't there. Its daft. Or to put it another way, as the people who came up with it did

However, Torry argues almost regardless of the level at which the citizen’s income is set, the poor cannot be compensated for withdrawal of both the personal tax allowance and means-tested benefits without the scheme becoming too expensive.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/27/green-party-citizens-income-policy-hits-poor

 

 

Much of the discussion is based on grafting CI on to the existing system.  Perhaps that's like running two different railway gauges, or trying to be in the Euro and have your own currency.  Possibly that's the problem the CIT have in finding the right tweaks to make it work within the context of a system set up with something else in mind.

 

Dillow suggests we may need another Beveridge review, and perhaps that's right.  One of the fundamental questions is what level of conditionality we want to attach to social provision.  We currently have a system which is increasingly about punishing people for not finding jobs which are either unavailable, or which couldn't support them.  That is a benefit to the worst employers, by driving people into the most marginal forms of employment as an alternative to starvation.  That is where CI is an interesting idea.  It's obviously fundable, though not without changes to other parts of the tax and benefits system.

 

But on the point about bringing people into the tax and benefits system, those people are in the system in any event, and it's hard to imagine something more complex and convoluted than the position of someone on low pay, variable hours, and in and out of work.  Many don't manage to get the benefits they are entitled to, and end up underclaiming.  If they somehow manage to overclaim, they are treated as criminals.  I think that's unacceptable.  A simpler system would both reduce difficulty for the user, and also reduce administrative cost.  We seem to manage to make it work for pensioners to have a basic unconditional income.

 

The basic principle of social security is that there should be universal access to core requirements - education, health, housing, income.  That principle is being further eroded every year.  If a CI can reverse that, I think it's worth exploring.

[snowychap]

I disagree. If you believe you have the right to drive a car and use a phone you either have to accept everyone else does, or you accept that you are somehow special and have rights over them.

In as much as I have the 'right' to have/use/do those things everyone else wherever they are has that 'right', too.

If everyone has a car and a phone, we kill the planet. That's not disingenuous, that's fact.

I doubt that we do. We probably kill off the human race but for the Earth that'll be no bad thing.

[snowychap]

it adds in millions of people back into the tax system. Those currently not paying tax.

I don't currently pay income tax and yet I'm in 'the system'.

I still receive a P60 (a P60U I think it is), for example.

 

But a lot of low paid work isn't PAYE.

What work?

 

However, Torry argues almost regardless of the level at which the citizen’s income is set, the poor cannot be compensated for withdrawal of both the personal tax allowance and means-tested benefits without the scheme becoming too expensive.

 In today's Grauniad

 

That doesn't make the thing 'daft'. It means that the people researching it have done more work and found that one part of it wouldn't work as they originally thought and that, in its current form, it may not achieve some of the things it would have originally hoped for.

That's a good thing to discover because it means that more thought can go in to developing and adapting the idea.

It might well have more of a beneficial impact in a few years time when working age benefits, tax credits and the like will have been frozen (or even reduced) in to insignificance.

Edited January 28, 2015 by snowychap

[blandy]

That doesn't make the thing 'daft'. It means that the people researching it have done more work and found that one part of it wouldn't work as they originally thought and that, in its current form, it may not achieve some of the things it would have originally hoped for.

However, Torry argues almost regardless of the level at which the citizen’s income is set, the poor cannot be compensated for withdrawal of both the personal tax allowance and means-tested benefits without the scheme becoming too expensive.

In today's Grauniad

That's a good thing to discover because it means that more thought can go in to developing and adapting the idea.

It might well have more of a beneficial impact in a few years time when working age benefits, tax credits and the like will have been frozen (or even reduced) in to insignificance.

We might differ on whats' a daft policy, then.

For me, one which as currently espoused is known to be unworkable and unaffordable as currently set up, and which would have the opposite effect to that intended (aiding the poorest) and which requires fundamental change - fundamental as in going from "universal citizens income" to not universal + means tested/income related and at a completely different level and value to that detailed at the moment. Well that's a daft policy in my book - and to be frank, in the book of the Greens and their advisors too. It's just taken them a bit to realise it. They now say it's "impossible for a government to implement and we ought to find a replacement"

Whether they are honest enough to rework it and come up with a tenable allternative version before the election, we'll see. I hope they do.

The idea of simplifying a very complex system is admirable and would hopefully be beneficial.

I think the notion of universality seems at first glance like a panacea, but as the sums are looked at (and it really doesn't take a lot of looking at) if the lvele is such as to replace all the other benefits (or most all) then it needs to be pretty high. Give that much to everyone and it starts to become or clearly is unaffordable.

Lower the level, and it's no longer a simple replacement for all the other benefits, but an additional one. And this is where the idea of claiming efficiency savings falls over.

It's not as obviously fundable or as obviously effective a solution as hoped for. Quite the opposite. It's daft (I may have mentioned this previously).

[tonyh29]

Anybody truly worried about over consumption needs to work out the earth killing statistics involved in everyone eating meat.

I thought it was established that cows produce more emissions than cars and were causing global warming ... And thus by eating a cow we were saving the planet .... Or have I been listening to Troy McClure too much ?

[chrisp65]

Hi! I'm troy McClure, you may have seen me in such infomercials as 'eat a beaver, please a cow'.

[tonyh29]

"Eat a cow , he'd eat you if he could" is one of my favourite quotes , I try and use it at least once s week , always raises a laugh when I'm out with vegetarians

(OT sorry )

Edited January 29, 2015 by tonyh29

[snowychap]

Whether they are honest enough to rework it and come up with a tenable allternative version before the election, we'll see. I hope they do.

