I'm surprised at how popular a proportional property tax is... I really don't see why replacing council tax with a local property tax where councils have power over the rate doesn't have more buy in

The UK's local government spending as a % of GDP is close to the OECD median of 9%, but it ranks 7th in local government spending on social protection as a % of GDP

Just exempting care workers would be ridiculous. Basically it would be a case of designing a policy to kick out care workers, panicking when you realise how stupid an idea that is, and then kicking out a load of engineers, scientists etc out of sheer stubbornness.

It's driving me insane. The govt spends £1.4 trillion a year. Borrowing estimates are often by tens of billions over a year. But we're supposed to imagine money is budgeted to the last penny.

Karl Whelan@karlwhelan.bsky.social · 2w ago

Christ almighty. The British obsession with itemized “pay fors” for everything is insane. This is just really not how fiscal policy or government works anywhere functional.

One day someone will accept that social democratic parties modern class basis is an alliance between urban service sector labourers and (typically young) educated professional types. Presumably this will be an electoral advantage just because working on the basis of accurate information is good.

Elizabeth Taylor@elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 3w ago

Will we ever ever get a PM who wants to support social liberal ideas or actually likes ‘metropolitan’ people again? I’m tired 🥲

One day, somebody in government will notice what the net migration level is hesding to. The fiscal forecast (£24 billion) was based on average net 235k to 2026-29 but that is at least 100k too high, costing £13 billion, or double that if want to reduce immigration visas further.

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Times reporting that Andy Burnham succeeded in persuading Shabana Mahmood to become Chancellor because it would give her more control over cutting immigration

Worked example. A three bed terrace in central Ashington is currently on the market for £95k. Call that about £500 a month on a 30 year mortgage. Renting a 3 bed on the same street costs £875 a month.

Labour Right's plan of action: (1) make it harder for people to immigrate to the UK (2) hammer business with a variety of unproductive taxes and costs while simultaneously not raising enough revenue to improve services (3) move right on a social issues (4) ??? (5) growth and electoral success?

Sharon 🪳🌹@sharonk.bsky.social · 3w ago

the Labour Left at least has a tax and spend program, even if one could argue it's inefficient i'm not exactly sure the Labour Right has a theory of capitalism or hell, even of governance, at all

If the fear is that Net Zero may harm the economy then wait until they discover the impact of net emigration.

James Austin@jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 3w ago

I still don't see much here - it's still allies of and if you think that Ed Miliband is going to foreign sec (as proposed here) I have a bridge to sell you. That said, if Burnham thinks Miliband is too divisive in Labour to be appointed, wait till he finds out Mahmood's rep

once again, the irony of ASI/AGI guys is that if what they were claiming was true, they are essentially proving the Second International correct in thinking that capitalism does in fact overturn itself automatically into post-capitalism

I don't usually write personal stuff, but a few words about my experience of being interviewed by Gary Stevenson. It started with a nice chat, comparing taste in hoodies... then the tone changed. He demanded to know why I'd deleted a tweet criticising him.

Is welfare spending ''out of control''? It's estimated to be 11.1 per cent of GDP this financial year. That's just 1.1 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen by 0.9 per cent of GDP since 2012-13 ⤵️

Britons tend to feel it's more important for an Andy Burnham government to pursue policies it believes are right than to stick to the policies in the Labour manifesto Pursue policies it believes are right: 48% Stick to manifesto promises: 16% Something else: 14% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

Labour is up/the Greens are down 3 points in the polls since the local elections

once again

Michael Caley@michaelcaley.bsky.social · last mo.

the headline here is obviously far too strong given a variety of sampling issues, but this is a very clever and interesting study design they find that companies which are adopting AI at high rates are also adding jobs at higher rates econlab.substack.com/p/we-can-fin...

Not to obsess over decentralisation but I think fundamentally the UK Government's approach to local government reform in England is paradoxically neither small nor big enough, when compared with pretty much any other country outside these (very bad at local government) islands.

Community detection and force directed graph layout for local authorities in England and Wales based on 2021 commuting flows

The top 10 largest urban areas in the UK according to the OECD city (continuous area of >=1,500 pop/sq. km) and FUA (city + local authorities where >=15% commute to city) definitions

Among the G7, IMF forecasts UK to have second lowest debt and deficit by 2030 www.ft.com/content/c2de...

i will say that one way in which i agree AC is worsening climate change is that it has allowed more Americans to live in the South

I dont get this "AC is a new world only technology" take. AC is in basically every building in East Asia and was stated by LKY as a primary driver behind Singapore's economic miracle It's ok to Be Chill

Sharon 🪳🌹@sharonk.bsky.social · last mo.

sorry what

The prospect of a Reform government makes me even more convinced that parliamentary sovereignty is not good

Peter Walker@peterwalker99.bsky.social · last mo.

Very many of these people have made their lives here, have UK spouses/kids etc, but could lose their homes or their jobs under Reform’s plans to stop non-UK nationals living in social housing and to charge employers large annual sums to employ anyone not British.

It's really depressing that the Labour right's lesson from New Labour broadly seems to have been 'relentlessly target what you perceive to be the median voter' instead of 'be Keynesian and welfarist instead of statist and authoritarian'

I'm amazed at how many things these people believe with the sum total of evidence being vibes

Three charts, since the UK's fiscal position is in the news (again). Any discussion of this issue really needs to recognise (i) the long average maturity of UK government debt, and (ii) the tightening already baked into the UK government's fiscal plans. (1/4)

The BES panel has some cool data on where voters place parties and themselves on immigration and redistribution. Voter perceptions of Labour under Starmer (wave 20) on have moved a lot further to the auth/right than they moved to the lib/left under Corbyn (waves 7-19)

My theory is that voters are surprisingly indifferent to scale, so if you’re going to do something to piss them off you might as well do a *big* (and ideally slightly dull) thing that gives you the potential for impact. bsky.app/profile/tacj...

Tom James@tacj.bsky.social · last mo.

So people remember George Osborne’s pasty tax, but not that he raised VAT to 20%. The lesson is you make the argument, go big or go home, pick boring but significant over tiny but memorable, and hope people have forgotten/things are better in 4 years.

I agree that employer NICs was a suboptimal way to raise revenue compared to raising income tax, VAT, or employee NICs, but the fact that they did actually do a big broad-based tax increase on wage income kind of undercuts the argument that avoiding the tax pledge would have made a big difference

Fascinating the extent to which people responsible for billions of pounds base their views on nothing but vibes.

Ian Smith@iankmsmith.ft.com · last mo.

One big gilt investor said Burnham's chancellor decision would “set the tone” for the soon-to-be PM's relationship with markets. "Is it going to be a government of Burnham backers, or is he going to be able to make tough decisions?" Our piece on the race to watch www.ft.com/content/f5cc...

High executive turnover is one of those things that seems bad but is there any actual evidence that it is bad? Italy and Japan had high turnover during both their post-war boom periods as well as their stagnation since the mid 90s