The NIMBY Tax

Nimbyism (Not In My Back Yard) is a pretty well documented phenomena. While people may be broadly in favour of wind farms, a third runway at Heathrow, badger culling, or nuclear power, general support turns quickly to vehement rejection when people find out the new Sellafield is going to get built at the end of their road.  A couple of recent newspaper articles seems to indicate Nimbyism has now found its way into the tax/spending argument.

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In a BBC documentary produced towards the end of last year a selection of people around the cities of Britain were interviewed on their opinions of their own social situations and on who should pay more tax. The answer was almost universal; everyone thought they were struggling and paid too much, and they all thought the people in the next bracket up should do more.  This view was repeated (albeit with increasing eloquence) from the £8,000 / year part time supermarket lackey to the £80,000 a year professional financial services managers. The only people to offer an alternative view were the super wealthy (i.e. multi-million annual income) for whom taxation was, by their own admission, "entirely voluntary." Interestingly the super-wealthy seem split between those who really do pay their full tax bill out of a sense of social responsibility, and those who don't pay anything and avoid talking about the issue.

Although at the time this didn't elicit much from me aside from a slightly exasperated sigh, a recent Daily Telegraph article interviewing a financial services professional earning 'high 50,000s' made me reconsider this issue.

Sometimes "people" think things because they are narrow minded, ill informed, media led, naive, or otherwise lacking. Particularly in the field of politics instinctive and emotional reactions to the main political parties seem to triumph over reasoned argument or policy specifics. Rarely however, the national zeitgeist actually gets it right. I think this might be just such a time.

As I've said for a long time everyone really does pay too much tax.

As the BBC and DT have shown, people are even starting to realise this, although its a slow, slow trudge up the slippery slope of realisation. (Just as a thought experiment on this imagine you earn £18,000 per year gross, pay student loan deductions, and save £100 per month - how much do you pay in tax? Answer at the bottom). Unfortunately we aren't out of the woods yet however, people still misunderstand why everyone is paying too much tax.

To try and illustrate this I'm going to resurrect my intrepid islanders who seem to have been unexpectedly popular; Spike, Timmy and Jonny. They are joined in their tribulations this time round by Sammy and Andy.  Rather then create another island I've set this one in a frontier village (this gets a bit complicated by the end so bear with me).

Timmy, freshly reincarnated from his island-based doom, arrives on the frontier first and picks out the best land for farming. Using his tools, knowledge and start-up funds he builds a farm and becomes not only self-sufficient but surplus producing.

Second along comes Jonny, he's heard there’s good farming in these parts and also sets up his own fields and orchards. He's not quite as capable as Timmy, but he still gets by and makes a small surplus each year.

Next comes Sammy. Sammy can't farm, but he's got useful skills (let's say blacksmith). So rather then setting up a third farm he becomes the village smith. He charges Timmy and Jonny for his services, and since they can only pay him out of their surpluses he is the poorest of the three, however, the farms both become more productive because of the repairs and improvements Sammy can make to their tools, and in the winter the two farmers both put aside some of their store to help the smith.

Fourth is Andy. Now Andy doesn't really have any skills, he can't farm, he can't smith, he can't thatch. But... he does have some fighting experience.. so what happens?

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Zero out of ten if you said anything involving police, army or anything else 'happy liberal'.

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Andy of course takes over. Threat of violence is the basis of all state authority, and one guy with a sword is a pretty big threat to two farmers and a smith who has to get bailed out in the winter. Andy gets both of the farmers to pay him a part of their produce each year (more from Timmy since he has the better farm), and gets Sammy to build and maintain his house and equipment.

We now have a functioning mini-economy. We have two producers (Timmy and Jonny), a service industry (Sammy), a welfare state (Timmy and Jonny helping Sammy out in the winter), taxation (anything Andy takes), and a government with an army (Andy).

Now along comes Spike.

