Relaxing The Rules: Swinegate Returns

The good citizens of Wales must be very afraid.

On the very day the government re-announced the last government's "Equality Strategy", Ann Clwyd, MP for Cynon Valley, apparently rose to her hind legs and said this in support of relaxing the rules recently passed by MPs to curb expenses abuse:

"During my election campaign, someone came up to me and shouted 'Thief!' and if I had been a man I would have run after him and punched him in the face.”

So Ann clearly reckons it would have been okay for ex-MP David Chaytor to lamp his outraged constituents - at least, presumably before this week's guilty plea - and now the Equality Strategy means there's nothing to stop her 'aving a go...

I empathise with MPs who say they are struggling with legislation that they misconceived in their haste to get re-elected. Really I do. Because you could say that about an awful lot of their output, including their appalling attack on the digital economy in the course of the infamous "wash-up".

But we soldier on without being entitled to run people down in the street and punch them in the face, and so must our MPs - male or female.

There must be limits to the extent MPs can relax the rules for themselves.

Where Will Your Tax Money Go? China?

Here is a fabulous tool to show how the UK Government spends our money. Here is a calculator showing where your own personal tax money goes. And, here is a forum to answer your burning questions around low cost government, waste and efficiency. These are all being developed in the course of the Open Knowledge Foundation's excellent Where Does My Money Go? project.

The forum has already settled a burning question of mine:

"What proportion of government revenue comes from personal income tax, as opposed to corporation tax?"

Answer: In 2008/09, the UK government collected £41.8bn in corporation tax and £149.6bn in income tax.

Together, we and the corporations paid about another £180bn in National Insurance (which of course corporations also pay for employing us) and VAT.

The government recently decided to lower the top-line corporate tax rate from 28% to 24%, and there have been protests about how large UK-based corporations like Vodafone minimise their tax. But I don't really begrudge them that. We need to incentivise private sector corporations to start here, and stay here to employ people and otherwise generate income.

I'm more concerned about how to incentivise ourselves. Corporations tax is a sideshow, compared to the fact that we individual taxpayers, who are effectively banned from incorporating, are supposed to aspire to pouring over 50% of our income into a leaky old public sector bucket - and then fund our own education, healthcare and "retirement" to the very considerable extent that the state cannot be relied upon.

The reason the economy struggles to grow is down to the horrific reality that over half of the country's economic output - and of our personal income - goes to support the public sector, which produces absolutely nothing. Civil servants should not feel slighted by that. As taxpayers they are in the private sector with the rest of us. And they have every right to feel just as alarmed as everyone else, if not more so - especially if they are sitting at a desk doing a non-job. Civil servants are citizens who are being overtaxed to pay for their own net incomes. Weird, huh?

Is this supposed to motivate each of us personally to stay in the UK and generate economic growth? Or is our declining share of income better spent on moving the family to, say, Hong Kong - or, indeed, to Singapore or China, as Jaguar advises, where people save half their income?

The reason that the current government's plans for how to stimulate growth are thin is because the government can't grow the economy. Only the private sector produces growth (though of course the government can be supportive... or not).

This coalition government can't and won't explain all this clearly, partly because it wants our taxes to keep rolling in so it can reduce the deficit in time for the next election, and partly because the Liberal Democrats in the ranks are almost as wedded to 'tax and spend' as their cousins in the Labour Party. Those people think that cutting taxes is "taking money out of the economy". But, of course, lower taxes merely leaves money in the hands of individuals - the private sector of the economy - where the public sector can't get at it.

Here's a growth hypothesis for you: If low income earners were to pay no tax, and others no more than 20% personal income tax/National Insurance plus 10% of income to a UK sovereign wealth fund that invested the money long term; and the administration functions in the public sector were halved, the UK would be growing faster by the next general election than under the current plan.

Discuss.

Image from Joystiq's coverage of tax relief campaign for UK games developers.

Anatomy Of A Dodgy AAA Rating?

Can't wait for a judgment in Cassa di Risparmio della Repubblica di San Marino SpA v. Barclays Bank Plc (Case No. 08-757, High Court, Queen’s Bench Division).

According to Bloomberg, CRSM claims that "Barclays Plc deliberately designed structured notes that would have a much higher risk of default than their triple-A rating suggested" - i.e. "25% or more" instead of “a fraction of 1 percent.”

With any luck, the case won't settle, and we'll have some more forensic insight into the relationship between investment banks and ratings agencies, as well as due diligence and the ratings methodologies...

Lifting The Lid On The EU's Finances

Congratulations to the Financial Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on their exposé on the gross fraud, waste and ineptitude inherent in the EU's €347 billion 'structural and cohesion' funds.

Even putting fraud and waste aside, it's hard to understand how this approach is sustainable if Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain are anything to go by. Public sector largesse eventually seems to generate the need for public bail-outs, especially when local governments borrow to match the free money that's available. No wonder the new UK government has put an end to direct local authority funding through this mechanism.

Certainly all this porkbarrelling has done little for 'cohesion'. A recent poll found that only 42% of Europeans trust the European Union - reflecting a general disenchantment with EU institutions over the past few decades.

The seven year budget cycle and lack of provision for returning unspent funds to donor states also makes the scheme incapable of flexing to meet changing economic circumstances. The fact that a large proportion of this money is lying around simply unclaimed in the current environment is scandalous, and another blow to economic confidence.

It's a travesty that this money was raised in national taxes in the first place, let alone handed over to Brussels on the terms of this scheme.

The EU's budget for this nonsense should be slashed next time around.

Image from Forest's Fine Foods.

Hey Eric: Lend Your Euros Directly To Other People

Like previous financial crises, this one won't end until individual and collective confidence in banks and the financial system is restored. And while it's all very well for the Eurozone's political masters to be demonstrating their 'political will' to hold the Eurozone together at individual taxpayers' expense, their latest attempt at restoring confidence has not exactly impressed Spain's debtors...

But such bail-out headlines merely the typically dominant institutional narrative. The real question is whether the Euro and EU institutions actually have the confidence of EU citizens - especially taxpayers. A recent poll suggests they do not: only 42% of Europeans trust the European Union - reflecting a general disenchantment with EU institutions over the past few decades. Meanwhile, in sharp contrast, bottom-up facilitators that enable citizens to participate in shaping and personalising their own services have done very well.

This is reflected in the behaviour of EU citizens on the economic front. The implications of the one-size-fits-all Eurozone monetary policy seem to be regarded as just as unfair by German taxpayers and the French savers supporting Eric Cantona's suggestion for mass bank-withdrawals on 7 December as by those hitting the streets of Greece and Ireland. The Guardian quotes Valérie Ohannesian, of the French Banking Federation, as saying Cantona's appeal is "stupid in every sense". Yet, crucially, she did not explain why people should feel more confident about leaving their money on deposit, or why it is fair that banks receive taxpayer bail-outs while taxes increase and spending is cut. In the absence of any other narrative, each bail-out undermines our confidence even further, to the point where we hit the streets and seriously consider suggestions like Eric Cantona's.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There is a bottom-up narrative emerging, and our politicians need to focus on it.

Eric Cantona's confident call for mass withdrawals hints at the fact that people are prepared to put their money where their mouth is. But it would be futile for those with surplus cash languishing in low interest savings accounts to withdraw it all and hide it under their beds. Instead, they should join those who already put their money to work helping others, by lending it directly on peer-to-peer lending platforms to creditworthy people and businesses at a decent rate that also represents a decent return.