An historic decentralization deal in England There is historically in England a North/South division. In the South, trade and financial services have made London the target of international investments and…
Public spending
How is NHS coping with winter? Winter is historically, and not surprisingly, a very challenging time for the UK National Health System, NHS, due to lower temperatures and the spread…
Switzerland may be known for low taxes, but that does not prevent it from redistributing them; richer regions subsidise the poorer ones. Now at least one paying canton is starting to protest against the arrangement. There really is a big difference between how much taxpayers in different cantons pay for (or receive from) others. But somewhat surprisingly, there is hardly any “freeriding”: subsidised cantons do not use the subsidy to lower their own tax revenues. “Race to the bottom” that most EU politicians like to fear is therefore little to be feared.
The UK government has been watching Jamie Oliver’s TV shows and now wants to implement his plans for a new tax on sugar. The Commons‘ Health Committee has reported its overwhelming support for the idea at the end of November. Other than arguments that such taxes are “good per se“ because they will decrease obesity, most serious justifications invoke the idea that the tax would be a just way of raising extra money for the health service tasked with treating the consequences of obesity. Unfortunately, neither goal would likely be achieved through a sugar tax.
Germany Income per capita is not only high in Germany, it is also relatively equally distributed in the population. OECD data indicate that only a few small countries have income both higher and more equally distributed than Germany. In other large European countries like France, UK, Italy or Spain, income is lower (on average) and more unequally distributed. This international comparison suggests that higher income does not have to result in higher inequality. A contributing factor to this could be that state institutions of a higher quality can positively influence not only the wealth of a nation, but also redistribute it during slow growth.
It is good when foreigners buy agricultural land. Johnny Foreigner will have evidentnly paid more than anyone else, and he can bring access to better capital, technology, know-how or marketing channels. That’s what the single market is for.
Yet governments fear him and legalise against him – like the Slovak government recently (and many others). Some see it as a protection for domestic landowners, but in reality it is subsidies that rule European agriculture. They seep through to landowners, and Johnny likes that. Reduce them, and Johnny won’t be so eager to come.
Two decades after the last EU bananagate, it’s going bananas again. EU subsidy programme to bring “fruits, vegetables and bananas” [sic!] to schools is only partly trying to do a “good thing”. Partly it’s changing schools into dumpsters for excess output of oversubsidised agriculture. And the EU Parliament has just infused it with EU propaganda: “EU food good, other food bad”. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth would be proud.
How do you know that any institution has too much money? When it does not manage, in spite of best intentions, to spend them all. Then there is room for scaling down the budget. The money will not disappear – it will be spent by the original “donors” instead. We show that the EU is, at least to some extent, such institution.
There are plenty of reasons to panic about the level of UK government deficits and debt. But Brexit, even if it actually came, is not one of them. We review the relationship between a UK-sans-EU and public finance.
The Greek bankruptcy of 2010 was the latest impetus for reviving the debate on robustness of governments’ budgets in the Eurozone. It became clear that in order to assess the long-term fiscal health, it is not enough to look at the much used public debt-to-GDP ratio. Additional indicators need to be considered which take a broader picture.