Terrible Taxation

No, not a moan about the level of taxation today (I'll save that for the other days of the year), rather, a moan about where we get the tax from.

Obviously, there are good taxes and bad taxes. Sometimes we tax things because we want to change behaviour (boozenfags) and sometime we tax things because we can impose high taxes without changing behaviour very much (umm, sadly, boozenfags again). We also end up taxing things that we'd really rather we didn't have to. Taxation upon labour income, for example, leads to a reduction in the amount of labour that people...

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You What?

Scientists are of course very clever people. You don't want to have dullards in your brains trusts now do you? Unfortunately, clever people aren't clever on every subject.

Homes and offices should have regular "MoT-style" tests to rate their energy efficiency, according to experts, in a bid to meet the government's ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Those that fail to meet required standards could see their council tax or buildings insurance rise, suggests Foresight, the government's scientific thinktank.

Energy Mots? Not an entirely silly idea. But the sanction? Higher buildings insurance?

Umm, do...

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That fiscal drag thing

Yesterday I was whining about how Brown has indeed raised income tax each and every year by not upgrading the personal allowance in line with the rise in wages. More on that subject here:

“The failure to raise personal allowances and thresholds in line with income has nearly doubled the number of top rate taxpayers from 2m a decade ago because earnings tended to rise about 2pc per annum faster than prices. When the starting point for 40pc tax is frozen in 2011 at its level in 2010, that will bring another 100,000 into the net and lift the...

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Daily Brief

On the Tonight Show last night, Jay Leno offered up a way to bail out both Wall Street and Detroit at the same time:

"Well, it looks like the government is going to bail out Citigroup, yet they don't want to bail out the auto companies. See, I don't think this is fair. I mean, blue collar guys who make our cars, they don't get the bailout. But the white collar guys on Wall Street, they get the bailout.
You know what I think we should do? I think they should work together. I think the guys in

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Citi: Will the bailout be enough?

The WSJ has details of how the Citi bailout was structured:

If the U.S. were to take another equity stake, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wanted it to be small, since otherwise the government would end up owning Citigroup. The officials worried that appearing to nationalize the company would further roil markets. They agreed that $20 billion was the limit for what they would invest.
The policymakers also discussed whether Mr. Pandit should remain CEO, say people familiar with the talks, and agreed that removing him would send a bad signal to the markets and

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