Ann Pettifor

Taxation

Vultures are Circling Our Fragile Economy…

This article appeared on the Open Democracy site on 16 June 2020 On the weekend of 30 May Elon Musk – a billionaire with a net worth of $38billion – launched a rocket into space. This private venture was in contrast to President Kennedy’s ‘moonshot’ ambition of 1961-69 ­– one of the greatest mobilizations of […]

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The Latent Unused Power of Citizens & The Production of Public Collateral

The following is a very long, but I hope worthwhile read…published by the Trans National Institute’s stunningly well produced Report State of Power, 2019: Finance –   in January, 2019, and edited by Nick Buxton. Until we fully grasp the importance of public debt to the finance sector, immensely wealthy, globalised corporations will continue to parasitically

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Do Tax Revenues Finance Government Spending?

The Economist had a piece  on Britain’s tax base in its 25th January edition. It begins with a reference to Denis Healey’s speech to the 1973 Labour conference, in which he promised that tax increases  would be met with “howls of anguish” from everyone, not just the rich. As it happens, I have been reviewing the

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Why Building More Houses Will Not Solve the housing Crisis

I wrote a piece for the Saturday (26 January 2018) Guardian. Its been described by many as “counter-intuitive” – because in it I draw on the research of others (notably that of Ian Mulheirn – director of consulting at Oxford Economics)  to argue that building more houses will not dampen house prices. I posed this

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Take Back Control of the Palace

In this piece, written for International Politics and Society, I argue that  the global investigation into the “Paradise Papers’ has created an opportune moment for wider debate about how the increasingly corrupt and out-of-control global financial system can be tamed. It is time, I argued, that tax-paying citizens recognised their power to create change, and to manage

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Why I did not sign the Observer letter for ‘Plan B’

I thought long and hard before refusing to sign the letter calling for a Plan B. Not because I do not think it is urgently required. But because the letter called for “clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion, as well as by raising taxes on those best able to pay.” It goes without saying,

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