Incentives for property investment? There are times I want to go into government buildings with some sort of brain detector, see can I find anything. The reason why the property market is moribund is that property is still insanely overvalued. Urging people to invest in something overvalued is not only what got is into trouble in the first place, it’s surely a form of fraud.
Insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different outcome.
This budget is going to make me worse off. This is not what I object too though. What gets me is that it will make people who are better off less well off than it will make me. This is something to do with it being a “jobs budget”. They don’t want to create a disincentive for the poor to work by taxing the rich too much.
I think they do their economics by voodoo and shibboleth. They have raised money today by every means conceivable except raising income taxes, because raising income taxes is a Bad Thing. The result is that we have a highly regressive budget that hurts the poor far more than the well-off. Certainly it could be counterproductive to pile on excessive taxation. But is it not even more mad, in the midst of economic disaster, to have some of the lowest direct taxes in the developed world?
My mother, confused about why she’ll be able to afford less fuel this winter, asked me “So why can’t they tax the rich?”
I thought for a minute, and replied “Mainly, because they’re rich.”
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