CDR: Re: Well, that's over. Heads up, America!

Steve Mynott steve at tightrope.demon.co.uk
Wed Nov 8 06:08:38 PST 2000


On Wed, Nov 08, 2000 at 11:17:11AM +0000, Ken Brown wrote:

> were ever going to get to be a chat show host.  Thatcher was  (& is)
> almost universally hated, even by those who voted for her. 

Thatcher was respected rather than liked.  Britain in the 1970s was
a global joke, laid ruin by decades of socialist misrule.  Fixing
that was unlikely to win her many friends.

But she partially succeeded and changed Britain and even her opposition
from extreme socialists to more moderate, but still dangerous, social
democrats.

The work isn't, alas, over and leftist ideas remain as givens
in English society supported by the state ran schools and
television stations.  

> Maybe that is why most of your states voted dam near 50-50 for each
> candidate.  Same policies on most things that count, and where they
> differ nobody believes them anyway. (Is Bush really saying, as his Tory
> acolytes over here in Britain are, that you can cut taxes *and* increase
> pubic spending? Does anyone take that seriously enough to factor it in

I think you mean "public".  Actually this is possible if cutting taxes
leads to more tax being collected.  If tax cuts lead to increased
economic activity then a  smaller piece of a larger pie can be larger than
the original piece.

This is the famous "Laffer curve".

If you take "rolling back the state" as a goal than this is an
argument for cutting taxes to zero.

> Certainly that is how Labour got in in UK. Everyone hated the Tories.
> Labour promised - in writing - to carry on Tory policies on most things
> (they even adopted the Tory budget for 2 years). So the only issue was
> that Labour looked like the nice guys. Landslide.

I don't think everyone hated the Tories (Conservative party).  They had
been in power for 18 years and I think people simply thought "give the
other guys a ago".

Since then Labour, although they had swung to the right, have increased
indirect tax and introduced anti-crypto laws in the shape of RIP.

The population is starting to wake up and Labour is looking
increasingly vunerable due to popular protests on the amount of tax on
fuel.

Many conservatives, like John Redwood, have spoken against RIP.

-- 
1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve at tightrope.demon.co.uk
    
    abandon the search for truth; settle for a good fantasy.





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