Happy Face

The optimal tax rate on the highest earners is in the vicinity of 70%. http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.25.4.165

http://t.co/fuJ0iv1A

No-one has said its illegal. That's the disgrace of it Chico.

400 UK-based individuals earn, or are capable of making, £10m a year. But only 65 (just over 15%) paid income tax, according to the latest figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The rest use a battery of sophisticated but legal techniques to avoid paying. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1611272/Super-rich-paying-no-income-tax.html

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a-393m-payday-but-tycoon-lakshmi-mittal-wont-be-taxed-on-it-here-as-hes-a-nondom-6622827.html

Someone else van check the other 9 richest in the UK.... 1 Lakshmi Mittal and family £17,514m £4,936m Steel 2 (6) Alisher Usmanov £12,400m £7,700m Steel 3 (2) Roman Abramovich £10,300m £2,900m Oil, Industry 4 (3) Duke of Westminster £7,000m £250m Property 5 (4) Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli £6,870m £920m Pharmaceuticals 6 (15) Leonard Blavatnik £6,237m £3,237m Industry 7 (16) John Fredriksen and family £6,200m £3,450m Shipping 8 (5) David and Simon Reuben £6,176m £644m Property, Internet 9= (new) Gopi and Sri Hinduja £6,000m New Industry, Finance 9= (7) Galen and George Weston and family

Laughing all the way to the bank: Lakshmi Mittal will not pay tax in the UK on his £393m dividend due to his non-domicile status Britain's richest man is £393.9million better off today after paying himself a huge dividend from his company, safe in the knowledge that as a "non-dom" he will not pay tax on it here. Indian tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, 57, is the world's fifth wealthiest man, worth more than £19billion.

I was using Cole more as an example of someone playing brilliantly at the end of a very long season than someone who plays particularly shit for England. Collectively, tiredness is an excuse that's overused in international football, when it's rarely brought up going into the last day of a season with the title up for grabs.

I think the tiredness excuse is a load of old bollocks. Ashley Cole played the best game of his career in the last game of a very long season winning himself a champions league medal. Am I supposed to believe all of a sudden he's too drained to do half as well for England? Nah, he just wants to play when he has a chance of winning. Which means not for England.

Despite the confirmation that it's US propaganda, the BBC seem to be sticking with 'militant' spin on any victims http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18327634

everyone at this gig is a daily mail reading cath word.

The combined wealth of the 6 Walmart heirs = the wealth of the entire bottom 30% of the US. i find comparisons with individuals much more compelling than a non-specific 1% or whatever.

Interesting how the argument for the morality of war is framed entirely around the relatively small number of British 'victims'. No question whatsoever of the hundreds of thousands of middle eastern innocent victims being expendable.

Would it not be ok if g=i?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Sb49QqK8I wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle

It doesn't do any harm tbf. If a mackem was claiming RHCP, Bruce Springsteen and Take That playing the SOL was an example of prospering economy though I'd laugh in their cheesy chip encrusted face.

3 days of football at SJP would be a better example than uncle Jeff doing a guvvy in the big smoke.

Quick, give the man a 3 part Sunday evening BBC detective series with a slightly homoerotic undercurrent.

You'll love Krugman tearing this stupid Tory bitch a New arsehole on Newsnight parky

Martin Wolf nails it: the Cameron government made a terrible mistake by going all in for austerity doctrine — and now cannot change course, because to do so would be to admit its mistake. It may be humiliating for the government to offer such a speech now. But there is no reason why the people of the UK should suffer for its mistake, indefinitely. But there is a reason, of course: the ambition and vanity of politicians. Hello, Mr. Clegg. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/britains-trap/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

I wrote a few days ago about the widespread belief here in the UK that there has somehow been a dramatic collapse in the economy’s potential. Martin Wolf has much more, plus a link to a very important paper by Martin and Rowthorn (pdf) that, as I read it (and Wolf too) very effectively debunks that belief. There’s a lot of technical detail, but as I see it the main point is that we see a sharp drop in measured British productivity that could be the result either of some mysterious structural shift or the much more ordinary notion that many firms have held on to “overhead” labor in the face of what they expect to be only a temporary fall in sales. And the data just don’t support any of the proposed explanations of the supposed structural shift. Specifically, the popular line here is that it’s the loss of all those high-value jobs in finance, which sounds plausible until you do the arithmetic and find that it’s way, way too small. This bears a strong family resemblance to stories about alleged structural unemployment in the US that focus on the shift out of construction; again, it sounds good until you do the numbers and find that it’s tiny. This matters, a lot. If Britain has not experienced a mysterious productivity collapse, it is suffering much more than acknowledged from a lack of effective demand — and also has a much smaller underlying budget problem than the government claims. The British may be poor-mouthing their economy — and in so doing creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which excessive pessimism about potential leads to policies that in fact impoverish the nation. Do I know for sure that this is the truth? No. But it looks more plausible than the official line. And surely policy should take into account not just the so far purely hypothetical risk of a loss of confidence by the bond market, but also the very real chance that vast amounts of potential production, not to mention the future, is being squandered through excessive pessimism. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/poor-mouthing-britain/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

Just like Barton last year in that regard. And Carroll the year before. No-one is saying he's going for sure, but he's clearly one of the most likely to go, irrespective of how quiet he reamaims. He might want to stay if Chelsea and spurs won't make a substantially better personal offer than NUFC, why would he shit where he eats?

How does all the bus drivers going south help the ne economy? Call centre staff wont be able to get to work

That would be even worse, if it's not true we'll be watching this thread like the thatcher one until September.