OTC makes the sensible case for scrapping large chunks of the quangocracy; buried away in the comments is his fuller manifesto, which is pretty much the same as my own:
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First step would be to leave the EU.
Second step would be to repeal every law based on EU directives. We can always re-implement later. Mass repeal of every law introduced by Labour since 1997. (Probably a lot of overlap!)
Third step would be to shit-can every consultancy contract with the government and renegotiate.
Every single drop of government funding for quangoes and charities stopped dead.
Massive tax simplification: flat tax of 25% on everything above £12,000 per annum. Dividends untaxed. Corporate tax abolished*. All duties abolished**. VAT abolished. National Insurance either abolished or replace the current Ponzi scheme with actual insurance.
Sell off the NHS.
Renationalise the trains and resell them in such a way that you don't have oligopolies on routes. Same thing for buses.
Deregulate schools and introduce vouchers.
Introduce citizens income, end ALL welfare programs. Implement program to gradually phase out citizen's income***.
Sack the entire civil service, district and town councils. Review the entire governance requirement.
Go to the market to get us out of the bank ownership business.
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* I'd quibble with this. It would be far better to have a 20% flat tax on all income, personal or corporate, than 25% on personal incomes and 0% on corporate.
** 'Duties' that equate to user charges, such as fuel duties to pay for roads; a modest tax of a few percent on new goods to cover refuse collection costs; or indeed taxes on land values seem like 'good' taxes to me.
*** I'm not sure where this is going. A higher effective income tax-free personal allowance is an important corollary of a Citizen's Income-style welfare system; as nobody can be sure which is preferable, why not give people a choice?
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*** I'm not sure where this is going. A higher effective income tax-free personal allowance is an important corollary of a Citizen's Income-style welfare system; as nobody can be sure which is preferable, why not give people a choice?
Passing money through the government is inherently inefficient, some of it always gets soaked up in costs. Abolish passing the money through government = abolish the costs.
The nearest thing we have to CI in this country is flat rate, non-contributory, non-taxable Child Benefit. Admin costs are negligible (0.5% or less) and measured fraud an error is negative, i.e. underclaims outweigh overclaims.
I don't see any moral distinction between Education Vouchers or Health Vouchers and CI. The only argument is about how much these should be in £-s-d.
Obo is being a bit enthusiastic here. A key facet in any part of my manifesto would be localism. We have the absurd situation of local people paying to national government and then local government having to bid through very expensive and laborious procedures for a chunk of the money back.
Scrapping duties? Are we ignoring Pigovian taxes now? Ban excessive taxation but there ought to be a balancing of costs.
Agreed on simplifying income taxes, scrapping VAT and NI (which the CBI would replace the latter anyway). But I thought LPUK was all no-income-tax, all-consumption-tax awhile back? Have you persuaded them round, Mark?
PT, to the extent that we need government (and we do need some), of course it should be as local as possible for the reasons you outline.
LPUK's tax policies are all over the place (trying to change their minds is about as fruitful as explaining Land Value Tax to the SNP or to Daily Mail readers), but Obo ploughs his own furrow and just talks sense, as we see above.
Most of what OTC and you want has been set out by Hannan and his oppo in 'The Plan - 12 months to chnage Britain'.
L, I keep meaning to buy that book. What hacked me off is that they promote the idea of Local Sales Tax rather than Land Value Tax. But I suppose I ought to read it and nick the best bits.
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