Higher taxes, means higher growth, this has been proved by Brown and our Labour government this previous decade.

Don't oversimplify things, Ben. It flies in the face of hundreds of years of economic theory and practice. True, higher taxes can lead to higher economic growth if and only if those taxes are efficiently spent on programs that bring about a net-benefit to the economy, but higher taxes aren't easily shown to have a correlation with higher growth.

~~jag the economist~~

My point is that Liberalism means that liberals trust the state and trust that economists (in other words people with more knowledge than me), know how to spend money better than the average Joe.

~~Ben almost the economist~~

Either this is a Dave Spart-style spoof, or you take your definition of liberalism from Fox News.

Ok, it's only 2p, but it's the principle and considering they don't know what leadership means, they're all about the principles. Do they think they can rewrite liberalism on the back of a napkin?

What principle?  That taxes can only ever go up?  Even Gordon reduced income tax: should that be reversed?

Higher taxes, means higher growth, this has been proved by Brown and our Labour government this previous decade.

Yes.  Ireland's tax cuts have been a stunning failure that have left it impoverished, haven't they?

If you delve a little deeper into their "new plan" you see they plan to change another key principal of liberalism; rather than wanting to redistributing wealth they want to take a step back. Hhhmmm, last time I checked, that was a conservative value. Next they'll want to renationalise the 11+, or maybe scrap the NHS.

Again, the Lib Dems' sin seems to be a failure to subscribe to what Fox News calls "liberalism".

Much as you've given me a laugh, I'm sure LabourHome can do better than this.

Liberalism is about FREEDOM. This means freedom from coercion and freedom to follow your own life so long as you do not impact of that freedom of others.

This means that the individual should choose how to spend their money, not be told by experts who have no chance of knowing the complexities of everyone's lives.

So what is defined as liberalism above is the opposite of liberalism, indeed, its the beginnings of argument for totalitarianism (no matter what the intention, which is good in your case I believe).

Move onto tax: the liberal position is that tax should be as low as posible, in order to enable the individual to spend their own money how they wish to, because, the individual knows best about their life, and should be responsible for their actions.

Secondly, the LibDem 'tax cuts' are not cuts but shifting taxation onto other things. Away from work (which is a good thing) onto behaviour which affects others adversly, such as polluting. In that way, the harm done to others by actions can be offset. This is done through taxation in many cases since it is unfeasable to make an agreement with every person your action adversly affects.

Lastly: Gordon Brown has done two good things, firstly he followed the Tory spending plans which made the best of the good economy the Tories left us with and enabled us to weather the dot-com bust. Secondly he took politics out of interest rate setting by making an independent bank of England responsible (long term LibDem policy by the way).
He has however taxed too much, and in the wrong places (the poor are massively over taxed). The economy is slowing down, especially compared with the rest of the world. He is responsible for much of the pensions crisis through raiding pensions for extra cash.
His 'great' figures are obtained by fiddling the statistics, by being selective with the time period and what is included in the calculations (to be fair, every chancellor is going to do this, but don't rely on his pronouncements on the health of the economy).
And what has been the result of all his money spending? Not much. NHS in crisis (although whatever is done, it will be, it needs radical reworking), education still in crisis despite Blairs attempts at reform (mostly restoring Tory policy of course), tax burden increased, the poor getting poorer and less social mobility. Some success. I'm just thankful we've had good surrounding circumstances.

It has been shown time and time again, that high taxes kill the economy, and that lower ones invigorate it and help the poorest become less poor. Look at Ireland, once the poor man of Europe, now economically vibrant due to liberal tax cutting measures.

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