patterns (black death revisited II)

 'go back to work and we can cut tax by 2p' - mel stride, work and pensions secretary.

the big goal of the government is to entice back to work the 400 000 people who have left the UK workforce. they have  'upped stumps and back to the pavilion' and retired early without a by-your-leave or any consideration for the captains of industry and the need of the rich to extract value. 

were they to return (the torygraph article says) it would boost the size of the economy by 0.2% and thus reducing the borrowing requirement by 11 billion pounds (or alternatively you could reduce the basic rate of tax by 2p).

horsemouth thinks that the tax take on a 0.2% increase of the economy is not very much you could easily achieve that through increased taxation on the rich. by the point he finished working horsemouth was in any event sunk beneath taxation (this is not true they were still getting VAT out of him 20% on every single thing he purchased) so reducing the base rate of tax by 2p in the pound would not have helped him. 

of course a shortage of workers should drive up wages for those remaining (relatively speaking). 

what this actually shows the complete marginality of the vast majority of the work done and the working population of the UK to the actual GDP and the actual economy  (horsemouth assumes that the bulk of the actual economy is in financial services and alike). 

of course the actual direction of travel is to drive people back to work by inflating away the value of their savings (but also the wages for any work done). the rich will, of course, continue to receive an ever increasing share. for all the talk of the pandemic as a radical break this was the pattern before the pandemic, this was the pattern during the pandemic and (wouldn't you know it) this is the pattern after he pandemic 

horsemouth will have to see where it all goes. he's hiding out with his folks in the countryside.  outside it is a beautiful sunshine-y morning. today a visitor to the homestead. 

blok in 1909 is in florence (well in settingjano).  horsemouth was reading some of his essays on the italian trip in lucy vogel's book.