Robert Peston on THAT Monbiot Tax Heist Article

[jackstarb]

Finally - Robert Peston has given his opinion on George Monbiot's 'Tax Heist of the Century' article.

Is Cameron giving companies the mother of all tax breaks?.

IMO - Peston gives a balanced and pragmatic view of what's actually proposed and why.

No doubt anti-Tory conspiratory theorists will continue to prefer Monbiot's view.

Yeah I think that's a good article. Good find Jack.

But no doubt the idea that in actual fact its better to lower taxes and keep multinationals here paying a fair chunk of tax rather than force them abroad and get £0 will make socialists brains pop.

And I wonder what our friends like Newwave will think of the principle that actually you can lower taxes and actually get more revenue like Peston says:

although the UK's corporation tax rate has been well below the average for the G7 biggest economies for more than 25 years, UK corporation tax revenues as a proportion of GDP have generally been well above the G7 average

So anyone who dissents from establishment orthodoxy is a conspiracy theorist? That's an insidious way of closing down real debate right there. Especially here on MN where posters are eager to be on the side of the vocal majority.

And who takes what the BEEB and its hacks tells them as read anyway? They're government controlled and Patten being the new chairman will mean even more pro coalition bias. Hold onto your hats!

glasnost - feel free to comment on / criticise the Peston article if you like.

Personally, I'd be interested in reasons why Monbiot decided to write an article so obviously outside his area of expertise. Few (if any) credible left wing journalists appear to have run with his allegations, whilst several tax experts (including our own CinnarbarRed ) have found many flaws and inaccuracies.

What was he thinking?

Who are these credible leftwing journos in your opinion? Are there any left given a voice in mainstream media seeing as it's rightwing dominated? Particularly economics.

Seems that these days anyone not blatantly and overtly rightwing is seen as leftwing.

Oh for the good ole John Pilger.

Can you name any journalist who followed up on this story? You would think if it were the 'tax heist of century' it would have caused real ructions by now. Questions in parliament etc.

I enjoy Monbiots articles but he seems to be out on a limb with that one. Poor research it seems.

Still he gets much more right than wrong.

Glasnost - I agree economic journalists do tend to be centre right (to extreme right).

I think Paul Mason is a lefty at heart. But he puts his journalist professionalism, before his politics.

Fraser Nelson in The Spectator is good for left-of-centre economic analysis.

Monbiot's article was clear, concise and easy to understand. He talks sense and he knows what he's talking about. It all adds up to a very unpleasant picture of this government (and the previous one) and, worse, shows how democracy can be undermined by very clever, greedy, unscrupulous people.

What worries me most are the problems that are being created in the developing world. Surely these multinational banks can't continue fleecing the developing economies for much longer. We're seeing some of the effects of what Monbiot is talking about in North Africa at the moment, of course. Give it a few years and it could happen here. People will protest against the injustices of this system when they have nothing more to lose.

Monbiot's article was clear, concise and easy to understand. He talks sense and he knows what he's talking about.

Erm, except most of it was complete & utter bollocks and most people, even our beloved socialist friend Newwave have distanced themselves from it.

Thanks for your considered analysis, Niceguy2.

Mellowfruitfulness - Monbiot was just plain wrong.

isn't he always? Doesn't he have a column in the Guardian? Isn't he the one who talks about global warming and climate catastrophe?

If he was wrong about the 'tax heist of the century', could he be wrong about other things too? Could climate catastrophe in fact be the 'tax hesit of the century'?

Claig - I wondered if you'd post on this thread with the climate change connection. It is Monbiot's reporting on climate change which has earned him so much respect.

Was the University of East Anglia respected and renowned as one of the leading authorities on 'climate catastrophe' in the world?

And then God said, "Let there be light", and there was Climategate. But many are still in the dark and offer their respect willynilly.

NG2

I am not a socialist, I dont beleive in nationalisation, I did like like New Labours casual approach to our civil liberties. I detested Blairs warmongering and his alliance with Bush.

Then again New Labour wasnt a socialist party and Blair was Thatcher Lite.

I would like to live in a mixed economy and a fair and equitable society which reasonably rewards success and helps those in need.

I detest it that their are pay freezes for those on low to moderate pay whilst boardroom pay and bonuses spiral out of control. The gap between to top peoples pay and those at the bottom is nothing but an obscenity.

I am a Social Democrat and was a long term LD supporter I do however see much to admire in Ed Milliband.

An alliance between the Labour Party and a breakaway LD section of MP's and party lead by Tim Farron woud be great.

Clegg and his acolytes can then join the Tories where they will feel quite at home.

"did not like" bangs head on desk.

Lets be honest, this is way beyond Monbiots area of expertise, there are literally thousand of pages on corporate tax and its so complex he was never going to represent and explain it accurately. I often don't agree with him but I do find Monbiot interesting although he's dropped a bit of a clanger on this one.

newwave - the way to address spiraling boardroom pay and bonuses isn't taxation though. It it better coporate governance. These pay packets are paid out of SHAREHOLDERS money and they are the ones who need to address this. The problem is that shareholders are mainly represented by large funds, represented at board level by people on the boards of that particular fund, so it is actually just a giant circle jerk.

The solution to this is probably better regulations about how executive pay is decided.

Bankers bonuses are different - if one wants to say that these aren't as low as they can be, one has to prove that Investment Banks are not hyper capitalist institutions that put profit before else. The reason bankers make a lot of money is because their banks make to much money - and that is mainly due to insufficient competition. This is being solved by increasing the capital requirements for banks as it makes them less profitable. Breaking some of the bigger ones up would help as well.

I seem to have veered somewhat off topic, but the thing is I pretty much agree with you on the content of your post.

But I disagree that the way to achieve greater equality and a more balanced economy is through the tax system.

One problem as I see it is that a companies first (and it seems) only legal duty is to the shareholders and increasing "shareholder value".

If I am correct in my assumption then maybe the law needs to be changed so that the needs of the workforce and society in general are given equal weight.

Shareholders own the company though so of course the companies main priority is going to be to them and their interests.

I don't see what law change you could make to make the workforce or "society" as a whole a major concern of a company even if you wanted to. If it were done though it would this country very unattractive to foreign investors and most of our FDI flows would collapse.

That would be an incredibly difficult system to regulate though - how do you measure those things and who decides what is in the interest of society?

What you can do is try and compensate for externalities with, for instance environmental regulations, employment rights, banking regulations etc.

This aligns shareholder value (in the strict sense of financial value) with wider interests.

TCNY

One idea that has been mooted is to make the top salary in a company a multiple of the lowest paid person.

I would add that in a company that pays bonuses to the top earners then a bonus must also be paid to everybody in the company with the top bonus also being a multiplle of the lowest paid as well.

Say no more than 200 x

The tax system would no longer come into play because the cost to the business will stop top pay galloping away.

hudd, please correct me if i am wrong but I believe that Ford stopped making cars at Dagenham even though they were producing cars cheaper than in Germany because the German laws made it far more expensive to lay of German workers than UK workers.

A small thing like increasing redundancy payments to a high level would "force" companies to have a social conscience and take the workforce into consideration.

And I note that Germany has a thriving industrial sector.