"I never claimed anything of the sort" - oh yes you did

'It's what the social security system has done. Annnd the national debt.' - are you using examples of weak politicians pandering to popular solutions (pay later, get elected now)
for comparison against the completely different people caring for their own families?

Governement spending vs individual spending is a huge issue, and i think you've just conflate the two.

@ Niger

Oh no I didn't!

(Went to a panto on Tuesday. A bit later than usual this year, but still good :) ).

Nigee*

@ Octavious: " You are assuming that the people you give the money to would sell their own offspring down the river, which is frankly a crazy assumption."

Why is that a crazy assumption? People do that all the time.

Only a small minority. Establishing the principle that the oil money belongs to the people is one thing. Then telling the people they can't have it is quite another. Treat people as if they are idiots who need the State to provide even their most basic needs and that is what they will become. You have people in the UK unable to collect benefits and use it to pay their own rent because the government spent so long paying it directly to the landlord for them. It is sickening and pathetic, and I'll be damned if I ever support a policy that works along the same lines. Treat humans like humans and they will generally impress.

My biggest problem with this article is that Britain is more than 12 times larger than Norway and has, and had, far less north sea oil. During the peak, from 1981 to 2001, the UK oil averaged ~2300000 BDP.
source: http://www.oilfinance.co.uk/northseaoil.php

Based on the average price of oil over the time, which was $20/barrel, the total money made on UK oil production was about $16 billion, or 270/UK resident.

Even the most generous return on investments the UK could have made with that money, this so called rainy day fun would be pocket change for the UK government.

Some how, invested smartly the guardian thinks $16 billion worth of oil can create a 450 billion pounds savings account.

Assuming the guardians numbers are correct, UK oil ammounts to 7500 pounds per capita, meanwhile the Norwegian one amounts to 100,000.

Octavious is 100% correct, the reason the Norwegians started the rainy day fund wasn't because its government thought saving was a good idea, it was because the government ran out of places to spend said money on.

The guardian claims that the oil was used to cut taxes on the rich, this is simply bogus and later on the guardian actually admits that it wasn't used
"the oil money enabled non-oil taxes to be kept lower"
So apparently keeping the tax rate the same counts as a tax cut for the rich. I also find the keeping taxes low line to be funny, given that you brits have some of the highest tax rates in the world.

This article is retarded, no matter how you cut it. This is just the guardian trying to make the conservatives look bad, which they do almost every day, so no surprises here.

What's equally laughable though, was that remember it wasn't just the conservatives that did this.

Remember, they're complaining that the rainy day fund wasn't used during the 80s and 90s, so you're friend Tony is just as responsible as Maggie.

Who's friend Tony? Who has praised Tony Blair in this thread?

@ Fasces: "apparently keeping the tax rate the same counts as a tax cut for the rich"

The top rate of income tax was cut from 60% to 40%. That's a cut.

That doesn't include deductions. During the same time period, top income rate of the US was cut from 71% to 28%.

And during the 90s the tax rate was increased, which was when most of the UK oil came in.

Out of interest, Jamie, how did tax revenues from the wealthiest tax bracket change after the cut?

"Who's friend Tony? Who has praised Tony Blair in this thread?"
The Guardian loved Tony, I'm criticizing the guardian which is run be retards.

highest tax rates in the world?
corporate
(Bangladesh: 45%-0% ?)
(Guyana: 40%/30% ?)
Cameroon: 38.5%
Japan: 38.01%

Britian : 24%-20%

Individual (max)
Sweden: 57%
US: 55.9%
Belgium: 55%

Britian: 45%

VAT (sales tax)
Hungary: 27%
Iceland: 25.5%
Croatia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark: 25%

Britian: 20%

I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion - are you adding all the taxes together?? Do you have better figures than my wikipedia table?

@ Octavious - do you have evidence that they increased?

Who are you addressing, orathaic?

@ Fasces: Also, it's not the Guardian that came up with the $450bn figure - it was John Hawksworth, Chief Economist at Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

The claim that the UK has one of the highest tax rates in the world. Cause i don't know how to measure tax rate... government tax income per capita?

@ Jamie

l have absolutely no idea what they did. I was asking out of interest rather than to make a point. I actually suspect that more income tax was harvested under the 60% regime, although I doubt the relationship between the tax rate and what's harvested is close to linear. Solid information on this is annoying hard to track down.

@ orathaic: Sorry, I missed the point where Fasces made that stupid claim. Fasces, Britian has at various points in the past had quite a high tax rate, but actually in recent years the UK has become a low tax country. Our tax rate is much lower than many other countries.

"highest tax rates in the world?
corporate
(Bangladesh: 45%-0% ?)
(Guyana: 40%/30% ?)
Cameroon: 38.5%
Japan: 38.01%

Britian : 24%-20%

Individual (max)
Sweden: 57%
US: 55.9%
Belgium: 55%

Britian: 45%

VAT (sales tax)
Hungary: 27%
Iceland: 25.5%
Croatia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark: 25%

Britian: 20%

I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion - are you adding all the taxes together?? Do you have better figures than my wikipedia table?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP

UK has the 20th highest tax income as % of GDP in the world.

And is below the OECD weighted average?

sorry, unweighted...

@Ora: 39 vs 34.8%. 4.2 higher.

Actually, according to those figures, it is UK 34.3% OECD (average) 34.8%.

So the UK has lower than average tax take. You can't use the 2012 figure for the UK against the 2008 figure for the OECD when the UK figure directly influence the OECD's average...

Good statting, ora. Like I said, the UK is generally seen as a low-tax country these days, especially for large corporations - indeed in the case of large firms, the UK government is directly working with them to help them avoid as much tax as possible.

(But also in terms of personal taxation)

@Ora: First, I'm going to mention that 14 of the 20 highest tax rates in the world are OECD, so excluding the data to include only OECD is going to make the UK's tax rates look lower than they actually are. Of the 177 countries in the heritage foundation study, the UK came in 20th, far higher than world average.

And second I'm going to mention that in 2012, the most recent data, the UKs effective tax is 39.0, not 34.3%. If we want to be consistent, here is a google spreadsheet of the heritage foundation in which I isolated only the OECD countries.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsOOyRPqXPgWdDRqcFVXN0RzeGVTcDhyVUlxRFFBMWc#gid=0

So to answer your earlier question:
United Kingom=39.0
OECD (Unweighted average)=36,2

The UK tax rate is higher than the OECD average, it wasn't prior to the great recession, but it is now.

"The UK tax rate is higher than the OECD average, it wasn't prior to the great recession, but it is now."
Just to clarify, by meaning prior to the great recesion I don't mean it was considered low back then. What I mean is that for the years leading up to the great recession, Britain's taxes were slightly lower than the OECD average, which neither means they had low taxes nor does it mean that the period of them being below the OECD average lasted long.

By the OECD's own site (http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/41498733.pdf) the UK, in all but two of their studies (1995 tax rate as % of revenue and 2008 tax rate as % of revenue) the UK taxes were higher than the OECD average.

I'm sorry Ora, but stop bullshiting around, no matter how you cut it Britain has, by almost any standard, over the last 30 years some of the highest tax rates in the world.