Why would you hope that they do?

Simply for the opportunity of labeling the idea 'daft' again?

...as the sums are looked at (and it really doesn't take a lot of looking at)...

Doesn't it?

It required the CIT looking at the figures with the help of the University of Essex's Euromod model in order to discover the flaw in the numbers that they have (as per the link you supplied earlier).

[snowychap]

There is more detail on what the CIT found when modelling and what they came up with using two other options (as detailed below) in that model here in their newsletter.

 

Another option: 'alternative 1'

As we have seen, the major generators of large losses among households with low disposable incomes are the combined value of Working Tax Credits and the Personal Tax Allowance, and the difficulties encountered when a complex system of means-tested and contributory benefits is replaced by a simple Citizen's Income.

It might therefore be worth proposing a method of implementing a Citizen's Income that circumvents these problems. What is not an option is to tamper with the Citizen's Income itself. Its value can be reduced, but it must remain an unconditional and nonwithdrawable income for every individual. If it does not do so then it will not deliver the advantages of social cohesion, simplicity, transparency, zero marginal deduction rate, lower total marginal deduction rates, reduced error and fraud rates, loss of stigma, etc.

So my proposal is that a Citizen's Income should be paid, that the Personal Tax Allowance should be abolished (which means that thresholds for taxable income have to be adjusted as all earned income will have become taxable), and that the Citizen's Income should be taken into account in the calculation of all existing means-tested benefits (including Tax Credits). This suggests that the Basic State Pension will be retained, so the Citizen's Income rate for those over the state retirement age should be £30 per week. (The new Single Tier State Pension will make this payment unnecessary.). Child Benefit will be retained and Child Citizen's Income should be paid at £20 p.w.. The adult Citizen's Income rate should remain at £71: the 2012-13 Income Support rate. Again, National Insurance Contributions will be paid at 12% on all earned income. All existing benefits are left in place, and the Citizen's Incomes are added to the means taken into account when means-tested benefits are calculated.

Simulation of the current system and of this alternative Citizen's Income scheme reveals that only a handful of households would experience any loss at all. In that respect the scheme is entirely feasible politically. However, such a lack of losses comes at a cost: £84bn, which is clearly unsustainable.

One way to solve the cost problem is to increase the basic and higher Income Tax rates by 10% from 20% to 30% and from 40% to 50%, and to increase the highest rate by 5% from 45% to 50%. The results are still encouraging. In the lowest disposable income decile, only 1,000 households in the country would suffer losses of over 10%. Overall, only 5.3% of households would suffer losses of over 10%, and the vast majority of those households are amongst those with the highest disposable incomes. Only 0.2% of households would suffer losses of over 15%.

The cost of this scheme is £24bn per annum. Restricting pension contribution tax relief to the basic rate (as suggested in the Citizen's Income Trust's illustrative scheme) would provide about £10bn, and administrative savings would provide perhaps a further £2bn. The scheme as calculated leaves in place the current contributory benefits: Unemployment Benefit (contributory JSA), Incapacity Benefit, and contributory ESA. There would be a case for reducing these by the amount of the Citizen's Income in order to make savings. The extra economic growth that a) immediate increased disposable incomes amongst households with the lowest disposable income would generate, and that would be generated by decreasing marginal deduction rates and therefore increasing employment incentives, should easily provide the rest.

The number of Working Tax Credit claims would almost halve, and only 1% of households would still be receiving more than £200 per month in Working Tax Credits. Child Tax Credit claims would fall by about 20%. In both cases the value of claims would reduce, so we would see some households abandoning Tax Credit claims. The result would be administrative savings and increasing employment incentives.

A further option: 'alternative 2'

A further option would be to reduce the working age adult Citizen's Income to £50 p.w. (i.e., to more nearly match it to the current value of the Personal Tax Allowance rather than to the Income Support rate) and the young adult's Citizen's Income to £40 p.w.. Again the Citizen's Income amounts are added to other means taken into account when means-tested benefits are calculated. Income Tax rate rises could then be restricted to 5% throughout, thus raising Income Tax rates to 25%, 45% and 50%. The cost is again £24bn p.a.

The results are again encouraging. 0.08% of households in the lowest disposable income decile would face losses of over 10%, and only 0.2% would face losses of over 5%. Overall, 0.25% of households would face losses of over 15%, 1.1% of households losses of over 10%, and 20% of households losses of over 5%, again mostly amongst households with higher disposable incomes. This is the pattern that we would expect.

In this case the number of Working Tax Credit claims would reduce by 32%, and the number of households receiving Child Tax Credits would reduce by 16%. As we would expect, the reduction in the number of households receiving means-tested benefits does not reduce by as much as with a larger Citizen's Income, but the reductions are still substantial and would deliver administrative savings. Total marginal deduction rates would be reduced for either of the two schemes, thus encouraging additional employment or self-employment. With either alternative scheme we would therefore see a gradual reduction in the number of claims for Tax Credits.

[blandy]

Whether they are honest enough to rework it and come up with a tenable allternative version before the election, we'll see. I hope they do.

Why would you hope that they do?Simply for the opportunity of labeling the idea 'daft' again?

...as the sums are looked at (and it really doesn't take a lot of looking at)...

Doesn't it?It required the CIT looking at the figures with the help of the University of Essex's Euromod model in order to discover the flaw in the numbers that they have (as per the link you supplied earlier).

I'm reading your post as your way of saying "yes, you were right and I was wrong" -

I'd hope they do snowy, because I like a lot of their policies and wish them well. They cannot do well when they have a policy as daft (my words) or "impossible to implement" (the originators words) as the one they proposed.