
Nick King: The Chancellor should look to Laffer for Budget inspiration and cut taxes
The Treasury often fails to recognise the potential benefits of lower taxes, because they don’t properly factor in how behaviour changes.
The Treasury often fails to recognise the potential benefits of lower taxes, because they don’t properly factor in how behaviour changes.
We are in danger of losing sight of the simple truth which has been a favoured phrase of Tory politicians through the ages: borrowing today is simply taxation deferred.
If there’s one thing which ought to unite even the most passionate partisans of the different proposals, it’s the abject state of British decision-making on infrastructure.
My answer would be “maybe, provided the spending or tax cuts significantly improved our growth potential.”
They keep changing. But does it matter? For the last 30 years, when it comes to the public finances, the diet always starts tomorrow.
The Labour leadership contender adds that “we should never be ashamed of investing in our public services.”
Would the Government have the bottle for planning, childcare and police overhauls – and will Downing Street sign up to this plan anyway?
As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I am uneasy about the bail-out of Flybe. Every time a private business is bailed out by the taxpayer, the pressure grows.
The Prime Minister’s spending commitments sit alongside welcome proposals for devolution and reform.
Can have a bold enough economic policy that people in these newly gained seats can see the difference in five years’ time?
That’s a legitimate political agenda, and people are quite welcome to vote for it. But they deserve to know what’s coming.
The tax burden isn’t a full measure of the size of the state. But it’s arguably the pre-eminent factor and certainly that which most concerns the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
Labour is banking on our innumeracy. I don’t say that they are taking us for fools. Plenty of clever and educated people can’t process numbers on that scale.
And, the Chancellor notes in his Bolton speech, that excludes 59 Labour policies “which don’t have enough detail for us to cost fairly”.
It presents an exciting agenda spanning everything from hiring more staff to investing in key infrastructure and supporting innovation.