Where Would We Be Now If Brown Had Won Last May?

[Chil1234]

Genuine question. Pre-election, the Labour manifesto pledges on budget management were very similar to the ones on offer from the other parties. Darling, in a speech not long after the election, seemed to be very much a 'deficit believer' and criticised Brown for failing to tackle the subject head on, instead getting sidetracked into a debate between investment and cuts. Would things be fundamentally different now if we still had a Labour government? Better or worse?

Labour would put up the highest band of tax, surely? 50% is hardly anything when you're earning megabucks. They'd have made a top band, above the 50%?
I read somewhere recently (wish I'd made a note of it) that the divergence between the highest and lowest earners now and the highest and lowest earners in the 1970s is a HUGE multiple- that is, the highest earners now earn, say, 30 times more than the lowest as compared to, say, 17 times more in the 1970s (I'll try and look up for the actual figures - they're shocking.)

No one has a clue because it didn't happen.

Coalition I must stop wasting time looking at Mumsnet ! But it is so funny at times. Your post had me rocking with laughter at the computer. You are right of course - but poor old Chil asked a question

Brown would have been piling up even more debt for our children to pay off.

@TheCoalitionNeedsYou. No-one may have a clue but I still hear a lot of sentiments along the lines of 'things wouldn't be like they are if Labour were still in charge'...

Chil1234 - Aye, but there is no way to test the counter-factual, so it's just another opportunity for people to display their kneejerk prejudices and unthinking tribalism.

"If it was Brown we would all be basking in the sunshine of a golden age/be eating rats in the burnt out husks of skyscrapers"

Admittedly the typical message board is a haven for kneejerk prejudices (with the emphasis on the 'jerk' quite frequently) but I have more faith in the largely female MN community to be able to resist the temptation to knuckle-drag and instead take a hypothetical scenario, speculate logically and extrapolate it intelligently.

Then I am an optimist. :)

I dunno, I find this section pretty depressing these days - it too often turns into longfongernails or newwave trying their best to be as unpleasent as possible while occasionally sensible points.

I am starting to believe they actually hold the opposite views to the ones they profess and are trying to put people off.

We'd be in the middle of a sovereign debt crisis and in need of an IMF/EU bailout. The country's credit rating would have been downgraded so interest rates would have forced put up and there would have been a run on the pound as market confidence would have evaporated.

None of these cuts have fetched in money for the goverment yet, correct me if I am wrong, but even the VAT increase hasn't paid so far so the only difference as to where we would be now I can see is that we would be looking at cuts in the future but fairer ones.

rabbitstew.
Yes insight.

complimentary .

Up shit creek without a paddle imo and to answer the original question.

"Labour would put up the highest band of tax, surely? 50% is hardly anything when you're earning megabucks. They'd have made a top band, above the 50%"

Where to start dotnet?

1. Have you considered why Labour didn't raise the top rate tax in 2008/9 (it was then 40%). If it was such an excellent revenue raiser, that would have been a great time to do it - instead of borrowing.

1. Thanks to the sterling efforts of the good people of UKUncut - we now all know that the extremely rich don't actually pay much income tax. So we are talking about tax rates paid mainly by the moderately rich (who often do useful jobs such as doctors, lawyers, heads of larger schools).

1. A 50% top rate tax is already pretty high even compared to other high tax counties. Sweden has the worlds highest tax rate of 56.6%. Denmark has 55%. In fact our top rate is higher then Finland's . And we have the fourth highest in Europe (just behind Holland).

"divergence between the highest and lowest earners now ....huge."

I'm sure you are right - most of this divergence widening having occurred in the last 12 years! But increasing tax and benefits addresses the symptoms - not the cause. My guess is high levels of tax and benefits actually contribute to the core problem.

The core problem being that extremely rich people are extremely greedy?...

Rabbit - I can't comment on their greed - as I don't know any. But it appears the extremely rich can choose where they live, and where they pay taxes (or not).

My point about tax and income divergence is that a richer person can perhaps negotiate a salary rise to 'cover' a tax increase.

And (more controversially) an employer might feel they can get away with paying an employee less than a living wage - when they know that it'll be made up in benefits

Unemployment would be rising but nowhere near as fast and would not reach the levels to which they will under the Tories.

Surestart would have been kept.

The debt would have been tackled but over a longer period.

The NHS would be safe from butcher Landsley.

The economy would be recovering instead of flatlining.

Unemployment would be rising but nowhere near as fast and would not reach the levels to which they will under the Tories.

Surestart would have been kept.

The debt would have been tackled but over a longer period.

The NHS would be safe from butcher Landsley.

The economy would be recovering instead of flatlining.

We would be at the IMF after the bond markets had beaten us up.

In the UK.

Even the bankers.

I suspect if Brown had won the election, he would make similar cuts to Cameron/Clegg (although maybe not so fast), because New Labour, like the Tories and Lib-Dems fully support global capitalism.
My own view for what it's worth, is that we have to stop our reliance on the financial sector, and focus on building our manufacturing industry, so that we have a more balanced economy. Obviously this has to be high end goods, because competing with China on the cheap tat front isn't really going to get us anywhere. I also think we need to restrict immigration to those with useful skills. I'm definitely not a racist, but it just doesn't make sense to allow unskilled people into the country, when there is high unemployment and a shortage of jobs. Unfortunately, this would mean curtailing immigration from EU Countries, so as we get quite a bit out of belonging to the EU, and probably wouldn't want to leave, we would have to have a Government willing to reform the EU.
As it stands, I don't see any Party advocating any of this.

I wonder if Labour under Gordon Brown would have grasped the nettle of implementing a MAXIMUM wage? Very, very radical and brave it'd be, but possible, surely ? I remember the outcry from small employers when the MINIMUM wage was being mooted - couldn't be afforded, businesses would go bust etc etc.

It didn't happen. Mind you, the minimum wage seems to have been eroded - too low now; surely it should be £7 or £7.50 an hour, all these years on?

I read in the Guardian yesterday that at the time of the banking crisis, two thousand eight hundred bankers were taking home £1,000,000 a year each. They weren't millionaires - they were 'earning' a 'salary' of a million.

If you say the minimum wage is £10,000 a year and you compare that with those city bankers, the injustice is obvious. No working person is worth a HUNDRED TIMES LESS than another working person.

I can see that some jobs *are 'worth' a lot more than others - eg a headteacher at a large school should be paid lots more than most of us.

But what would be so over the top lefty about saying no-one should earn more than, say, ten or twelve times that of any other working person?

The next question would be, how to get at and redistribute the money saved by cutting the wages of the plutocrats?

Thing is, just because I can't see my way through the whole argument to how its implementation might be possible, doesn't mean it's not possible.

Nor would we be stuck for talented people to lead our industries etc., if there were a maximum wage. People are motivated not only by money, and young and keen replacements would spring up in place of those who decided to leave what they would no doubt term our sinking ship!

In a free society, if I want to pay someone £10million pounds a year to work for me and he's happy with that, under what basis would/should the government intervene in our otherwise private arrangement where noone else gets hurt?

Niceguy, similarily if you want to pay someone £1.50 and hour hey?