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Who set up our current tax laws!

Leeds Spur said:
Naive

You don't have a fudging clue what your bank is doing.
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CEO's don't even have a fudging clue what their own banks are up to (dimon - whale, fuld - lehman anyone?), yet the man on the street will suddenly take an interest and have a thorough understanding of a banks risk profile if you let a couple of banks go under, hmmmmm!
 
NW5pur said:
CEO's don't even have a fudging clue what their own banks are up to (dimon - whale, fuld - lehman anyone?), yet the man on the street will suddenly take an interest and have a thorough understanding of a banks risk profile if you let a couple of banks go under, hmmmmm!
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Nobody knows what banks are doing because nobody wants to know.

Make security a selling point and banks will have to ensure people know.
 
I believe the pensions bill is growing by £5bn/year. Soon it will cost more than everything else combined, the governement needs to tell public sector workers to f*ck off and give them the same contribution pension that the private sector gets.
 
OK Mr Informed.

Given that you obviously know the trading positions and exposure of your current bank maybe you could provide it here so we could get the benefit of your insight?

Otherwise you're acknowledging that if your bank goes tits up you're cool with your life savings going down the pan? What about your business? You can't do business without a bloody bank!! What if Lloyds/RBS/Barclays etc go pop with your holding account as well? Tough brick eh?

You are talking absolute gonad*s IMO.
 
Richie said:
I believe the pensions bill is growing by £5bn/year. Soon it will cost more than everything else combined, the governement needs to tell public sector workers to f*ck off and give them the same contribution pension that the private sector gets.
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Agreed........they already earn more than the private sector like for like so this fudging myth about how hard done by they are is flimflam.

They should just cut the wages and pensions overnight and if they don't like it they can all fudge off. They won;t though, because they know full well they have a great deal!
 
scaramanga said:
Nobody knows what banks are doing because nobody wants to know.

Make security a selling point and banks will have to ensure people know.
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i agree that low risk could be a nice selling point or a niche in the market, but how do you know they ‎are low risk unless the credit rating agencies and regulators tell you? and can you even rely on the ‎CRA’s or regulators? the average man on the street is hardly going to be carrying out regular ratio ‎analysis on a bank’s books, and even if they do, the financial crisis has taught us that you can’t exactly ‎rely on a banks valuations of its assets anyway. my point is that the complexity of a bank is ‎unintelligible to the average man on the street, many would probably still be tempted by the higher ‎interest rates offered by riskier institutions without fully understanding the risk they were taking ‎anyway - it’s not as simple as choosing where to buy a loaf of bread where market forces will ensure ‎market efficiency, if you buy a loaf of bread and it turns out to be moldy then you probably won’t go ‎back, it’s and easy decision to make, if you’re deciding which bank to use based on its risk profile then ‎it’s a ni on impossible to make an informed decision and if your bank fails and you lose your life’s ‎savings then it’s a slightly bigger issue! therefore the consumer needs protecting

it’s all well and good saying let the banks fail and let the market decide, which I agree with in principle, ‎but that was completely impractical back in 2008, most banks were too big and too intertwined to allow ‎that to happen, we’d be a lot worse off now if Governments hadn’t stepped in, the infection would ‎have spread and the whole banking sector would have gone under. However, that is something that ‎‎“meddling” governments and regulators, that supporters of freidman style economics are so against, ‎are trying to address with ‘Living Wills’ so hopefully we won’t have to bail out banks in the future ‎

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/library/communication/speeches/2010/0212_th.shtml

I’d personally much rather have a regulated resolution plan in place than simply leave the survival of ‎the most integral part of our economy to market forces
 
The FDIC is a great scheme.

Without it, and our guarantee on deposits, the whole system would be undermined.

It makes the banking system stable and secure.

Banks SHOULDN'T be risky for depositors. They should have a secure account to hold your money and I would pay a fee for it. If that meant my money was safe.
 
Richie said:
I don't believe government should be subsidising or bailing out any companies.
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Yet you are arguing that corporations should have use of the national infrastructure for free. You keep saying that the taxpayer ends up paying and its the same, but its not because the each tax payer is made to pay for infrastructure use (use and wear and tear) regardless of whether someone buys from the company. This changes incentives and removes market effects on where my tax money is spent.

Another issue is that corporation tax encourages investment as that can be deducted from profits before tax. Its hard to argue that investment within a country is better than dividends being paid to off-shore investors (unless you are one of those investors).
 
Leeds Spur said:
The FDIC is a great scheme.

Without it, and our guarantee on deposits, the whole system would be undermined.

