whence & thither

[ahinton]

a) Don't ask me, ask 'Scotty'!

b) Nah, don't be silly, Gongy ...

Thank you for that, Tippy (perhaps)...

[ahinton]

Well, I'm not here to defend either company pension schemes or the state pension system.

Nor, it might seem, are certain people implicity referred to in http://citywire.co.uk/new-model-advi...relief/a775915

Yes, I know that the article mentions en passant the term "State Pensions"(!), but let's not go down that road again...

More importantly - especially given that tax relief on pension contributions has already been reduced - further cuts to it (should they occur - and let's never forget that cuts of almost all kinds seem to be beloved of the present UK administration) will clearly make pensions an ever less attractive proposition for investors who might otherwise have wished to save into them for retirement or anything else, since that very tax relief on contributions is its principal attraction; were such reductions to go hand in hand with regular increases in state retirement age and levelling off, reductions and possibly eventual abolition of state retirement benefit, the former will come to be of less use as a savings vehicle and the latter will be of increasingly less use for anything at all.

Such a scenario would likely lead to increasing numbers of people finding themselves having either to undertake paid work (if they can get it) for more, if not all, of their adult lives and/or to look to alternative saving vehicles (if they can afford to save) towards an income either to replace or to supplement earned income in later life; the problem with this is that the jobs market would have to be able to sustain far more people for far longer than is now the case, as people who would previously have been classified as "retired" (by reason of being above state retirement age) will become part of that market, possibly for life, in which case there would be ever more people seeking work. It would not be hard to imagine what that would do for unemployment statistics!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Koch Brothers Billions the future? No one seems able to stop them.

[ahinton]

Koch Brothers Billions the future? No one seems able to stop them.

Well, of course they don't. They can be upbraided for breaches of the law and indeed have been on quite a few occasions at what to the rest of us would be very consideable expense - but then look, for example, at how Barclays' Bank have been fined left, right and centre on both sides of the pond and it ain't over yet but they manage to keep going, no problem. The crucial explanation of Koch's unstoppability seems to be encapsulated in the paragraph that commences
"Like a casino that bets at its own craps table, Koch engages in "proprietary trading" – speculating for the company's own bottom line. "We're like a hedge fund and a dealer at the same time," bragged Ilia Bouchouev, head of Koch's derivatives trading in 2004. "We can both make markets and speculate".
What this demonstrates is that you can do this as long as you continue to sit on both sides of the fence and, provided that you also own the fence and the land on either side of it, you can do it more successfully again. OK, they're not THAT big, but give them another 20 years or less of continued capital growth and they may well get to the point of being able to say to an aggrieved US government (having perhaps already bought up some much smaller ones elsewhere) "if you don't like what we do, we'll buy you, too".

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it is amazing what tax rates can do to gambling returns ...

and on corporate welfare statism which all good neocons are strongly in favour of at least £85bn is the estimate that companies take from the taxpayer

Personally, I’ll believe we’re getting somewhere when Channel 4 puts on Corporate-Benefits Street – with White Dee replaced by Amazon founder and inveterate tax-dodger Jeff Bezos.

[ahinton]

it is amazing what tax rates can do to gambling returns ...

and on corporate welfare statism which all good neocons are strongly in favour of at least £85bn is the estimate that companies take from the taxpayer

I can't open your link but that seems to be because it's down right now; I'll try it again later. From what it appears to be about, however, one might feel tempted to conclude that the taxpayer had better indulge in some serious and sophisticated tax avoidance in order to ensure that this happens on a much smaller scale, perhaps...

[aeolium]

I can't open your link but that seems to be because it's down right now; I'll try it again later.

It might well be the same as the one I linked to earlier in the Politics of the Left thread (msg 201).

[ahinton]

It might well be the same as the one I linked to earlier in the Politics of the Left thread (msg 201).

Well, if so, I've already read it, of course!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/06/benefits-corporate-welfare-research-public-money-businesses

does this work and is it a duplicate?

apologies

[ahinton]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...ney-businesses

does this work and is it a duplicate?

apologies

It does and it is and I had indeed read it first time around. No problem!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/yacht-cannes-selling-homes-local-government-officials-mipim

well that's how it is eh?

[ahinton]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...fficials-mipim
well that's how it is eh?

Indeed, but I'm quite sure that it's nothing new. The only argument that I'd have with this piece is its use of the phrase "prime land already owned by you and me"; the author might own some of it but I don't own any of it and I do wish that journalists and others would stop using expressions of that kind that are so misleading.

Royal Mail's gone. Eurostar next. As I've speculated previously, who's for Parliament being sold off (assuming a buyer could be found, that is)?...

[french frank]

Indeed, but I'm quite sure that it's nothing new. The only argument that I'd have with this piece is its use of the phrase "prime land already owned by you and me"; the author might own some of it but I don't own any of it

'You' a non definite plural not required to specify 'excluding ahinton'. But the secrecy surrounding this transfer of 'public assets' (is that all right?) is very troubling. It may be that private money can develop such property to better effect than the councils themselves, but the point is how much the development will benefit 'the public'. The suggestion in the article is, 'Not necessarily very much'.

[ahinton]

'You' a non definite plural not required to specify 'excluding ahinton'. But the secrecy surrounding this transfer of 'public assets' (is that all right?) is very troubling. It may be that private money can develop such property to better effect than the councils themselves, but the point is how much the development will benefit 'the public'. The suggestion in the article is, 'Not necessarily very much'.

Yes, I understand what you mean, of course. I just don't take kindly to being told that I "own" something or some part thereof when it's not actually true; I neither possess nor wanted shares, for example, in RBS and thus had no shareholder input into the government decision temporarily to nationalise a substantial proportion of it. "Yes, "public assets" is indeed much better than "publicly owned assets"; one might argue that the National Insurance Fund is a "public asset" but I'm relieved that I own none of that one in particular because, according to some, it doesn't actually exist.

The matter of whether local or national government can develop the kind of "prime land" referred to in the article as effectively as can private organisations is, of course open to debate apart from the obvious fact that such public and private developers will be expected by their very nature to have different agendas for it, but those differences will not necessarily mean that only public organisations will develop those assets for the benefit of "the public", as you put it, not least because "the public" is all of us and we don't all want exactly the same things anyway.

[french frank]

The matter of whether local or national government can develop the kind of "prime land" referred to in the article as effectively as can private organisations is, of course open to debate apart from the obvious fact that such public and private developers will be expected by their very nature to have different agendas for it, but those differences will not necessarily mean that only public organisations will develop those assets for the benefit of "the public", as you put it, not least because "the public" is all of us and we don't all want exactly the same things anyway.

But "benefiting the public" is not the same as "what the public [tbd] wants". There is a separate concept of 'the public good'.