Westminster Politics 2024-2029

Nogbadthebad said:
Only one of those companies, Schroders, is a tax paying British company, the others are all foreign based and owned. Schroders is a wealth management company, and investment growth is very, very different to government economics.

Its like asking Aston MArtin for advice on running a bus company. Technically, they both involve motor vehicles, but that is where it ends.
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Schroders and BlackRock have stacks of economists and analysts across the world and invest heavily in start-up companies among other things. I don't think Reeves hearing outside viewpoints is problematic. People would moan if she just listened to the views of career civil servants in the Treasury too. It obviously depends what actions she takes.

Schroders is the only UK-headquartered company of the four mentioned, but the others have tax-paying UK subsidiaries from what I understand.
 
neverdie said:
There's lots of difficulties that have to be overcome through engineering, goes without saying, but they can be overcome. It isn't just about "green" for me, though the non-combustive is green. It just happens to be the logical conclusion (economically speaking).

Fusion will likely overtake the centralized grid. At what point do you feel comfortable paying for a fusive energy, which will come, when that doesn't belong to any company and is by its "nature" not that which is subject to supply/demand metrics? There would be an infinite supply of the energy at that point, and a non-infinite demand. What should the price be? Free? But will it? That's just fusion but there's a reason, too, I look beyond it.

And the governments, through universities and taxpayer monies, not corporations (for the most part) have paid for it. It would be a scandal if this was given over to any energy company.

It's worth considering just how enormous the shift is here. Supply/demand is pivotal to all economics. Here it doesn't really exist. You cannot price something higher due to inflation, with fusion, whenever it is available, because it will always be available and in a quantity which is infinite. That's almost the death of capitalism (traditional) by itself. An economy is just energy, really; and this is "just" fusion -- there will be more on the way.
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I don't think any of that is realistic in the slightest.

All you have to do is look at the old BT phone lines. It was all connected decades ago, and each house had 10-30 metres of copper wire from the pole, costing a few pounds each at best at the time of installation. But you had no option but to pay them many times the value to rent that wire from them throughout its lifespan.

Basically, the infrastructure will be charged for.

Also, much of the technology you describe is still a pipe dream.
 
TwoSheds said:
Again, I don't think we disagree at all about the likely direction of travel of technology, I just think you are taking everything to probably-illogical conclusion. Fusion could generate a lot of energy but it's not unlimited, and it certainly won't be free - you need fuel for one thing. And the odds of just casually whacking a fusion plant in your back garden in the next 20 years seem infinitesimal. If and when it happens it will need big companies/institutions to safely run the plants, it's so much more complicated than solar power it's untrue. You'll need a mighty grid to get the vast amounts of power out cheaply to people and industries across the country, and that will bring its own transformations to the economy as a whole, but you'll still have some bastard trying to rip you off for it, and you'll make something using the energy that you try to rip someone else off for. It's called capitalism.

Although engineering and science can constantly improve the efficiency of a "motion machine", no matter what you do and how impressive your endeavours, you can't make a perpetual motion machine. It is a physical impossibility. Making carbon capture to e-fuels economically viable for most applications in my opinion runs into the same problems - better is highly unlikely to ever be good enough compared to other superior options. It will be the valve to something else's transistor.
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I'm talking central grid when I talk fusion there. That's obviously not something you're going to have yourself. The thing could blow up half a city.

Why wouldn't it be free? The taxpayers of the EU, UK, US, China (mostly these nations) has funded it almost entirely with minimal company (private) investment. The private investment is so small you can count the billions over years on one hand. And fusion is basically infinite energy (a relatively perpetual amount of energy). So long as you have hydrogen which isn't going anywhere given its abundance.
 
Jippy said:
Schroders and BlackRock have stacks of economists and analysts across the world and invest heavily in start-up companies among other things. I don't think Reeves hearing outside viewpoints is problematic. People would moan if she just listened to the views of career civil servants in the Treasury too. It obviously depends what actions she takes.

Schroders is the only UK-headquartered company of the four mentioned, but the others have tax-paying UK subsidiaries from what I understand.
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If the people who actually pay you, and pay you bonuses for performance, benefit from specific economic conditions, even if the country itself does not, and you have a clueless chancellor asking you what she can do, what do you think those people are going to say to her?

This is exactly what happens with taxation. We outsource tax law to the big 4 accountants, using their staff seconded to government. Then they go back to their employers, explain where the loopholes are, and charge Take that et al millions to use those loopholes.

Outsourcing government policy to profit seeking companies only benefits profit seeking companies.
 
neverdie said:
I'm talking central grid when I talk fusion there. That's obviously not something you're going to have yourself. The thing could blow up half a city.

Why wouldn't it be free? The taxpayers of the EU, UK, US, China (mostly these nations) has funded it almost entirely with minimal company (private) investment. The private investment is so small you can count the billions over years on one hand. And fusion is basically infinite energy (a relatively perpetual amount of energy). So long as you have hydrogen which isn't going anywhere given its abundance.
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Why isn't tap water free in the UK when all the infrastructure was built by the taxpayer? Because some bastard sold it all off. You're not going to get something for nothing, the world doesn't work like that unfortunately.
 