To start off with Spike goes to work for the farmers, after all with the need to support Andy and the new tools from Sammy, they can make use of the extra hands, so Spike goes to work. Any initially this works, both of the farmers make bigger surpluses, give some to Spike, some to Andy and make some extra themselves. This is how an economy is supposed to work - each member increases overall productivity, and that extra production gets split between the various stakeholders.

But then Spike gets bored and decides he doesn't actually want to work for the farmers anymore, and he can't work for Sammy since he doesn't have the skills or abilities to help out in a forge. So instead he goes to Andy, and he tells Andy that if Andy doesn't make sure he continues to get his share of the farm output he's going to help Timmy, Jonny and Sammy throw Andy out.

Andy, believing this to be credible threat (four against one is starting to get a bit hairy), agrees to give Spike some of the produce he takes from Timmy and Jonny. Of course, in time Andy decides he doesn't want to give up his own standard of living so Timmy and Jonny will just have to cough up more in tax, and Sammy is just going to have to maintain Spike's house as well as Andy's.

We've now got through to something, that seen at a distance and in dim light, is a super rough approximation of the current economy. In particular a significantly sized class that isn't government, doesn't work, and use the threat of overthrowing the government to keep itself supplied at the expense of the rest of the society.

A bit later Timmy, Jonny and Sammy met up in whatever passes for a pub in my 5 man frontier town. Timmy complains that he has to give up more from his farm then Jonny has to give from his, and Jonny should do more to help. Jonny in turn complains that Sammy isn't get his tools fixed fast enough and he needs to do more to fix up equipment faster and to a higher standard. Finally Sammy complains that he is getting less for his services because the two farmers have to give most of their surplus to Andy and Spike now, and so he is having to work faster, and do more, but he is getting paid less.  The three all go round in a circle blaming one another, or occasionally blaming Andy for taking so much off them.

Spike meanwhile, lounges on, doing no work, paying no tax, but indirectly causing all the problems of Timmy, Jonny and Sammy.

I'm not going to end this one with actual mass death. (Though obviously the solution is a Timmy, Jonny, Sammy uprising, kicking Spike out (possibly of the land of the upright and breathing), and requiring Andy to actually do something in exchange for his share of the farming output). Instead I'm going to link this back to my original point about Nimbyism.

Everyone really is paying too much tax.

The problem isn't the tax, or the government, or other taxpayers (all of whom are paying tax as well).

The problem is everyone and anyone who wants something for nothing in the form of state support. To whatever extent you want the country to provide healthcare, education, defence, roads, bin collections, pensions and so on, your Spike.

Welcome to the welfare state...


/Z


EDIT: In answer to the 18,000 question, the maths goes something like this;

£18,000 gross,
Income tax, national insurance and student loan is deducted at source leaving;
£14,574.04
You presumably live somewhere and therefore pay council tax. The average council tax bill for 12/13 in England is £1,201, leaving;
£13,373.04
Let's say you drive a car, that's probably £60-80 a year in VED, plus about 50% of your cost of fuel. Some serious guesswork later (average 10 miles per day at 25 mpg) implies an annual fuel bill of, at current prices, £900, or £450 in tax, including tax say £520;
£12,853.04
Now take out the £100 a month saving (£1200).
Means your disposable income is about;
£11,653.04.
But of course you get taxed on that as well, I'm not going to run the whole thing out but an average VAT of 20% would mean a final post-tax spending power of
£9,322.43.
Adding your savings back on (since you do get to keep that for now)
£10,522.43.

So your total tax bill, after consumption, on £18,000 is about £7,477, or 42%.

All You Can Eat

Sometimes small issues give a better insight into the opinions of the masses then grand events. Everyone is becoming increasingly jaded with politics, and most people are so woefully unaware of economic theory (much less reality) that opinions are little better then 'a man in the pub said'. But when some trivial matter comes to the nation's attention there is an unfettered ability to see and hear what people think without any macroeconomic or geopolitical ignorance coming into play.

