[AdamN]

Burnham being PM is already pretty well priced in. When he walked back comments a few weeks ago they corrected and my sense is that the market understands that unless there until actual laws or budgets are promulgated, what is said by Burnham isn't really market moving.

[andy_ppp]

What is he going to do without the bond markets - the UK is in so much debt we basically need to jump however high they tell us to, unless he plans to default which would destroy the global financial system and destroy the UK for decades. The only way I can see out of this is to absolutely frack the crap out of the UK and push for more North Sea oil drilling. But we definitely won't do that so maybe we'll try a bit of fascism instead? I'm very unconvinced taxing rich people is possible (unless it is a global agreement) - most of their money can be moved into tax havens and other jurisdictions where HMRC will struggle to tax them.

[mathieuh]

The irony is the top three tax havens are overseas territories of the UK and subject to legislation which should curtail their tax-haven status but which the UK is unwilling to enforce

https://taxjustice.uk/blog/worlds-top-tax-havens-are-british...

[inigyou]

And London is the money laundering capital of the world. It's some ridiculous percentage of their GDP.

[monkeydust]

I think ...or hope...he ends more right than left and manages to do what Starmer failed to do a year ago which is to make major reforms to the Welfare system. Its just not sustainable.

[pjc50]

There really isn't a lot of slack in the welfare system unless you're prepared to be very short sighted and go back to "tent city" levels of homelessness. Which is partly why all previous attempts to cut it have failed. Maybe declaring certain areas of high rent off-limits for housing benefit, but then you have to raise the salaries of NHS staff and teachers living in London so they can afford to work there.

Maybe if the Miliband reforms pay off and certain critical things get built and gas prices return to normal, Labour will be able to take credit for lower electricity prices? Unless it's all spent on datacenters, which would be even worse political doom.

Personally I'd go with the "mansion tax" but that requires ignoring the well-connected screaming. They did manage that with VAT on private school fees.

[Urahandystar]

Yeah but the VAT on school fees meant a load of those children had to go to state schools so we ended up paying for it anyway.

[arethuza]

A rough calculation: £8,580 funding per child at state school, ~90,000 less in private schools and in state schools so about £770 million more required for state school funding and this measure is supposed to bring in about £1.7 billion a year...

So it looks like it would pay for itself?

Edit: We don't charge VAT on private healthcare - so charging it on private education looks a bit inconsistent to me.

[cjrp]

Wasn't it something like a 3-4% reduction in private school pupil numbers? And some of those would have ended up homeschooled rather than state.

[Forgeties79]

I just feel like no matter what any government does the ultra rich will find a way to get around it. Look at the US gulf south: they are in a race to the bottom when it comes to tax breaks and just giving everything away to businesses/high income earners, yet they are poorer than ever. Texas and Florida are the exceptions here to a certain degree but they are also massive states with lots already going for them. Their neighbors collect a fraction of the taxes they should and get nothing out of it except aggressive resource extraction and cancer.

Then look at the other end: are wealthy people and businesses really fleeing New York and California in droves like conservative media is portraying? Do we really see a meaningful wealth exodus occurring because of their corporate and personal tax laws? A cursory search says no. High housing costs, remote work, and just general pandemic shifts explain basically any changes there (and the number of people/businesses leaving isn’t particularly abnormal)

All of this is to say I don’t really know what the solution is for the UK. I just don’t think businesses and the super wealthy respond 1:1 to these policies in the way that politicians claim they do. They are so rich they are ultimately going to live where they want and do what they want. They aren’t going to relocate themselves due to tax policy. They will just “be rich” their way through the problem.

[philipallstar]

The ultrarich just don't matter. There are so few of them. And they might avoid personal tax, but they generate insane amounts of other taxes that they are still huge contributors. The people who net don't contribute are going to be state/federal employees, benefits recipients, state pension recipients, that sort of thing.

[gib444]

How do they know what he will do to the economy before even he does? That's impressive

I wasn't referring to his becoming PM but what he does during the premiership, you know, the more important part

[inigyou]

How much a politician will make wealthy people wealthier probably correlates pretty well with their left-right axis position multiplied by their amount of power.