TwoSheds said:
Why isn't tap water free in the UK when all the infrastructure was built by the taxpayer? Because some bastard sold it all off. You're not going to get something for nothing, the world doesn't work like that unfortunately.
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Even if it hadn't been sold off it wouldn't be free, cheaper certainly, but not free
 
Nogbadthebad said:
If the people who actually pay you, and pay you bonuses for performance, benefit from specific economic conditions, even if the country itself does not, and you have a clueless chancellor asking you what she can do, what do you think those people are going to say to her?
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Every major government has a dialogue with business because they lack the expertise in-house. Tax is an example of that and government departments tend to get a brain drain of experts to industry, given salary differentials.

Re asset managers, they are pretty cyclical so tend to do well when the economy is growing and people are saving and investing more, which isn't necessarily a misalignment. Sure they have their own interests, so you need to be mindful of that. To think career civil servants should never have convos with business is folly though.
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
Exactly. Tap water is literally free here in Scotland.
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You probably need to check your council tax bill a little more closely. Water isn't free, neither is energy, nor will it ever be.

Nogbadthebad said:
If the people who actually pay you, and pay you bonuses for performance, benefit from specific economic conditions, even if the country itself does not, and you have a clueless chancellor asking you what she can do, what do you think those people are going to say to her?

This is exactly what happens with taxation. We outsource tax law to the big 4 accountants, using their staff seconded to government. Then they go back to their employers, explain where the loopholes are, and charge Take that et al millions to use those loopholes.

Outsourcing government policy to profit seeking companies only benefits profit seeking companies.
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Asset managers benefit most of all from a growing economy and low interest rates, same as the rest of the country. As long as there's somebody in the room to explain to her how it all works it's only a positive thing to hear from the industry. They'll know infinitely more about macro economics than the civil service do.
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
Wow, I got schooled. What I was trying to say that it’s not as bad as it is in England, which has one of the only fully privatised water systems on the whole planet.
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Went back to Manchester not long ago with the kids, was telling them Manchester is the best tap water in the world. They didn't like it... might dissone them.
 
M16Red said:
Went back to Manchester not long ago with the kids, was telling them Manchester is the best tap water in the world. They didn't like it... might dissone them.
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Take them to London and the Midlands and they'll soon change their mind!
 
Former British prime minister Liz Truss gave a speech on the convention's main stage in which she said, "patriotic Brits... look across the Atlantic with envy."

"We want a Trump revolution in Britain," she said, lauding his ally Elon Musk. "We want Elon and his nerd-army of Musk-rats examining the British deep state.

"We want to be part of the second American revolution."
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She speaks for everyone obviously
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
Wow, I got schooled. What I was trying to say that it’s not as bad as it is in England, which has one of the only fully privatised water systems on the whole planet.
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Worth pointing out that we also don't experience hosepipes bans and can drink our tap water without catching a mouthful of poop.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
Worth pointing out that we also don't experience hosepipes bans and can drink our tap water without catching a mouthful of poop.
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That's what you think, those clouds of midgies happily shit everywhere, you just can't see it
 
Jippy said:
Every major government has a dialogue with business because they lack the expertise in-house. Tax is an example of that and government departments tend to get a brain drain of experts to industry, given salary differentials.

Re asset managers, they are pretty cyclical so tend to do well when the economy is growing and people are saving and investing more, which isn't necessarily a misalignment. Sure they have their own interests, so you need to be mindful of that. To think career civil servants should never have convos with business is folly though.
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She met them two days ago.

The first idea floated in the press since? Reducing the tax free portion of cash ISAs to £4K from £20K.

Making share-based alternatives more attractive. Putting low risk investment options at a disadvantage in a country where we are trying to lower the cost of pension-age citizens is not just assinine, it is clearly a move to boost market investment. I wonder who it is who benefits from that?

As I said. If you let for profit entities lead your strategy, it will benefit for profit companies. Because they are legally bound to maximize profit for shareholders.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
She met them two days ago.

The first idea floated in the press since? Reducing the tax free portion of cash ISAs to £4K from £20K.

Making share-based alternatives more attractive. Putting low risk investment options at a disadvantage in a country where we are trying to lower the cost of pension-age citizens is not just assinine, it is clearly a move to boost market investment. I wonder who it is who benefits from that?

As I said. If you let for profit entities lead your strategy, it will benefit for profit companies. Because they are legally bound to maximize profit for shareholders.
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That argument is years old, but is being heard more and more cos the London Stock Exchange is in such serious decline, with new listings hitting record lows, and UK equities becoming very much a backwater. That's why you had the British ISA touted among other ideas to try and boost ownership. It's not a new issue particularly, here's Steve Webb, the former LibDem pension spokesman, calling for a cut in cash ISA allowances in 2017, it's just becoming more acute.
There are similar convos happening in Hong Kong and Singapore, for example, cos the dominance of the US market is hitting fresh highs.

Of course Schroders can potentially benefit if money from cash ISAs goes into stocks ISAs, though most of it would go into ETFs most likely, not active funds.

There are other issues around people not taking enough investment risk, hampering their saving for retirement. Mainly sucks for older folk if they cut the allowance, cos they may well be better served being in cash.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
She met them two days ago.

The first idea floated in the press since? Reducing the tax free portion of cash ISAs to £4K from £20K.

Making share-based alternatives more attractive. Putting low risk investment options at a disadvantage in a country where we are trying to lower the cost of pension-age citizens is not just assinine, it is clearly a move to boost market investment. I wonder who it is who benefits from that?

As I said. If you let for profit entities lead your strategy, it will benefit for profit companies. Because they are legally bound to maximize profit for shareholders.
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Everybody benefits if such poorly returning investment options are discouraged. There are better performing, lower risk investment options available in S&S Isas and other tax free instruments.
 
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