With so much of the focus of the media and markets on Greece and its PIGS neighbours in the eurozone, one could easily forget that the UK will have the largest deficit in the EU this year and next. This post suggests that being outside the eurozone is a two-way street for the UK. The lack of restraint on its fiscal policy is already showing, with a simple index of government finance statistics placing the UK finances as the weakest of 24 developed countries.
This post scores Budget 2010 against three criteria: closing the budget deficit, preserving public services and managing expectations. While scoring very well on the first two, principally because the nettle of public sector pay was grasped, expectations about taxes and future Budgets were not properly managed, which may cause trouble down the line.
With the Budget looming, a range of opinions are being aired about the relative importance of tax increases versus spending cuts. This post attempts to put Ireland’s public expenditure in perspective, by comparing the size of our Government, relative to the economy, with that of our European neighbours. It finds that Ireland’s government will, in all likelihood, be the largest in Europe in 2009.
Last week, over 200 people filled out a simple quiz on Ireland’s tax system. The results are revealing. As one might expect, people think the system is far less progressive than it actually is and that the typical worker is paying a significant amount more in tax than they actually are. Perhaps the more surprising result is the broad consensus across all groupings about what the tax burden on typical workers should be: 23%, rather than the current 4%.