The issue that caught my eye today was to do with a two men and an 'all you can eat' Mongolian restaurant. The advertised deal was simple; you paid a set amount (£12 I think), and you could then supposedly eat all you wanted from a buffet. By implication it seemed that you could get a jug of water for free but other drinks were charged normally, and that there was a voluntarily 'service fee' some people choose to pay.

This seemed a fairly standard set up, and I've partaken at similar venues throughout my student career and as a 'productive' member of society. It neatly avoids the problem of "who pays what" when the bill comes in large groups, and ensures that you don't go home hungry. The complaint for the two protagonists in this instance though was that they had been asked to leave their 'all you can eat' buffet of choice, and then banned for life, on the basis that they ate too much. In an interview with the owner the reason given was that the restaurant was a business, and it didn't help things when people came in and ate more than everyone else.

Fairly confident that the community feedback from this article was going  to be universal condemnation of a restaurant that offers 'all you can eat' (AYCE) and then kicks people out for eating too much, I was stunned, not to mention slightly nauseated, to find that the actually the main popular opinion coming through was that "people like that (meaning the complainants, and with an unspoken caveat of over-weight people) are a disgrace," various other offenses were laid at their door, including putting other people of their food by eating too much, ruining things for everyone else and so on. Less than half of the comments took the view that a restaurant advertising 'all you can eat' didn't have much of leg to stand on if people ate more than had been budgeted for.

After my initial shock at this response blew over, I have, on reflective consideration, realised I shouldn't be surprised. This is exactly the phenomena I described in the previous post 'Don't Read It, Sign It!' - the fault can't lie with the person/business making an offer they can't honour, it must lie with the person/business that has the audacity to expect that people/businesses stick to their stated agreements.  For future reference I'm going to refer to this concept as Gobian Responsibility (after the restaurant that inspired this).

For definitive purposes;

Gobian Responsibility holds that responsibility for a hurt lies not with the individual or corporate suffering the harm, even when they, in full knowledge and without coercion, agreed or actively undertook the activity or decisions which lead to the harm. Responsibility must therefore lie with a third party, involved in, profiting from, or extraneous to the incident.

Socialist politicians (or at least their Labour and Lib Dem equivalents) have spent a great deal of time and effort to mould a national narrative based on Gobian Responsibility. The matter of AYCE restaurants is a worrying indication that we, the people, are actually starting to buy in to. At least of part of this is no doubt the beguiling simplicity of a system that says nothing bad that happens to you is your fault - it’s always the fault of someone else.

Here are some examples for consideration;

1.) The London Riots
Genuine Cause; Masses of people seeing an opportunity to get something for nothing and deciding to take it, even if it meant stealing from others. Exacerbated by a break down in the credible threat of force offered by the police (this is actually the foundation stone on which every human civilisation going back to the Stone Age is based - lethal violence wielded by some form of rule-setting authority).

Gobian Cause; 'Society' (meaning people who work, earn money to buy things, own shops, houses, cars and so on) not giving enough to those who choose not to work and therefore have less things.

2.) The Credit-Crunch
Genuine Cause; The cost of capital being driven down due to political pressure, at least in part due to the British obsession with home ownership. As a result many people and organisations were able to take on loans or other financial obligations they couldn't, in all honesty, ever hope to honour. When this level of unserviceable debt reached a large enough level it led to financial institutions (banks) either refusing to lend more money to unviable entities, or to call in the collateral securing defaulted loans.

Gobian Cause; Bankers refusing to continue to lend out vast sums of money to zombie-corporations which should have already collapsed so they can pay themselves vast sums in bonus.

