In came the old man who has spent £30,000 on National Lottery tickets since it started.
"You'd better not bend like that in front of me, or you'll get the Golden Rivet. Are you looking for your wallet?"
"A penny."
"A friend of mine once bent down for a penny, and broke his neck. Never bend down for anything less than fifty pee."
It's clear from what he tells us that seizing the entire income and assets of "the rich" would cover the USA's expenses for only a year. Of itself, this does not exonerate those who benefitted hugely from skewing the economy. What he has shown is that the damage done to Humpty Dumpty is greater than all the king's horses and all the king's men can easily undo.
Eating the rich is revolutionary talk à la française and like Robespierre, Michael Moore might find he'd started a revolution that ate its own children. Reasserting the rule of law is another matter, and it would be part of the corrective process of justice to fine, jail or defenestrate from public office those who had the mens rea in this morass of criminal incompetence and wickedness. This is something for which Karl Denninger himself has often called. Right does not belong to the right, any more than to the left.
What a shame that Mr Whittle has forbidden all responses to his video. I suppose he would consider what I say to be merely part of his "predicted sewer backwash on the intertubes".
"At first, Terry and Sylvia Jones split time between the Cologne and Gainesville churches. Then in 2008 they cut ties with the Cologne church after members accused the couple of financial improprieties connected with their side business, TS and Company, which is owned by Terry and Sylvia Jones. TS and Company sells vintage furniture on eBay and was supposed to help support the churches."
The government is moving the State pension system away from the layer cake of basic pension plus additional variable toppings of Graduated Pension, SERPS and S2P and towards a single income benefit for all set at a level that lifts pensioners out of the complicated and negatively-reinforcing savings trap.
But if all get the same benefit, it could be argued, all should pay the same, or at least the same rates. I think we may end with the self-employed paying the same proportion of their income in tax and NIC as employees - possibly also including what is currently the employer's contribution. This might vitally boost the government's flagging finances.
I commented on the stealth tax of NIC back in 2007, and showed how for an employee on basic rate tax the total government swipe was equivalent to a marginal rate of 40%. There is (or was, until the introduction of the 50% tax band) really not much difference between basic and higher rate tax-paying employees.
But there is a distinct advantage for certain categories of fairly highly-paid professionals to be self-employed or work as partners rather than directors. This could change - and what a juicy target those (e.g.) barristers might present!
Potentially, there's a plus for us ordinaries: if this tax-cum-NIC were all income tax, then it would be far more attractive for average earners to make personal pension contributions. Skandia thinks we could see the end of Higher Rate Tax relief on pensions; but I think it possible we could see, in effect, HRT relief for all. That would be radical, and ultimately beneficial. And it would reward the prudent ant above the live-for-today grasshopper.
Or maybe we'll just see an extension of the heavy tax burden to not only barristers, but jobbing plumbers, plasterers and the like, accompanied by more horrid, bullying tax investigations.
