Apparently, Rachel Thieves needs the right advice:
If Rachel Reeves needs some money tonight, she could do a lot worse than read my Taxing Wealth Report. A whole raft of options for her in there. https://t.co/iKeWuQYv7O
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) July 1, 2025
I can only conclude that, despite being somewhat dull, even she isn’t that stupid.
Taxing wealth is easy with the power of the state behind you. Minimising the negative consequences is a much harder task.
Wealth tax and rent controls are loved by the hard of thinking Leftist despite the evidence they don’t work.
Just to show the problem, if you confiscated all the wealth of the Times 100 richest people, you could run UK Gov for about 6 months!
Then what?
Richard Murphy is a regular subject over at Tim Worstall’s blog. Taking the piss out of his insane ravings is a regular sport over there. I believe that it all started because Tim used to comment at Murphy’s blog but Murphy tends to block and ban anyone who disagrees with him.
Indeed, I have followed some of it. Murphy is not just ill-informed or stupid; he is evil.
This country looks at benefits the wrong way. They need to tighten up on levelling out sick pay. If I worked for NHS, local government etc you get 6 months full pay then 6 months half pay. Most sick leave is less than 6 months. If you work in private care sector, hospitality, etc you get SSP which is about one third min wage. So if course not being able to live on that, which is why people go to work, they have to claim universal credit. You are not entitled to much so if you have sick notes they try and push you onto the incapacity benefit. They advise you that you won’t have to look for work. This is despite the fact that you have a job to go back to. Now in a lot of circumstances if you go down that route you might find you are better off than working.
So what government needs to do is either make SSP at least 80% min wage or make all companies pay the same sickness benefit. This way the workforce won’t even look at bring on benefits.
“A whole raft of options”
Choose from cripplingly high taxation, disastrously high taxation, and impossibly high taxation!
The report (and I have read it) is tooth grindingly stupid. Its claims of raising wealth wouldn’t hold water even on a one- off basis. As mentioned by our erstwhile host you are dealing with someone who is the embodiment of evil in its purest form. Thieves may have no discernible virtues but she clearly isn’t that stupid,
If you’re taxing wealth rather than income, you could start with the Ely Potato’s four-bedroom House of which he is the sole occupant. It must be worth a lot more now than when he bought it.