538 on Goldberg and maldistribution

Fascinating post on 538 but I fear I must at least have a cursory fisk of it. But it has some great Gini coefficient charts.

In effect, Jonah Goldberg is complaining about the dangers of redistribution in the least redistributive first world nation.

Well, he's at least warning of the dangers of redistributing more and ceasing to be the least redistributive / most competitive.

If you ask a conservative to name a country that provides as many quality services for less, or more and better services for the same price, they can't name one. If they do, encourage them to start packing their bags. Sure, they could save a lot of money living in Mexico.

Well, in terms of certain types of taxes, most of Europe provides better for less and they certainly provide more for the same levels of taxation. They lack the American economy's dynamism and ease of getting filthy rich. They not only could save a lot of money in Mexico and Monaco, they do. Many millionaires avoid the US completely, from the off, and choose Mexico instead, so they never have to deal with the IRS or the tax obligations of US citizenship. It may have downsides, but many still do it, never mind Belize, Panama and the Bahamas, to mention only the near neighbours.

As Leo McGarry often said, America can never provide more for less, because it's spending half of all federal money on having the Pentagon defend most of Europe and Asia from aggressors and being the only part of NATO worth having.

But my main point is that in wanting smaller government, we don't want "as many quality services for less", we want no services for nothing. Leftists just never seem to get their head around the idea that if the government doesn't do it, but there is demand for it, economic demand from real people with real money, then the private sector will step in, like it does with every other product and service that people have not been trained to expect for free from the government and the dehumanized "taxpayer".

David Cameron and savings tax

Whatever the outcome, it now seems very likely that David Cameron will be PM and George Osborne will be Chancellor. Maybe people missed the announcement at the time and have forgotten about David Cameron's proposed policy on income tax to be payable on interest on savings. In the new tax year, the rates you pay are 0%, 20%, 40% and 50%, losing all allowances and paying an effective rate of 50% if you fall into that band, whether the income is from employment or just yield on capital. Of course, this puts the tax paid by the "socialite" "unemployed" "trustafarian" private income set at 50%, higher than pretty much anywhere that doesn't have a full-on wealth tax like France or Norway. It is higher than the top rate of 45% charged in Denmark.

Personally, I feel the same about paying the 50% rate as I did about the 20% and 40% rates combined. On a gross income of say £200,000, there is no way I am giving half of it straight to the government to bribe the public sector payroll vote and all the other wasteful things that were once listed by Sir Humphrey. If I were getting such interest payments from my money I would have to move my domicile and move to a permanent home in Brussels or Malmo, Sweden and pay 15% or 30% on the interest. 50% is far too high, especially for an anarcho-capitalist, even if David Cameron was in power and taking an axe to the state sector.

But he did propose, without mentioning the new top rate, removing all taxation of savings that does not fall into the higher rates. So those paying 20% would pay no tax on savings, making cash ISAs obsolete. Only those paying the 40% or 50% rates would pay them, and he'll probably get rid of the 50% rate on everything within 5 years of office.

My calculations have shown that not only would UK domicile again be acceptable, for those on smallish incomes it could become very attractive.

For reasonable incomes under £150,000 you would only pay the 40% tax on the excess beyond £37,400. You could arrange interest payments of this amount and your tax would be zero. At £40,000 your tax rate would be 2.6%. At £50,000 it would be 10%. At £100,000 it would be 25%, which is still better than many European countries, although Spain, for example, would only tax you 19%, on any amount.

It would be quite easy to invest enough of your millions in property, in the UK or abroad, and spend some of your capital on things that you cannot buy out of your interest income after tax, like cars, so as to have say, only £1m pounds left, which even if rates went up to 5%, would only yield the £50,000, which would be taxed at just 10%. Upon moving your domicile you can liquidate your investments (after moving to a domicile that has no cap gains tax, like Belgium or Austria) and regain the monetary income. But I would have thought that, as long as you lived outside the M25 it would be quite possible to fund regular expenses like fuel and food on £37,400 / annum.

Howzat for class war.

Whole world now plays

Marketing experts said today that they now think they are only months away from making the totality of current human life play well in Peoria. "The whole world and the way citizens of planet Earth live today is increasingly falling into line with the middle-class middle-America values of this medium-sized Illinois settlement." said Dave Zeller, of a Chicago ad agency. People as far flung as Chile, China and Egypt have now almost completely rearranged their lives so that they are defensible and marketable to the typical American family. Experts say that the exposure of Janet Jackson's nipple at the Superbowl shocked the world into realising that they would never get any money from the typical US consumer as long as they persisted with such venerable national cultural traditions such as non-Christianity, national dress, failing to eat at McDonalds and holding a culturally subjective view of the correct behaviour that fails to fall within the confines of Midwestern American etiquette. He also said: "You had women not wearing bras who didn't even aspire to an SUV and a McMansion, wearing funny tribal jewellery and guys being Maoist atheists and worshipping some weird-ass god called Allah, instead of, you know, regular, "God". Thank God they realised they have to fall into line with what conservative suburban housewives like Marge Simpson expect of them!"