*Footnote on this: Banker-bashing is something of a personal hatred of mine since it is exactly the sort of narrow minded political point scoring that ensures economic recovery is all but impossible. To clarify briefly on a few points;
a.) The proposed tax on bonuses is, (optimistically) expected to raise £2 billion. This will cover the costs of social security (pensions, unemployment benefits and so on - excluding health care and education) for 4 days.
b.) The 'we need to make things' myth; it's true that not everyone in the world can sell insurance. This is not the same as saying that no-one in the world should sell insurance, or that insurance and banking do not have a value-adding place in an economy. (The fact that much of banking and insurance infrastructure developed to service the needs of the expanding commercial empires since the Venetians should tell you something).  Given that we now existing as part of a global economy there is no reason at all why a financial services industry operating at a global level is not a sustainable basis for the national economy.
c.) Some banking product isn't "fair" (charges, salaries, overdraft fees etc.); it is still relatively easy in the UK to get a free bank account. Assuming all you want to do is get paid your salary electronically, make various direct debit payments, have somewhere to safeguard your money, use ATMs, pay on debit card at the supermarket, use internet shopping then most major banks will provide this service completely free of charge. Anything other than that almost certainly means you want some form of borrowing (overdraft, credit card, loan, mortgage and so on). This, in all forms, is a contractual obligation in which you get an upfront wad of cash, in exchange for a series of repayments or conditions to which you are fully aware before signing up for anything. You get all the money to begin and the banks take all the risk. If you don't like the conditions, don't get the loan. Remember - you do not have a right to anyone else's money - including a bank's.

3.) National Debt of £2,311 billion
Since I rarely pass up an opportunity to try and express the size of this problem how about this... the British national debt is, at current exchange rates, 198% the combined national output of every country in Africa combined.

We owe nearly double the amount that 14% of the global population earn in a year.

Genuine Cause; a succession of neo-liberal and socialist governments elected since the end of the second world war on a mandate to build, expand and violently oppose reduction in, the 'welfare state,' combined with overwhelming popular support for such activities.

Gobian Cause; The richest not paying enough tax.


As long as the political and social narrative continues to be based on this version of 'responsibility' we will continue to have politicians who break election promises (after all it's not their fault), a criminal justice system designed to help criminals (after all it's not their fault), a social system designed to redistribute wealth away from the successful and to the failing (after all it's not their fault), and all you can eat Chinese restaurants that kick people out who want to eat all they can (after all it's not the restaurant’s fault you thought that advertisement was genuine).

So whose fault is it?

/Z

Who Says?

The internet age has put a powerful weapon into the hands of single interest groups, lobbyists and all the other flotsam and jetsam of political life. With websites, twitter, YouTube, podcasts and so on a relatively small group can co-ordinate national and even international support. The success of institutions such as a Taxpayer's Alliance is, at least in part, down to 21st century technology. 

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But all is not well in the interweb lands of single issue lobbying. With the disposal of conventional media the requirement to avoid provably false statements is also started to wane. If your giving an interview to a newspaper or political affairs programme you really need to make sure your statistics are supported, and your not sprouting gibberish. Unfortunately this safety net doesn't exist online.

I'm currently reading the final independent report of the Rail Value for Money Study (RVM), with a view to, at some point in the future, writing an insightful post on where our current transport policy is, and where it should be going. I'm not there yet. 

However, I also came across the Road Users Alliance (RUA) while looking for some statistics on the number of road users in the UK, and the total passenger-distance covered. Coming straight from the RVM's analysis on the costs of the UK rail sector, and with a practical understanding of the size and composition of UK government receipts, some of the more sensationalist claims from the Director of the RUA stood out as probably failing the "provably false" test.

As such I have just fired off an email to RUA asking them to explain these apparent inconsistencies, (coped below);

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Hi,

I'm in the processing of completing some research for my own interest into how the costs of the road and rail networks are provided for. In looking for statistics on road usage and costs I came across the RUA website. While looking at your website I came across the piece by Mr Tim Green, entitled Road Users Want a Better Deal. I was wondering if you could provide some answers to the questions I had after reading this article;

1.) At the beginning of the piece a figure of £47bn is given for the tax raised from British motorists - could you provide a source for this figure? From reviewing the 2010 Budget the predicted 2009/10 revenues from fuel duty and VED combined is only £31.9bn.

2.) The piece closes by stating that "Road users collectively pay £138 billion in road related taxes and vehicle costs." Could a source for this please be provided? The implication is that these are costs levied by, or on behalf of, government; not privately incurred costs. If things such as the price of buying or maintaining a car have been included this seems out of place if not deliberately misleading in a discussion of centrally funded road maintenance.

