Wednesday 8 April 2015

Taxing Issues on Redundant Cat Food


One is a grandfather, for the 3rd time, That's 3 boy grandchildren now, and I'm only 60!

Been having food issues with Kitty - she's become very picky about what cat food she eats. We alight on something she will eat, only for her to refuse it after a couple of meals. The recycling is littered with empty tins from a plethora of different flavours and brands. We finally discovered she likes Coshida (Lidl) lamb with mint. I ask you - cat food with mint? She'll be demanding Waitrose Essential Ivory Pillar Candles next.

Hay came home yesterday going on about some extra virgin olive oil she'd bought, which made me wonder why no-one has exploited the niche, middle-class market for extra virgin engine oil, or first cold press gearbox oil.

Had to make some people redundant yesterday - not a nice thing to have to do, but they took it stoically. We're getting rid of our UK technical presence, limiting it just to the sales function - i.e. me.

Am I mistaken, or has Blair put the kiss of death on Milliband's chances of winning the election? If we can't be trusted to vote on whether we stay in the EU, how can we be trusted to vote on who the next PM should be? Is it a ridiculous and illogical argument, or the truth. If the truth, should we be ruled by a dictatorship of the political class?

There are many I would not trust to make a sound judgement on anything, let alone whether we should leave the EU. They are no more than air thieves - however, that's the price of democracy.

Getting a tad fed up with the mantra that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the brunt of tax increases. I thought they already did - that's the reason income tax is based on a percentage of income.

That made me think about taxes. 

  1. Increasing taxes predominantly serves the public sector, which does not have as good a record as the private sector for efficiency when it comes to value for tax pound due to the strength of the unions. That said, we still need public services and unions are, on the whole, a good thing.
  2. Lowering taxes puts more into workers' pockets, giving them slightly more money with which to buy stuff (which can in turn create demand and more jobs to create more stuff), or enables them to save a bit more (which is lent out to people to buy houses or stuff on credit, or lent to businesses to invest in growth to make more stuff. It needs to be a decent amount though.
  3. Low taxes also have the corollary of encouraging the super-rich to put more into offshore instruments, which benefits no-one but the super-rich.
  4. Ergo, strategically lowering taxes to stimulate growth must be accompanied by closing loopholes that allow money from the super-rich to gravitate offshore.
It's worth noting that the top 10 low tax countries are predominantly off-shore havens which export nothing and import money from high tax countries.


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