Dan Neidle

Caught a few interviews with him on Zahawi. Seems a smart guy on a mission to improve society.  Ex Clifford Chance. Does he rof? 

👋👋👋

He was very impressive and plainly liked being on the camera. I liked how he described himself as a tax nerd and somehow managed to convey a coolness to the most unlikely of subjects. 
Poachers do make the best Gamekeepers. 

Indeed. He was interviewed on BH (R4) yesterday morning. Full of a cold, and just woken up but still more coherent and clear-thinking than an entire cabinet of ministers.
 

 

If here is here - much kudos to you, sirrah.

 

Next parliament will be interesting.  Rebalancing tax burden away from earned income onto wealth makes a lot of sense, but it's unpopular even among those whom it would disproportionately benefit in the short term (in the long term you could argue it would benefit everyone except the very old, as it would spur productivity/economic growth):

 

https://benansell.substack.com/p/a-puzzling-inheritance

Very interesting, Vertigo.

Another interesting conumdrum, which might tie into the unpopularity perceived unfairness of many ways of taxing wealth raised in that blog, is that curiously, societal belief that they are living in a meritocracy actually seems to go up in line with rising inequality.

"...rising inequality is legitimated by the popular belief that the income gap is meritocratically deserved: the more unequal a society, the more likely its citizens are to explain success in meritocratic terms, and the less important they deem non-meritocratic factors such as a person’s family wealth and connections."

https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/100794/1/Mijs_2019_Paradox_of_Inequality_preprint_.pdf

These are pretty hard circles to square for any left leaning govt, in terms of devising a psychologically acceptable tax policy that somehow prevents ever compounding levels of inequality.  

 

  

 

 

Agree.  If you want a really depressing read:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Leveler-Inequality-Twenty-First-Princeto…

 

Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.

Agree.  If you want a really depressing read:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Leveler-Inequality-Twenty-First-Princeto…

I've not read it, but I've heard a couple of talks by him. It's interesting what he's done: take the long view re inequality over the course of history. 

But yeah, his central point is indeed grim. That is, that the only things that historically have significantly reduced inequality have been the "four horsemen": warfare, revolution, state collapse and plague. 

That's not to say there might never be a way to fairly tackle inequality in a stable, peaceful system, but clearly we have yet to hit upon the right formula to do so in a way that's also compatible with our psychology.  

 

Not that hard really, it just requires cooperation between every single stable country someone would want to live in.

Every time any country ups its taxes, every other country pricks its ears up and offers sweetheart deals.

Eg it's a joke how low Italy's taxes are for rich newcomers.

Just wonder how much money he personally made helping others to avoid tax before he went on this crusade.

Unless his private practice was all about helping HMRC recover underpaid taxes??

bradders that’s the 3rd time u have attempted that meatshielding angle

do i really have 2 explain 2 u again y ur very likely wrong and y u seem 2 have an inexplicably deep ignorance of how tax avoidance works and who does it?

do u even lawya?

that the only things that historically have significantly reduced inequality have been the "four horsemen": warfare, revolution, state collapse and plague. 

High estate taxes / inheritance taxes in the UK reduced inequality in the 1920s to 1960s period.  Warfare (WW2) was a reason for the high taxes during part of the period but I'm not sure that's really enough to say that it was warfare directly that reduced the inequality.

Inequality in Ireland was radically reduced from early 19th century to 100 years later at time of Ireland getting self-determination in 1922.  One of the ways that occurred was through state sponsored buy-outs of large landlords and making (the better off class of) peasant farmers owners of their land.  Again, that all occurred without warfare, revolution or state collapse.

Elephantinthewildhappyandfree30 Jan 23 22:55 ReplyReport

That’s the 10 millionth time Oracle had used the term meatshielding

i kno it’s absolutely insufferable on here isn’t it. absolutely riddled by unquestioning tozza useful idiots

"Indeed. He was interviewed on BH (R4) yesterday morning. Full of a cold, and just woken up but still more coherent and clear-thinking than an entire cabinet of ministers."

With apologies for the tangent (and the truism), our politicians these days just seem so incompetent across the board. I remember being younger and thinking it seemed like there were many competent people in public life, even amongst those i didnt necessarily agree with. These days definitely not. I think it became particularly stark from around the time of the brexit campaign. It was like an 'emperor is naked' moment. Cameron, Truss, Kwarteng, Bojo, Corbyn, Patel, etc, etc. These people just dont have a fcuking clue what they are doing.

You see someone like Dan Neidle on TV and think we could just do so much better if we had the right people involved in government / policy.

that the only things that historically have significantly reduced inequality have been the "four horsemen": warfare, revolution, state collapse and plague. 

High estate taxes / inheritance taxes in the UK reduced inequality in the 1920s to 1960s period.  Warfare (WW2) was a reason for the high taxes during part of the period but I'm not sure that's really enough to say that it was warfare directly that reduced the inequality.

Inequality in Ireland was radically reduced from early 19th century to 100 years later at time of Ireland getting self-determination in 1922.  One of the ways that occurred was through state sponsored buy-outs of large landlords and making (the better off class of) peasant farmers owners of their land.  Again, that all occurred without warfare, revolution or state collapse.

 

Rob, re WW2's levelling effect on inequality, Schiedel argues it wasn't just the high taxes that followed it, but that was a part of it: 

"The pressures of total war became a uniquely powerful catalyst of equalizing reform, spurring unionization, extensions of voting rights, and the creation of the welfare state. During and after wartime, aggressive government intervention in the private sector and disruptions to capital holdings wiped out upper-class wealth and funneled resources to workers; even in countries that escaped physical devastation and crippling inflation, marginal tax rates surged upward. Concentrated for the most part between 1914 and 1945, this “Great Compression” (as economists call it) of inequality took several more decades to fully run its course across the developed world until the 1970s and 1980s, when it stalled and began to go into reverse."

Regarding Ireland, it's interesting to hear about the state sponsored buyouts of landlords.

On the other hand, let's not forget that one million were lost to the great famine, and approx 7.5 million emigrated from the country during the 1800s-early 1900s. 

This surely would have vastly increased the bargaining power of the remaining workforce in Ireland, and resulted in far less competition for resources than before. It's likely a huge factor in the reduction in inequality by 1922.

"Spurious, not sure that argument works. Italy is a shambles, whilst Germany, with high rates of taxation, is the powerhouse of Europe."

It's not an argument. It's an observation of something I see all the time in my line of work. Germany might be able to hold onto most of its rich people for various reasons related to the country and its culture - not everybody is a selfish khunt.

And it's precisely because Italy is a shambles that it's offering bargain basement 15 year deals to rich people. May as well take a flat fee if noone declares their income and assets properly anyway.

Surely you can't dispute though that the reason always given for not taxing super rich people properly in the same way that the middle classes and merely well off are taxed, is that they would all fvck off.

That will continue unless and until there is cross border cooperation between all major Western countries on taxing the super rich properly.

To have the country run by intelligent sane people like Dan Neidle you would have to pay politicians more than they would be paid to do alternative jobs (like be partners at Clifford Chance). Can you imagine the  competition to be an MP if MPs were paid a million quid a year, cabinet ministers two million and the prime minister three million? As it is becoming an MP is not the goal of any intelligent sane human being. I've never met one - from any party - I would trust to run a milk round.