Eliminating the deficit with tax rises

I like an article with a fresh look at the problems we face and this piece poses some interesting questions/

The article from the May 2015 website looks at the options open to the chancellor to make the sort of cuts necessary to eliminate the fiscal deficit. Various ideas such as abolishing the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are mentioned and evaluated, along with the size of the dent that such moves would make in the deficit. The article is based on an FT interactive article that invites readers to change fiscal policy themselves through various cuts and tax rises to solve the fiscal conundrum. It is telling that the FT focuses predominantly on cuts and fails to even give the reader the option to hold spending steady and use tax rises to balance the books! The ever-vocal Thatcherite lobby seems to have framed the argument in such a way that people believe that further tax cuts are not just undesirable but practically impossible. It is certainly interesting that the 50p tax rate raised so little revenue, perhaps the sort of wealth taxes proposed by Vince Cable and Ed Balls could be part of the solution?

Anyhow, it is an excellent resource for a lesson on fiscal policy and brings in aspects of supply side policy and the limitations of demand management.