All the talk in recent months has been about how the People's Government intends to Level Up. A promise for northern towns, seaside towns, tumbleweed villages and rural backwaters that have been excluded from the financial excesses evident in the south-east of England during the decade of austerity. Many of these areas are now in the fiefdom of newly-elected Tory MPs. They have lost their industries, young people and bus service whilst being by-passed for infrastructure expenditure, school modernisation or replacement and suffered huge losses of government grants during the Cameron and May years of regressive taxation and rising inequality.
Now the government is preaching the need for 'levelling up' but with no acknowledgement that politics is the language of priorities. To level up when there is little or no economic growth requires a compensatory 'levelling down'. There are lots of possibilities:
- raising taxes for the higher earners,
- collecting taxes from those with assets in tax-evading countries, mainly UK protectorates,
- reducing infrastructure investment in the south-east and redirecting to the regions,
- introducing higher property taxes on online businesses,
- increasing corporation tax for selected industries,
- utilising the fuel escalator that has been in lockdown since 2011,
- raising taxes on air travel thus reducing foreign travel and unnecessary business trips,
- encouraging more working from home thus reducing the cost and time of commuting.
Most of these would also chime in with a greener agenda, greater equality and a more sustainable society lifestyle. Nevertheless, I suspect that levelling down will be not even be considered by the government. It breaches the very essence of its core value that protects the wealthy their right to remain wealthy. So 'levelling up' is no more than another government mantra, a bit like 'getting Brexit done' or 'peoples government'.
No comments:
Post a Comment
thanks