'How can we fund public services?' with
@IPPR

🕘9am, Tuesday
📍Museum of Liverpool

👉 @dantomlinson.bsky.social
👉 @yuanfenyang.bsky.social
👉 @andy-summers.bsky.social
👉 @guardianheather.bsky.social
👉 Chair: @carsjung.bsky.social

'Can we design a tax system which taxes the wealthy and is pro-growth?' with CIOT.

🕛 12pm, Tuesday
📍Albert 3, Hilton Hotel

👉 Lloyd Hatton MP
👉 @gemmatetlow.bsky.social
👉 Emma Chamberlain @pumpcourtchambers.bsky.social
👉 @arunadvani.bsky.social
👉 Chair: Nichola Ross Martin

If someone's daily consumption is unchanged, but they live more days, they are clearly better off. but I'm not sure I would say they are *financially* better off. sure, from gvmt perspective they cost more, if gvmt is paying for that consumption stream, but per-period utility for indiv isn't higher

Yes, but normal people don't think about their wealth based on public finances, they think about what they can afford each day/month/year

bsky.app/profile/arun...

@mikesavagelse.bsky.social in case you hadn't seen this already

Coda: here is a bit more of that sales pitch. Along with general talk about "wealthy Britons", who are anyway not affected by non-dom changes bcos Osborne 2017 reforms stopped almost all UK born folk (via Cond A) from using the regime. All very confused!

Non-doms is a hard area, but useful to speak to an expert to check, rather than only a lobby group and the PR team of an org trying to sell its services (and apparently unsure of the difference between per cent and percentage points)

It matters not just because you shd generally get the facts right, but bcos being out by 15x on how many ppl pay 30k totally changes plausibility of claims by lobby group cited as to how many ppl there are who wd pay 200k

Short thread on some of your point
bsky.app/profile/arun...

None of this is to say that the headline wealth concentration or Gini measures from WAS are rising.

But I think it is more helpful to look at what intuitions people have, and see if they are wrong, or just not smthng the data tell us about. In this case, the data just don't cover it.

As someone who does actually read the deets, you know WAS explicitly isn't sampling ppl without homes. It also isn't going to pick up ppl who are not spending much resid in UK

(below from my paper, bcos I can't screenshot a nice short summary from WAS docs onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...)

More charitably one cd say that there are lots of types of ineq (see IFS Deaton Review ifs.org.uk/inequality/).

Many of these have increased.

Also, ordinary ppl use "ineq" to mean "I see more homelessness + more luxury apartments", which isn't inconsistent with this

2. Wealth *gaps* have increased.
Wealth inequality measures relative share e.g. economy of 2 ppl, one with 10, one with 90 means top 50% has 90% of wealth.
If wealth doubles, one has 20, other has 180. Top 50% is still 90%.
But in £ the top has gone from having 80 more to 160 more than bottom

1b. Also, ppl are living longer, which is great but means that wealth is money they have to spread over a longer period = middle folk don't "feel" better off at any point in time.

This is a wonderful outcome, they have time they are alive. But doesn't accord w/intuitive feeling of being wealthier

1a. Not obv that middle are "better off" for that wealth, bcos a large part has come from shift in pension wealth being held privately (vs state). Privatisation means we measure it

If you excl pens wealth
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...