The UK Prime Minister may have the regal touch in northern England, but he’s been wrong-footed on the constitutional challenges posed by the Celtic Alliance of first ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, argues KENNY MacASKILL
A POPULAR view is that we all benefit, and there’s some truth in that.
As long as we live in an economy dominated by the market, then taxation (of wages, profits, or capital) will be an essential element in the process of delivering the “social wage” — education and health services, public infrastructure as well as more dubious and contested elements of public expenditure such as “defence.”
At a more subtle level, it can be maintained that to the extent that (as Marx argued) wages under capitalism always tend to fall to the minimum level required for the social and biological reproduction of labour, then the “costs” of taxation in the last analysis fall on the capitalist rather than on the working class.
A sharp rise in public-sector investment is required to kick-start the economy, argues MICHAEL BURKE
Trade unions call for windfall tax hike to fund social energy tariff to public’s energy bills
Years of underfunding are eroding Scotland’s local services and deepening inequality in communities, says VINCE MILLS
CAROL WILCOX argues for the proper implementation of the land value tax, which could see unused plots sold off and landlords priced out of landlordism, potentially resolving the housing and planning crises


