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UK - Election 2015

Francesca R said:
Your response to VAT is regressive WRT income seems to be "It isn't with respect to consumption".

But it is with respect to income. And you said it wasn't. Give it up.

Anyway I am off down Angel tube with a pick-axe and a shovel.
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I'm arguing that it's really not as simple as just looking at a narrow point-in-time interpretation of income. If you consider income in a more appropriate way, VAT is progressive wrt that measure.

Here's an article that puts the case in a more eloquent way than perhaps I've been able to do:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/the-ifs-answers-is-increasing-vat-progressive-22157.html

The common perception that VAT is regressive largely comes from noting that households with low current income often spend a lot – and therefore see a big cash rise in their living costs – relative to their income. But as explained in the previous answers, this is a weakness of looking at a snapshot of income: as the ONS notes, “referring to income distribution to identify the incidence of indirect taxes on households with low income can be misleading”. In general, over a lifetime people’s expenditure must match their income (the main difference being inheritances), so if someone is spending (and therefore losing) a lot relative to their income at the moment – either borrowing or drawing on past savings – they must be spending (and therefore losing) little relative to their incomes at other times. Looking over the lifetime as a whole, what matters is whether the lifetime-rich or the lifetime-poor see a larger share of their lifetime resources taken in VAT, and on that basis VAT is progressive because necessities (consumed disproportionately by the lifetime-poor) are typically subject to zero or reduced rates of VAT.


I've already pointed out that the IFS (and the ONS) considers looking at a raw VAT-vs-income analysis is misleading (and I'd tried - unsuccessfully, it seems - to explain why). It's really not a black-and-white issue. I had believed that you had the economics chops to realise this.
 
katy_did said:
Is there any reason to assume people in those areas are mindlessly voting Labour purely because their parents and grandparents did, rather than because their experiences (in what are generally still quite deprived areas) lead them to vote Labour as the party which they believe best represents their interests?

Using the same logic we would have to assume that wealthier areas consistently vote Tory rather than Labour because their parents and grandparents did, not because they believe the Tories best represent their interests.
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Yes. I believe that to be the case as well. It's also borne out by historic voting patterns. Why do you not think that either situation is incorrect?

Simply put, there are entrenched voters who will always vote for one particular party, and a very significant element driving their level of entrenchment is how their family has historically voted, and how their peers vote (which in turn is influenced by how the peers' familes voted). There are in fact many entrenched Labour voters who - dispassionately speaking - would probably be best served by a Conservative government, and vice versa. But it will take a seismic event to make them switch to vote for a Tory (and vice versa), because they are simply programmed (for want of a better word) to vote for Labour (or vice versa).

I mentioned a while back that a US political commentator once remarked that even if the most repugnant person possible stood as the Republican candidate for president, that person would still be guaranteed 40% of the popular vote - for the precise reason that there's a chunk of the US public who are programmed to vote Republican no matter what (and the same is true for Democrats). The same phenomenon exists in the UK.
 
3point14 said:
So, if the policy isn't working it's that you have the wrong people, not the wrong policy?
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No, that's not what I said at all.

I said that if a policy is not working, it's a failure of the policy-makers. In the feedback loop I described, the people should voice their dissatisfaction with the policy in question (either by protesting, or by voting out the people who introduced the policy), and the policy-makers should respond by modifying or abandoning the policy.
 
LondonJohn said:
Yes. I believe that to be the case as well. It's also borne out by historic voting patterns. Why do you not think that either situation is incorrect?

Simply put, there are entrenched voters who will always vote for one particular party, and a very significant element driving their level of entrenchment is how their family has historically voted, and how their peers vote (which in turn is influenced by how the peers' familes voted). There are in fact many entrenched Labour voters who - dispassionately speaking - would probably be best served by a Conservative government, and vice versa. But it will take a seismic event to make them switch to vote for a Tory (and vice versa), because they are simply programmed (for want of a better word) to vote for Labour (or vice versa).

I mentioned a while back that a US political commentator once remarked that even if the most repugnant person possible stood as the Republican candidate for president, that person would still be guaranteed 40% of the popular vote - for the precise reason that there's a chunk of the US public who are programmed to vote Republican no matter what (and the same is true for Democrats). The same phenomenon exists in the UK.
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It may be your belief that people are mindlessly voting for the party for which their parents and grandparents voted, but you can't support it by saying, as you did earlier, that the two maps "probably provide a very good proof that a large proportion of the population are entrenched voters".

You're ignoring the fact that the former mining communities are generally speaking economically deprived areas which are still suffering the effects of the mine closures. You're also assuming that where people do vote in the same way as their parents and grandparents, it's because they're "programmed" to vote a particular way and not because they've made a considered decision to do so.

In short, your claim that the two maps provide "very good proof" of your thesis is pretty obviously flawed.
 
katy_did said:
It may be your belief that people are mindlessly voting for the party for which their parents and grandparents voted, but you can't support it by saying, as you did earlier, that the two maps "probably provide a very good proof that a large proportion of the population are entrenched voters".

You're ignoring the fact that the former mining communities are generally speaking economically deprived areas which are still suffering the effects of the mine closures. You're also assuming that where people do vote in the same way as their parents and grandparents, it's because they're "programmed" to vote a particular way and not because they've made a considered decision to do so.

In short, your claim that the two maps provide "very good proof" of your thesis is pretty obviously flawed.
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1) There are other communities that are similarly deprived which don't show the same voting patterns.

2) Many of these former mining communities have been transformed by inward investment, and they are now no more or less deprived than neighbouring communities.

3) Your apparent view that most people make totally independent, well-considered decisions on where to place their cross is a charmingly naive point of view, but it's flawed. You might do, and I believe I do, but most people don't. That's not condescension or arrogance on my part - it's the well-proven truth.


