Another one from RJ's list. There's a too-clever-for-its-own-good scale climbing exercise at about 3 minutes in, which ends badly at 3 minutes 11 seconds when they continue the song a tone higher than they started it. Nice costumes though.
A grim document
15 hours ago
3 comments:
You may find this interesting
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/welfare/when-waving-the-bloodied-shirt-doesn%27t-engender-the-desired-reaction/
Particularly -
"'m quite happy with the idea that we'll ameliorate some of the rougher edges of market outcomes. Subsidise, for example, those left grasping firmly the ordure stained end of the stick. But I still want us to be using markets as the pricing and allocation mechanisms: precisely so that we don't get these absurdities as we do with social housing, where we've a £40 billion subsidy that no one seems to even recognise, let alone acknowledge."
Anon, ta. I responded as follows:
"Yes of course there are purely notional subsidies to social housing i.e. their rents only cover the rent for the bricks and mortar, they do not pay rent for the location value.
But it is inconsistent to look at the £40 billion annual subsidy accruing to 4 million households in social housing or housing association housing, without also looking at the [ballpark] £200 billion annual subsidy to owner occupiers, who do not pay for the location rent of the homes they occupy.
So by all means, hike social rents by £40 billion a year but only if you also start charging owner occupiers for the location rent.
To paraphrase: "Not charging Land Value Tax really is a subsidy, it's money foregone."
And then think about all the taxes you could scrap with that extra £240 billion coming in - how about the messy little taxes - like council tax, stamp duty, inheritance tax, capital gains tax, TV licence fee - and a couple of the big bad ones - VAT and National Insurance?"
Well, I suppose they were imagining it was creative.
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