It makes the banking system stable and secure.

Banks SHOULDN'T be risky for depositors. They should have a secure account to hold your money and I would pay a fee for it. If that meant my money was safe.
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exactly, the purpose of the deposit guarantee isn't to let the people who've put their money in a risky bank off the hook, the purpose is to prevent bank runs and collapses; and a systemic financial crisis!
 
Leeds Spur said:
The FDIC is a great scheme.

Without it, and our guarantee on deposits, the whole system would be undermined.

It makes the banking system stable and secure.

Banks SHOULDN'T be risky for depositors. They should have a secure account to hold your money and I would pay a fee for it. If that meant my money was safe.
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This is one of the results of the Great Depression. Clearly, some people who think deregulation is the way to go are fine with the consequences that may lead up to another recession/depression.

In principle, this idea works great, but in practice, there are too many people to be taken advantage of by the banks. If citizens lose their guaranteed savings of up to $250,000, then they are powerless to fall to the schemes of banks. I honestly don't think some of you are cynical enough to know how the financial sector truly operates. When talking about deregulation, there's no mention back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place. No mention of LIBOR and hedging against subprime mortgages. Enough with the flimflam that these financial companies can't do business because government keeps getting in the way. While the rest of us are hurting, Wall St. bonuses continue to go up, indicative of the greater trends of most banks doing extremely well.
When these financials make such huge profits, why do they need to pass the tax costs onto the consumers? That's a choice that they're making to rake in even more money, instead of contributing a little bit more back to society. The conservative argument seems like a veiled defense of greed (whether you realize it or not). Banks love people like you.

spursman17 said:
You may ask 'how does paying lower tax provide greater taxable income'? The answer is easy, although not obvious for some. Taxation discourages people to peruse business ideas as the rewards are not worth the risk associated with setting up a business.
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This is the greatest myth ever perpetuated by man. Corporations are reluctant to spend money in this climate, and many of these corporations don't pay brick through various loopholes and subsidies they receive. Trickle-down economics has been proven a failure in the past decade, do people really have such short memories? On the flip-side of your argument, I could just as easily say that having a corporation paying more tax (than they do now) on whatever profits they make should be incentive enough for them to spend it instead of throwing it all into the Scrooge McDuck vault.

Let's remove all the referees from football. The players will be honest enough when they've committed a foul. Let's let the Charlie Adams roam free to put in whatever tackles they deem fair. And after he breaks someone's leg, it's already too late.
 
The issue is that there are loopholes, large companies or individuals can pay to avoid. We need to have some kind of reform where we have innovative policy to prevent this. It is all well quoting the past masters of economic policy, do they really still ring true today with the pressures of low cost labour abroad and cheap imports from China, the welfare system that is being abused, the internet allowing an interface to shop wherever is more advantageous for the consumer, not by word of mouth or because you can only 'go into town'?

In a free market there will be those in positions who control the free market, that is a given. What is the Uk's competitive advantage? We need to be good at something or we risk being sidelined even further.

A reform of some kind is needed IMO to retain income. With the view that there should be no tax/only for what you buy you pay tax - this will lead to an drain of money as we buy in from abroad with the 'tax free earnings' we would be getting.
 
THFC said:
In a free market there will be those in positions who control the free market, that is a given.
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Then its not a free market in the traditional Adam Smith sense. When people control the market they distort the market to their interests. This applies equally to governments, monopolies and cartels. That is why you need regulation and the only source of regulation is government. We've seen the effects of self regulation in banking, the press (Murdoch) and parliament (MP's expenses).

The need for regulation so markets operate freely has been recognised since Smith's time. Even Hayek recognised the need, although you'd fail to realise this reading some of his disciples. But it should be light and designed to stop people distorting the market, not for setting prices etc.

The modern extreme right seem to have forgotten this and take the view that a free market is one without regulation, where people are free to do what the want. The anarcho-libertarians such as de Soto have some interesting views.
 
With regulation, you edge closer to total state controls, you risk pushing firms to 'cheaper nations'. In an ideal world its fine, but the reality is we would lose the pounds as they seek cheaper alternatives there are many tax free havens out there, and ways of avoiding.

As for free markets/free market economies - IMO they are not actually free. They are free for the minority, who have the wealth to do what they like, and pay as much or little tax as they like. For the majority you are bound by price, dictated to by the cartels that own the majority of the largest organisations that we as consumers rely upon for our daily necessities.

At what point can you let this happen, naturally the larger companies will look to consolidate what they have, acquire firms, make themselves the biggest, meaning less competition. Then they can do what Microsoft did example.
 
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