Recent posts.

Climates are influenced by changes in the earth’s orbit and axis. There is a 100,000 year cycle in the shape of the elliptical orbit around the sun, a 41,000 year cycle in the tilt of the axis away from the vertical to the plane of the orbit, and a 20,000 year cycle in the shift of the equinox and solstice around the orbit. https://ammpol.wordpress.com/ammcc , May 2022.

Incomes may be affected more by whether a carbon dividend or Basic Income is means-tested, than by whether it is carbon or income that is taxed, and whether the income tax is flat or progressive. https://ammpol.wordpress.com/carbontax , October 2021.

As a result of Covid-19, government debt is rising rapidly. The probable cost will be higher taxes, higher inflation, more austerity or eventual default. If interest rates are lower than inflation rates, wealth is redistributed from private creditors to public debtors. A wealth tax would have a similar effect. Modern Monetary Theory, ammpol.wordpress.com/mtwo , October 2020.

Other posts:
Coronavirus diary, 2020-2022.
Welfare policy, 1996-2019.
Democracy for minorities, 2018.
Land tax, 2004-2017.
Monetary policy, 2012-2020.
Environment, 2006-2022.
Boom and bust, 2009-2015.
Referendum diary, 2011-2014.
European election, 2014.
Going round in circles again, 2011.
Banking system and economic growth, 2011.
Economics, environment, welfare, 2009.

Welfare policy.

For people with incomes below average, means-testing may leave little incentive for work or saving. Instead, there could be a Universal Basic Income, with a choice whether to receive it as a reliable unconditional benefit, a personal tax allowance, or a mixture of means-tested benefit and tax credit, like the current system. https://ammpol.wordpress.com/carbontax , July 2019.

The Universal Credit, which is paid to one account per household per month, is out of step with modern life, turns back the clock on decades of hard-won equality for women, and allows abusers to seize control of the family finances. Welfare reform for the 21st century, August 2018.

By replacing graduated income tax with a flat tax, the affordable citizens income (Unconditional Basic Income) is almost doubled. Is a Basic or Citizens Income affordable?  November 2017.

High priority was given to the need for tax and income support for women working in the home, and for more childcare facilities. The most logical way of doing this, with the least fuss, is by the basic income method. History of Basic Income politics in New Zealand, 1996.

European election.

For me, in all the thousands of words I saw about the European election campaign, one sentence stood out. It was in the Manchester Friends of the Earth’s list of 10 policies:

” a new EU economic strategy . . . which shifts the tax burden from labour to resource consumption . . . ”
( http://www.manchesterfoe.org.uk/eu-election-survey-response-peter-cranie-green-party/ ).

Environmental taxes on resources and pollution could be better than income taxes, not only for the environment, but also for reducing inequality.

( ” Progressive tax and inequality”, in “Citizens incomes and progressive tax”,
https://ammpol.wordpress.com/ubiprog ).

I think this policy should be a major feature in the 2015 Westminster election campaign.