3.) Again, could a source be provided for this statistic; "While roads account for 92% of passenger travel most of Government spending has been on rail." Based on the Department of Transport's estimate that the average road user covers 6726 km/year, and the final report from the Study on Rail Value for Money's figure of combined annual passenger-kms on the railways of roughly 50bn this would mean there are approximately 85 million road users in Britain.

I await a response at your earliest convenience,

Thanks and Regards,

=====

When I get a response I'll post that up as well, though I'm not holding my breath (personally I think I'm going to get some form of "it's under review" response). 

This does however illustrate that even apparently reliable sources (such as the Directors of national campaigning groups) are not beyond toting patently absurd statistics as the truth if it will further their cause.

I'd like to close this (short) piece with a request to anyone and everyone who ever ends up reading this. Next time you come across an unreferenced statistic online send a query to the website or group responsible and call them to account.

Thanks,

Z

Morality +1

Gaming is increasingly becoming a mainstream phenomenon, from Xbox or eSports the gaming medium is gaining ground. Whether this is put down to technology, a maturing generation that grew up with pc games, or an increasing depth to the medium itself (though this I doubt), games are being played by more people in more ways. As games take a more central role as a method of telling stories or showing points of view, its time we, the gamers, do a bit of introspection.

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WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT 1

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I just finished the first Mass Effect game (26 hours, medium difficulty), admittedly a little behind the times given that the whole trilogy has been out for some time, however, my initial exposure to the franchise lead me to conclude it was a Knights of the Old Republic clone and it wasn't until I found out Bioware were the developers that I made my peace.

Overall it's a reasonable RPG; the problem of why your character can gun down hundreds of enemies from day 1 is sensible enough (you start out as a special forces commander), and your license to wander round the galaxy sticking your nose into things is neatly provided via initiation into a branch of the galactic government with infinite authority.

((This is where the spoilers start))..

The ending is actually good enough to push the overall game from probably a 6.5 to a 7, if not a 7.5, and the reason for that is not just the poignancy and cinematic potential, it’s that you, as a player, actually have to make a difficult moral decision, interesting enough in fact to knock me onto a blog at 11pm to write about it.

We, as gamers, have got pretty used to having it easy in the morality department. Despite all the games that try to present the player with 'good' and 'evil' paths virtually none actually work. 'Good' acts normally mean helping people; either by doing quests or giving up money and items, however, since quests are the main reason we play the game, and the items and money and always paltry; as an example I got asked to give a homeless person some money towards the end of Mass Effect, the sum of 20 credits got me 8 "Paragon points" (on a scale of 0 to 320ish). At the time I was sitting on a bank balance of 2.5 million, with probably another half a mil in unneeded items. 'Evil' paths on the other hand tend to mean randomly killing plot-essential characters (making the game short and tedious), or borderline-psychotic acts like running over monkeys in a thirty ton combat vehicle. The choice therefore boils down to attaining a saint like reputation for virtually no cost (that freights with a heap of benefits), or having to work hard to make your game less interesting by playing a homicidal maniac.

Mass Effect made me pause because the final choice is actually a real dilemma. The situation is simple; a huge alien spaceship is about to take over a space station and in doing so bring about the invasion of the galaxy by gigantic killer robots that intend to purge all life from the galaxy (and this is credible threat). The combined fleets of the main sentient races (humanity not included) are engaged in a desperate battle around the station to try and hold back the alien, and rescue the Council (a political group standing for the peaceful corporation of the most powerful races in the galaxy). You get to make the call on what the inbound human fleet prioritises - do they ensure the Council is saved and then move on to attack the alien ship, or do they leave the 'friendly' alien fleets to their inevitable massacre, let the Council die, and focus everything on bringing down the evil alien and thereby saving the galaxy.