Incidentally, on that final point, I believe it's a massive flaw on the part of the Westminster Village and the media. Most people in those businesses are very politically savvy, they do understand policy issues, they do understand the implications of each party's policy on them, their families, their communities and the country, and they vote on that basis. The problem is that they can tend to assume that most other people think and act along similar lines. The reality is entirely different. For example, if you went to (say) the Trafford Centre in Manchester or Bluewater in Kent today, and you stopped adult shoppers and asked them what the main parties' manifesto pledges were on, say, the NHS, defence, the welfare state or education, the overwhelming majority would not be able to give you anywhere near a correct answer. By contrast, they'd all remember Ed's little trip after the TV debate, Cameron rolling up his sleeves and "getting stuck in", and the famous Edstone.
 
LondonJohn said:
....... The reality is entirely different. For example, if you went to (say) the Trafford Centre in Manchester or Bluewater in Kent today, and you stopped adult shoppers and asked them what the main parties' manifesto pledges were on, say, the NHS, defence, the welfare state or education, the overwhelming majority would not be able to give you anywhere near a correct answer. By contrast, they'd all remember Ed's little trip after the TV debate, Cameron rolling up his sleeves and "getting stuck in", and the famous Edstone.
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The reality is even more depressing than that, I'm afraid.

You would get a significant minority who couldn't name the prime minister, nor say which party he belonged to. If you were to show photos of Milliband, Cameron, Clegg or either of the SNP-fish-related leaders, there would be a significant minority who couldn't name some or any of them.
 
anglolawyer said:
You have a grammar problem. Have another go. I don't need to see the results of your further reflections.
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I simply don't understand you. If you wrote about how something was brought into being, that is discussing how it originated.
 
LondonJohn said:
I'm arguing that it's really not as simple as just looking at a narrow point-in-time interpretation of income. If you consider income in a more appropriate way, VAT is progressive wrt that measure.

Here's an article that puts the case in a more eloquent way than perhaps I've been able to do:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/the-ifs-answers-is-increasing-vat-progressive-22157.html

The common perception that VAT is regressive largely comes from noting that households with low current income often spend a lot – and therefore see a big cash rise in their living costs – relative to their income. But as explained in the previous answers, this is a weakness of looking at a snapshot of income: as the ONS notes, “referring to income distribution to identify the incidence of indirect taxes on households with low income can be misleading”. In general, over a lifetime people’s expenditure must match their income (the main difference being inheritances), so if someone is spending (and therefore losing) a lot relative to their income at the moment – either borrowing or drawing on past savings – they must be spending (and therefore losing) little relative to their incomes at other times.
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The bolded statement above minimizes the importance of the qualifying remark. Over someone's lifetime, those who spend more than they earn and in consequence leave less money to their successors than they inherited will pay more VAT as a percent

The VAT winners are those who leave more money to their successors than they inherited.

The losers are those that leave less.

It is fairly obvious which group the poor and rich fall into.
 
LondonJohn said:
1) There are other communities that are similarly deprived which don't show the same voting patterns.

2) Many of these former mining communities have been transformed by inward investment, and they are now no more or less deprived than neighbouring communities.

3) Your apparent view that most people make totally independent, well-considered decisions on where to place their cross is a charmingly naive point of view, but it's flawed. You might do, and I believe I do, but most people don't. That's not condescension or arrogance on my part - it's the well-proven truth.


Incidentally, on that final point, I believe it's a massive flaw on the part of the Westminster Village and the media. Most people in those businesses are very politically savvy, they do understand policy issues, they do understand the implications of each party's policy on them, their families, their communities and the country, and they vote on that basis. The problem is that they can tend to assume that most other people think and act along similar lines. The reality is entirely different. For example, if you went to (say) the Trafford Centre in Manchester or Bluewater in Kent today, and you stopped adult shoppers and asked them what the main parties' manifesto pledges were on, say, the NHS, defence, the welfare state or education, the overwhelming majority would not be able to give you anywhere near a correct answer. By contrast, they'd all remember Ed's little trip after the TV debate, Cameron rolling up his sleeves and "getting stuck in", and the famous Edstone.
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You claimed that the two maps "probably provide a very good proof that a large proportion of the population are entrenched voters". You can surely see that that's a very flawed claim? For that to be true you'd need to rule out the possibility there are other reasons for people in former mining communities voting the way they do other than mindless conformity to the way their grandparents' generation voted.

Instead you just looked at the maps showing that former mining communities tend to vote Labour and said it proved your thesis that a large proportion of the population are entrenched voters. Obviously you're making a fair few logical leaps there.
 
LondonJohn said:
2) Many of these former mining communities have been transformed by inward investment, and they are now no more or less deprived than neighbouring communities.
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Rat said:
Only if you define 'seriously' a particular way, which would be begging the question. Most people agree that the debt would need to be paid, but many object to the poorest and most vulnerable having to pay it, or at least a disproportionate part of it.
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Which is then made into an excuse to ignore the problem. Meanwhile;

http://news.sky.com/story/1480754/sturgeon-vows-to-end-austerity-across-uk

How do you feel about the rest of the UK ending the deficit and then the debt whilst Scotland is shielded from such>?
 
Rum said:
Sadly a high proportion of those who would benefit from Labour staying well left of centre do not appear to vote. Inner Manchester 'working class' areas have turnout as low as 18%.

Another reason not to assume the Tories have a mandate.
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I would say that in a free society, those who choose not to influence the course of policy with their vote contribute just as much to the mandate as those who do.

Put it another way: The Tories have a mandate from the voters that matter. Who decides which voters matter? The voters themselves, by voting. Those that choose not to vote are effectively signaling that their voice does not matter to the mandate.
 
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