Those great founders of modern liberal thinking, Keynes and Beveridge, would have blanched at the amazing spectacle of Clegg, Cable and Alexander nodding their agreement on the front bench, a useful row of fig leaves.
Blanched indeed….they would be wondering how on earth we had got to a situation where the government spent 50% of the enire economic output of the country.
Rebalancing £2bn in child tax credits will help redress the worst effects of the VAT rise for the poorest and lifting the lowest-paid out of income tax will help all on the basic rate, but it does nothing for the 62% of adults who earn too little to pay tax.
Sorry? 62% of adults earn too little to pay income tax?
There are some 30 million taxpayers in a country of 65 million people. Take off the number of children (umm, 13 million or so?) and we’ve got more than 50% of adults paying tax.
So, soes anyone know what this number actually is and where or how Polly has garbled it?
Corporation tax will be the lowest in the west.
Err, no it won’t.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Peter // Jun 23, 2010 at 9:33 am
http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2010/06/polly-toynbees-elementary-mistake-of.html
62% of adults DO pay income tax, she conveniently got it the wrong way round.
2 matgb // Jun 23, 2010 at 9:39 am
either that or she’s garbling the IFS stuff about the lowest quintile, where I think that number’s about right as well.
3 dearieme // Jun 23, 2010 at 10:05 am
Can you just picture what Keynes would have thought of a dimwit like Polly? He was from the era when academics, it is said, never swore, but he would have been mighty tempted.
4 Johnathan Pearce // Jun 23, 2010 at 10:56 am
She probably just made it up.
5 FrancisT // Jun 23, 2010 at 11:06 am
Also in the Grauniad there’s this bit from their editorial:
“There are four main sources of national income. The first is government spending, [...]”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/budget-2010-george-osborne-editorial
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