Since it’s a game you can probably act on the assumption that whatever you pick you'll still save the day (much props to any developer who actually write a game where you can lose right at the end!) and therefore save the friendlies, however, with an 'in game' hat on the ruthless 'strategic' thing to do is to let everyone else die so that the human fleet can destroy the enemy, thereby saving the galaxy. Fleets can be rebuilt, Councils replaced, an invasion of galactic mega-death-bots is a 'bigger picture' issue. So, I gave the order to leave the council to their fate and focus on the main objective.

But this was a real choice - sacrifice many to increase the odds of saving everyone else, or try to save everyone, and for forcing those 30 seconds of reflection, of immersion, Mass Effect justifies its list price. Fingers crossed the other 2 build on the strengths of the first instalment and tidy up some of the issues (like the same three buildings on a dozen different worlds!)

<<END OF SPOILERS>>


The only people who actually seem to talk about morality in games these days are the media and only then to blame games for every shooting, angry teenager, or driving accident they can. Apparently shooting people on games makes you a violent person. Having spent the last fifteen years killing everything from demon rabbits to civilians with weapons ranging from bare fists to nuclear submarine squadrons, and probably toting up kills in the hundreds of thousands (not counting DEFCON), I would like to say my own failure to turn into a rampaging madman puts the lie to the claim that games kill people.

However, games do seem to suggest a point of view where death and destruction are just one of those things. Most game characters have no issue with solving their problems with a bullet (or laser beam, or hyper-accelerated paint chip) between the eyes, and as long as this execution is preceded with the right conversation options we, the gamer, don't tend to get penalised. Does this subconsciously rub off on those who play games a lot? Are we more willing to accept death as a solution because we dish it out so readily in our virtual alternate lives? Unfortunately I can't really judge this since I can't be both control group and test group, but it's something I'd be happy to discuss with anyone who has some input.

Death aside though, there is one aspect of gaming which I think really has rubbed off - purpose. The characters we play in games are always part of great events, central figures to epic stories and conflicts that stretch across the worlds our e-selves wander. Play the Baldur's Gate games and you take on the role of the son of fallen deity, growing in power and influence from a child with an adopted father to a figure of dread and awe, carving your own fate onto the world around you, in Mass Effect you act at the direction of a Council that leads galactic affairs, on a quest to save all sentient life in the galaxy, in StarCraft you are part of the wars and intrigues that determine the fate of dozens of worlds and three races. Even in games such as Skyrim where you start off as 'just one of the people' you inevitably obtain great lineage and might as the story progresses.

And then when the games are over we have to go back to our 'RL' lives, where most of the time we (and everyone we know) spends their lives engaged in largely pointless activities for the purposes of shuffling round vast amounts of bits of blue, green and orange paper, or, increasingly, for the purposes of moving numbers about on a spreadsheet. When you compare the lives our fictional selves lead to those our actual selves lead the difference is soul-sapping.

I once read (and I'm afraid I can't remember where) that we are in danger of becoming a lost generation, why? - because we lack a great purpose. Over the last century there have been events of such importance and impact that they shaped the zeitgeist of a generation - the Great Wars (both of them), the Great Depression in the US, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War and so on. Events that perhaps gave a sense of meaning to the people living their lives in them. But what do we have? The UK seems to have sunk into a mire of 'greyness'. Out politicians are directionless and limp wristed, our wars happen far overseas and largely consist of 'fire and forget' engagements, the commercial dreams that drove men to risk their lives on the oceans of the world have become little more than number-crunching by vast multinationals. Even the dream of new lands and sunsets on unexplored coasts have gone, the world has been mapped and divided up. Is it surprising then that to find purpose I have to turn to the virtual?

Very few people ever get to make a 'great decision' that influences the lives of millions and generations yet to come (politicians do not count since, as far as I can tell from observation, they don't actually understand what they're doing or why, and don't so much make decisions as pander to one roar of the mob after another), and perhaps the lesson to take from that is that games are good - why? Because they let those of us who wish for purpose in life to find distractions from tedium of 9-5 existence.

/Z