Sunday, September 20, 2009
Erratum
Worrying about ginoche, I arrange to cycle back past the tea room yesterday. A very slight detour to find that it is not ginoche at all, rather ganache, for which Mr G. now finds a lot more hits. Including the tea room visited at the last post (in various listings sites) and various sites for chocophiles. The tea room does not seem to have its own web site but it does attract favorable comment. I learn that ganache is a sort of goo made of cream and chocolate used for putting on cakes or in chocolates. And a fairly well-used name for chocostablishments of various sorts.
Also been pondering about the Tory scheme to abolish nearly all benefits in favour of a universal benefit. Now, without going to the bother of actually reading their scheme, I have been thinking about the dreaded poverty trap, into which many of the finest schemes vanish. So, a eureka moment. I offer the suggestion of the year from a disgruntled tax payer in Epsom. We invent an office of the minimum wage. Maybe staffed up with 10,500 bureaucrats of the better sort. This office, for each person, defines a minimum wage which we donote M. We leave the office of the tax, aka HMCR, in place. Now we suppose the gross income of this person to be I. Then the net income of this person, that is what he or she gets to take home, is M + R*I where R is the tax rate. Say 0.5 for starters. Now for low income people, that is to say where I is less than M divided by (1 - R), net income is bigger than gross income and they are on benefit (old speak). For high income people, net income is less than gross income and they are paying tax (old speak). A big benefit is that the marginal tax rate is the same however much you earn. Poverty trap vanishes. Another benefit is that it is additive. If you have a herd of benefits people making up one household, once you have decided what their aggregate M is, it makes no differance how you divide up the M among them.
If we feel strongly about fleecing the rich, we could have bigger R's for bigger I's.
But, as ever, there is some detail. Can't simplify everything away. Do we calculate M on a weekly, monthly or annual basis? Do we let people choose? Do we let people change their minds about their choice if their circumstances change? Is the position of self-employed people and business people any differant than it is now? Then what do we do about transition? Short of throwing a lot of money at a new scheme, there are usually winners and losers. Need to do something about the losers who might otherwise complain. Some sort of transitional deal. So it would probably be the case that a chunk of the efficiency gains of abolishing most of the benefits will be swallowed up in the costs of change. But it would be good if the Tories gave it a shot.
I learn in the course of this post that blogger seems to do a meltdown in the face of the slash which is usually used to denote arithmetic division. Gets into a right pickle. Unpleasant error messages. First time I recall it doing such a thing. Hence the use of words to avoid said pickle.
Also been pondering about the Tory scheme to abolish nearly all benefits in favour of a universal benefit. Now, without going to the bother of actually reading their scheme, I have been thinking about the dreaded poverty trap, into which many of the finest schemes vanish. So, a eureka moment. I offer the suggestion of the year from a disgruntled tax payer in Epsom. We invent an office of the minimum wage. Maybe staffed up with 10,500 bureaucrats of the better sort. This office, for each person, defines a minimum wage which we donote M. We leave the office of the tax, aka HMCR, in place. Now we suppose the gross income of this person to be I. Then the net income of this person, that is what he or she gets to take home, is M + R*I where R is the tax rate. Say 0.5 for starters. Now for low income people, that is to say where I is less than M divided by (1 - R), net income is bigger than gross income and they are on benefit (old speak). For high income people, net income is less than gross income and they are paying tax (old speak). A big benefit is that the marginal tax rate is the same however much you earn. Poverty trap vanishes. Another benefit is that it is additive. If you have a herd of benefits people making up one household, once you have decided what their aggregate M is, it makes no differance how you divide up the M among them.
If we feel strongly about fleecing the rich, we could have bigger R's for bigger I's.
But, as ever, there is some detail. Can't simplify everything away. Do we calculate M on a weekly, monthly or annual basis? Do we let people choose? Do we let people change their minds about their choice if their circumstances change? Is the position of self-employed people and business people any differant than it is now? Then what do we do about transition? Short of throwing a lot of money at a new scheme, there are usually winners and losers. Need to do something about the losers who might otherwise complain. Some sort of transitional deal. So it would probably be the case that a chunk of the efficiency gains of abolishing most of the benefits will be swallowed up in the costs of change. But it would be good if the Tories gave it a shot.
I learn in the course of this post that blogger seems to do a meltdown in the face of the slash which is usually used to denote arithmetic division. Gets into a right pickle. Unpleasant error messages. First time I recall it doing such a thing. Hence the use of words to avoid said pickle.
# posted by Jim @ 1:38 AM 
