If Labour raises taxes what will you think?

A very small part. The “freezing old people” rhetoric was verging on hysterical.

I agree with means testing/scrapping triple lock pensions. I know there are some very poor pensioners but I also know many very wealthy pensioners. The people I know that are struggling are young working full time. The best off people I know are retired. I know it isn't as simple as that and there are many struggling pensioners but it isn't fair on the young either.

Part of the outrage with that, though, was where they set the cut off point and that it was linked to a specific benefit. I think if they’d set it at, say, £20k there wouldn’t have been quite so much.

I don’t think the triple lock going would be as much against public opinion in the current climate. I don’t know about Labour backbenchers, though.

COVID cost £400 billion
Energy subsidies cost £100 billion.

That works out to about £34,000 per household. So, taxes would inevitably be increased to recover those costs.

But, what about trying to reduce wastage as well? For example, BBC recently reported that an average of £145 per night per person is spent on asylum hotels, but they could be housed elsewhere for £23 per night.

Many other examples could be listed.

Look where getting rid of WFA got them. That’s your answer. It’s an obvious thing to do, particularly since it was a Tory policy, but the outrage (and not just from pensioners) over the removal of £100 was insane. Imagine what it would be like if the triple lock was scrapped.

Key question: why are the breaking their manifesto pledge not to raise taxes, but are not breaking the triple lock promise?

That is all I need to know at this stage.

But most of that ownership will be indirect- ie the shares are owned by mutual funds and pension funds which are managed by those entities but are beneficially owned by people with pension funds.

I think you are getting a bit carried away.

Personally, I have no problem with large corporations being charged a higher rate of tax than small family businesses. I'd also make more of the small retailers exempt from paying business rates - I think this is one of the reasons we have so many empty retail units on our high streets.

Oh for goodness sake, what errant twaddle. Starmer is as far away from being a USSR style socialist as Liz Truss was. Labour is a progressive social democratic party now and has been since Neil Kinnock. Paying tax on school fees is hardly the same as bejng sent to a gulag in Siberia. Tsk.

I think what the socialists really want to do is just appropriate the money of people they don't like / class enemies.

That requires increasingly complex tax laws though, in order to target just the people you want to, since there's no consistency or logic to it.

It's what they did with those private schools which are charities - not the VAT increase, but the imposition of business rates only on those charities 'which educate children of mandatory school age'... but not any other charity (like a donkey sanctuary - much more important to the public good, I'm sure) whilst still expecting all the charity obligations to be met. Rigghht..

A government can pass whatever tax laws they choose - even if they violates human rights (the court case established the children's human rights were harmed but that the government was allowed to do it anyway, because... tax).

But socialist taxing and appropriation of property doesn’t end well.

Compare quality of life in the USSR with that in the US at the same time. The only reason for that was communism.

Look at Venezuela's self-induced implosion, caused by populist, socialist economic policy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela

Do you really want that for the IK?

But local retailers would be taxed as well? NI increase was especially painful for small to medium businesses already operating on slim margins.

the reality of what you are proposing is that prices would rise for consumers and smaller / fragiler businesses would go out of business. And yes, that includes Tesco who would probably take a hard look at its more marginal shops.

So back to the old days when local retailers could compete with the corporations? That wouldn't be all bad - it might reinvigorate our town centres and most of the profits from the small retailers would go back into the UK economy instead of to overseas investors.

No they would just put their prices up.

that they are a bunch of incompetent, hypocritical lying scumbags.

Tesco is partly owned by The Vanguard Group (based in the USA) and Norges Bank Investment Management (based in Norway).

No, I did not know that.

But that's not what I asked...

The majority shareholders of Tesco are investment vehicles, including pension funds managing public sector pensions.

Yes we can increase the tax Tesco pays. But then what about the secondary and tertiary impacts?

lower profit = lower dividend which ultimately shows up as smaller pension pots.

And then who’s on the hook for the shortfall?

Taxpayers in the form of more benefits to pensioners.

I just watched this and it is SPECTACULAR

I would pay money to see Rachel Reeves try and argue against the arguments Laffer makes

A, but I don’t trust them to spend it wisely so I still think it’s a bad choice. Most of the public services that require additional funding are so ineptly managed that we are throwing good money after bad. Everything needs a major overhaul rather than just pumping money in - most are corrupt at worst and inept at best.
I also think raising taxes when COL has already pushed many families to their knees is a really crappy thing to do, but they were never going to sort out the real issues with wealth and inequality because most of them are tied up in it so I don’t see what else they can do.

@Cattenberg do you know what margins Tesco operates at? 4%. Food retailing is fiercely competitive and we are the beneficiaries of an amazing choice of products at good value. Yes food has got more expensive. Blame the government for fuelling inflation with their national insurance rise and an increase in the minimum wage which have been passed on to consumers. Inflation was 2% in July 24 - its now nearer 4%

We have one of the most progressive tax systems in the developed world. I agree its a system. Perhaps so many paying so little for so long has harmed our democracy. Too many voters infantilised with no stake in balancing the books.

Let's look at, say, Tesco, which has made about £3 billion in profit this year. Many of its employees are on low wages, so some of them will be relying on in-work benefits to make ends meet. If Tesco was forced to pay more in tax, so that it only made a profit of £2 billion next year, do we really think it would close all its stores and leave the UK?

Similarly, if Amazon was forced to pay more tax on its UK sales, would it cease trading in the UK and concentrate on its markets in Ireland and Luxembourg instead?

[tries to imagine shoulders being milked]

We’re a system. It all has to work for us to live good lives. This is an incredibly rich country. A massive queue of enormous shiny new cars on a public road that is falling to pieces isn’t a sign that the shoulders are being inappropriately milked, it’s a sign that nobody is an island. A lot of taxes are dysfunctional too but when the slightest attempt to rebalance causes screams in the media, it’s bloody difficult to unpick. High tax tends to lead to higher salaries. If you just focus on your take home pay it gets easier…

The broadest shoulders have been mercilessly milked for the last 20 years by governments of all parties. There is not much left for Rachel to squeeze. The rest of us will have to pay up.