Today's discussion about the news

You'll have a 1000 quid a year more in your pocket, but unfortunate under Truss £1 is worth something between a lira and a Vietnamese dong

They should write that on the side of a bus

🤣

You'll be insisting we prove fairies don't exist next.

Post the calculation to back up the headline and then we've something to look at.

Honeslty. you had to experience rail travel in the 70s and 80s. No way is the current system worse. (Though I'm not suggesting it is good).

I think it's the perception that it can't be any worse that will make the prospect of renationalisation a relatively easy sell, even if BR wasn't exactly the golden age of rail in the UK.

IIRC public spending on the railways is higher than under British Rail? I might be completely wrong, and obviously separating out CapEx and OpEx is gonna be difficult.

Given some of the highest satisfaction with TOCs has been when they've been taken over by the government, I do feel that shows some promise for Nationalisation.

It's possibly a shame, in some rare situations open access operators showed a little promise.

Are there any good examples where the dynamism of competition has been harnessed within a unified national system, whether that's state-owned or (effectively) a private monopoly? The choice always seems to be lethargic nationalised industry (BR, BT, etc) or a fractured (sometimes artificially over-fractured) network of inefficiently uncoordinated small private units, in the case of railways then overseen by a regulator trying to impose a national system.

At least in the case of BT, the fracturing does seem to have led to genuine competition, and a co-ordinated system isn't a necessity (though BT Openreach does seem to be a hangover of old BT), but neither system seems to be ideal for railways.

Even if she was still in power, that's a bit of a stretch.

Yes, if Truss was still in power a pound would be worth something between a bit of belly button fluff and a toenail clipping.

I checked back. You posted a link to a paywalled article. All I can see is the headline. If you could find and post the evidence to back up the claimed figures then I can have a look.

Something to celebrate. Children of immigrants tend to do better in the UK than their peers in France and Germany.

https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6112?shareType=nongift

I'll post the text in the link then you can try to rebut it. You know fine well that the detailed data behind the article won't be available to me so stop trying the 'show me all the data' bollox and deal with the info available.

First lot.

Slashing net UK migration would leave people more than £1,100 a year better off over the long term, research suggests.

Analysis by the Growth Commission ahead of next month’s Budget also found that abolishing inheritance tax would deliver a bigger increase in per capita GDP than an equivalent cut to income tax

The commission was launched by Liz Truss, the former prime minister, last year to investigate how to boost Britain’s anaemic economic growth.

In research to be published this week, it will say that reducing annual net migration would improve living standards over the long term.

The commission modelled a reduction in the UK’s annual net migration from 315,000 from 2028 to a figure of 150,000. It said such a move would reduce GDP by 2.4 per cent by 2045 but raise GDP per capita by 2.1 per cent by the same year. This would be equivalent to a £1,157 boost per person per year in 2023 prices.

The commission said high migration lowered per capita GDP because it increased the UK population and put additional strain on housing stock.

Its research suggested that increased housing demand resulted in higher house prices and rents, eating into people’s disposable income and the consumer power needed to stimulate the economy.

Third lot.

For each tax, the research looked at the effect of reducing the tax by £7.6 billion – the amount inheritance tax is expected to deliver in 2024-25.

According to the analysis, cutting corporation tax by this amount – equivalent to about a 2p cut – would boost per capita GDP by 1.6 per cent, around £865 per person per year, by 2044.

Scrapping inheritance tax would deliver a 1.4 per cent increase – a £757 boost – while cutting income tax by about 0.5p off the basic rate and similar proportionate amounts to the higher rates would deliver just a 0.3 per cent increase (£162).

The Growth Commission said abolishing inheritance tax would be so effective because it could lead to 4,300 of the richest taxpayers remaining in the UK, while the move would also boost employment by 1.1 per cent by reducing early retirement.

While the initial benefit would go to those wealthy enough to be caught by inheritance tax, it said the “overall long-term economic benefit would support a better fiscal environment for higher living standards in the general population”.

The research comes ahead of the Budget on March 6, with Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, understood to be leaning towards action on income tax or national insurance rather than inheritance tax.

Mr McWilliams said: “Before we ran the analysis, I was not convinced that abolishing IHT [inheritance tax] was a good idea. But the research is pretty persuasive, showing that the tax has bad effects on savings, which leads to an exodus of high taxpayers and encourages early retirement.

“With an ageing population and with so many other countries with low or zero rates of inheritance tax, keeping this tax for purely ideological reasons looks to be a luxury the UK cannot afford.”

Shanker Singham, the commission’s other co-chairman, said: “Not all taxes lead to the same GDP per capita impacts. By being more forensic about the type of tax cuts we choose, we can boost growth, while at the same time protecting the public finances.”

Yes it does, read what I've quoted above,

Here's the relevant bit for you:

"The commission modelled a reduction in the UK’s annual net migration from 315,000 from 2028 to a figure of 150,000. It said such a move would reduce GDP by 2.4 per cent by 2045 but raise GDP per capita by 2.1 per cent by the same year. This would be equivalent to a £1,157 boost per person per year in 2023 prices."