niceguy-
It's hard debating with you Ttosca because you never let little things like logic and facts stand in the way of your diatribes.
That's funny, that's my impression of you.
I wasn't arguing the rich shouldn't pay more tax. In fact they still do even if we had a flat rate of tax. But that's a different debate. What I was merely pointing out was that economically speaking the loss of one high earner is far far worse than the loss of a few lower paid "average" employees. So economically speaking we need to keep them. Politically I was stating the situation is reversed. I did not argue anything else above so you are arguing with something I never said.
And that's nothing but neo-liberal received wisdom. What makes you think the loss of someone on £90K is worse than three times on £30K? In fact, there are arguments to point out the converse: each of the people on £30K has less money to keep. i.e. They will necessarily spend more of their income on basic necessities.
You've fallen for the disproven idea of trickle-down economics. It doesn't work and it never has worked. If it did, we wouldn't be seeing the greatest wealth inequality since the Victorian times, would we?
The problem with the economy now is with demand. People have no money to spend. It's not that businesses are packing up and moving to Zimbabwe where there is a lower tax regime. The problem is that people are out of work and don't have enough money to spend on buying goods and services from companies. Money needs to go in to the hands of the bottom, not the top.
As for taking money out of the economy, there is of course a trade off. Noone wants to see the NHS scrapped or teachers being sacked. But again...economically speaking if you tax someone, the money is no longer available to the private sector. If you tax me £10, I have £10 less to spend. Out of my £10 you have to pay the salary of someone and some of it will end up back in the private sector. But less. So you see, money is being taken out. Yes you may have spent it on what you think is a "good cause" but economically speaking it's less money in the economy.
Here, you flat-out refused to listen to the arguments. It's not about supporting a 'good cause'- even though morally speaking it's the right thing to do. You entirely missed the point. The money which government spends on all the things I listed actually bolster the economy. Building a train network from tax receipts employs tens of thousands of people, all the way from the people who lay the tracks, to the safety inspectors, to the train conductors, etc. etc. Furthermore, the infrastructure itself helps the economy enormously because it facilitates the movement of labour within the country. Do you understand now? I'm not even making a moral argument. It just makes good economic sense for the government to invest in public services and public infrastucture.
Corporation tax does seem to be bringing in a lot less money than income tax. The natural instinct is to up the tax & force them to pay more. But as I said on another thread, we work in a global economy now. This can only be done if all the other key countries adopt similar policies. We can't act unilaterally on this one.
The answer is not to give up and fight to attract investment by lowering and lowering taxes. That is a race to the bottom, and shifts the tax burden on to citizens.
You're right, the battle must be fought internationally, but I don't see you arguing for that at all. You seem to only promote regressive policies.