How to fill the 'black hole' posted by Richard Seymour

The IFS estimates that the Treasury has a £45bn black hole in its finances. Today, we learn that the 1,000 richest people in the UK have experienced a dramatic decline in their wealth due to the credit crunch, from £413bn to £258bn. £258bn is still too much dough for such a small amount of people. I expect they could comfortably survive on a mere million each (fewer ivory backscratchers, I admit, but we all have to make sacrifices in these difficult times). If you applied a windfall tax on their wealth, leaving each with a million quid to live on, you would still be raking in £257bn. That would cover the 'black hole', and pay for the TUC's proposed £25bn stimulus and leave £187bn left to spend or redistribute. Failing that, there is one other option: it has been noticed that the shortfall is roughly equivalent to the annual 'defence' budget. The obvious solution is to stop spending so much money on wars of conquest, arms development, nuclear weapons and all of the other means of mass destruction that the British state is so fond of. Lenin's Tomb will return soon with more attractively simple solutions to the world's most complex problems.

Labels: alistair darling, budget, capitalism, credit crunch, imperialism, new labour, recession, treasury