No End of Spending

I know, I know, the Barclay Bros banned him from the Telegraph and the Speccie for producing much too heady a brew of no-nonsense dry conservatism for the modern pantywaist "centrist" liberal reader, but the bearded mountain man Mark Steyn writes a lot of good common sense from his hideout in New Hampshire. If, like Idle, you don't get bored by drilling down to the pesky numbers, I recommend After America.

Here's a taste:

"The Irish have a useful word for the times - flaithiulacht - which translates to ruinous generosity, invariably with someone else's money. There is nothing virtuous about "caring" "compassionate" "progessives" demonstrating how caring and compassionate and progressive they are by spending money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born"

Envy, Spite, Vindictiveness and.....

...... THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES:

"A decent welfare state requires an appropriate balance between carriers and carried. HM Revenue & Customs believes that almost 27 million of our 30 million taxpayers will contribute less than £6,000 per head in income tax this year. Those who have a child in a state school or who make more than passing use of the NHS are likely to be net takers, rather than contributors. So who’s doing the carrying? The ‘squeezed middle’, as ever, will do their share. But those whom we call ‘the rich’ — the top 1 per cent of earners — will contribute an astonishing 28 per cent of total income tax this year. HMRC also identifies a tiny group of the super-rich, upon whom we have become dangerously reliant. These are 14,000 taxpayers earning on average a little over £2 million each. If just one thousand of them were to leave the country, the economy would have to generate 300,000 extra new jobs, paying £20,000 per year to make up the resulting shortfall in the tax take. That would stymie the Government’s growth strategy in one rush to the Departures gate."

Dennis Sewell, Spectator

Vince and Cleggy might be expected to understand the Laffer Curve, but frankly they are not interested in maximising UK tax revenue. Oh no. They want "an important symbolic measure”. I'll tell you what that reminds me of:

Peter Cook-Cable, as an RAF officer, says to the lower-ranking Perkins (Jonathan Miller-Clegg):

…it's a pyschological thing, Perkins, rather like a game of football. You know how in a game of football ten men often play better than eleven?

Perkins Yes, sir.

Cable Perkins, we are asking you to be that one man. I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war. Get up in a crate, Perkins, pop over to Bremen, take a shufti, don’t come back.

Goodbye, Perkins. God, I wish I was going too.

Perkins Goodbye, sir – or is it – au revoir?,’

Cable No, Perkins."

PS Dan is on the case today as well.