Dr Anton Howes
48.7K posts
@antonhowes
Invention historian. I write *Age of Invention*, an email newsletter on the history of invention and economic history.
Thread 2 on our NEW report on Scottish tax and benefit policy. Property tax reform is sorely needed in Scotland – for fairness and efficiency. 1. Like in England, council tax is out-of-date, regressive, and inefficient [THREAD]
NEW: Scotland’s devolved tax and benefit system is more progressive than the rest of Great Britain’s, but is unnecessarily complex and distortionary. 📊 @StuartAdam_IFS, @fiscalphillips, Jed Michael and Tom Wernham’s new report examines Scotland’s tax and benefit system [THREAD]
@londonHenryGB You don't know how good you've got it. 78.5% in Scotland. 84.5% should you have a graduate loan on top!
The leader of Reform UK in Scotland has questioned whether there are "too many" universities north of the border. Malcolm Offord said “every barman” in Glasgow and Edinburgh has a degree and yet the country is short of "really good technical jobs": scotsman.com/news/politics/…
Publicly traded companies in Britain must have, or “explain to the regulator” why they do not have: - A minimum of 40% women on their board of directors - A woman CEO, chairman of the board, CFO and/or Senior Independent Director - A board member who is an ethnic minority Why is anybody confused about why so few companies want to list here and so few promising startups scale up here? Would you agree to put people in charge of your company on the basis of their sex or race in order to meet a diversity quota? These rules were brought in by the Conservative Party in 2022, BTW.
For decades after banning both slavery and the slave trade, Britain bought the entire output of the American cotton-producing slave plantations to feed the Lancashire cotton mills. The trade finally ended with the American civil war. The loss of the lucrative cotton trade caused an economic collapse in Lancashire and starvation among the mill workers. It is known as the Cotton Famine. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashir…
@DrLKVaughan @antonhowes Yup. Increasing my hours would put me in that tax bracket, lose my tax free childcare and free nursery hours. Would actually be paying thousands of pounds to work. Repeat countless times across the NHS and no wonder the system is broken.
@antonhowes The whole thing quite bonkers. As for the residents (trainees), the President of one of the Royal Medical Colleges told me that pretty much every resident with kids, once they hit ST4/5 goes LTFT. That is a colossal workforce problem that could be easily remedied.
