Margaret Thatcher 2.0? British Prime Minister Liz Truss is going big. Her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, has unveiled an aggressive program of permanent tax cuts

Powerline ^ | 09/24/2022 | John Hinderaker

[SeekAndFind]

British Prime Minister Liz Truss is going big. Her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, has unveiled an aggressive program of permanent tax cuts. The Wall Street Journal likes the plan:

Mr. Kwarteng axed the 2.5-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax imposed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and canceled a planned increase in the corporate income tax rate to 26% from 19%. … Kwarteng also surprised by eliminating the 45% tax rate on incomes above £150,000. The top marginal rate now will be 40%.

As a percentage of GDP, it shapes up as the biggest British tax cut since 1972. From the Telegraph:

As you would expect, most of Britain’s establishment reacted with horror, and British markets plunged. In the short term, Truss’s plan will increase government debt. But she is betting on growth, as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan did during the 1980s. Dan Mitchell hails Truss’s cuts and quotes a surprising admission from the New York Times:

Ms. Truss…has modeled herself on Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher’s economic revolution in the 1980s turned the economy around.

Mitchell sees Truss’s policies as a welcome change from her recent predecessors:

I strongly supported Brexit in part because I wanted the United Kingdom to have both the leeway and the incentive to adopt pro-market policies.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when subsequent Conservative Prime Ministers did nothing (Theresa May) or expanded the burden of government (Boris Johnson).

Where was the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher? Didn’t the Tory Party understand the need to restrain big government?

Perhaps my prayers have finally been answered.

But, of course, the missing ingredient so far is spending restraint:

Tax cuts are good for growth, but their effectiveness and durability will be in question if there is not a concomitant effort to restrain the burden of spending.

Truss and Kwarteng also should have announced a spending cap, modeled on either the Swiss Debt Brake or Colorado’s TABOR.

Lower taxes in the U.S. and U.K. ignited the best growth in recent history in the 1980s. Will that formula work again? Happily, the Truss administration should give us an opportunity to find out.

[SeekAndFind]

WHO IS BRITAIN's CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER KWASI KWARTENG?

Kwasi Kwarteng (born Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng; 26 May 1975) is a British politician serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer since 2022. He previously served as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2021 to 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Spelthorne in northern Surrey since 2010.

In November 2018, Kwarteng was appointed Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union. Following the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in July 2019, Kwarteng was promoted to Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, attending Cabinet as part of the role. In January 2021, Kwarteng was promoted to Business Secretary. After Johnson resigned in 2022, Kwarteng supported Liz Truss’s bid to become Conservative leader.

Following Truss's appointment as Prime Minister, she appointed Kwarteng as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Initially an economic historian, Kwarteng is the first black person to serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Kwarteng was born in the London Borough of Waltham Forest in 1975, the only child of Alfred K. Kwarteng and Charlotte Boaitey-Kwarteng, who had emigrated from Ghana as students in the 1960s. His mother is a barrister and his father an economist in the Commonwealth Secretariat. After starting school at a state primary school, Kwarteng attended Colet Court, an independent preparatory school in London, where he won the Harrow History Prize in 1988.

Kwarteng then went to Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar and was awarded the Newcastle Scholarship prize. He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a first in both subjects and twice winning the Browne Medal.

He was a member of the team which won University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994). Whilst at Cambridge, he was a member of the University Pitt Club, and has since returned to visit. He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000

[Clemenza]

Why doesn’t she hire some indigenous English people rather than these (censored)? What kind of “conservative” supports the third worldization of their nation?

[Clemenza]

Tax cuts without spending cuts are retarded. Someone needs to burn anything written by anyone named “Laffer.”

[Clemenza]

Maggie Thatcher was a pro-abort and anti-nationalist who kissed the ass of the global financiers. Overrated.

[PallMal]

From what he's accomplished, he sounds ok to me, as he seems right-of-center.

I would rather have him in the position than some white Brit on the side of Ken Livingstone.

[Paladin2]

Has this guy viewed all of the Milton Friedman videos and passed the comprehension tests?

[CurlyDave]

Why doesn’t she hire some indigenous English people rather than these (censored)? What kind of “conservative” supports the third worldization of their nation?

If you read the guy's resume you would be amazed at his academic credentials and political experience. This is no affirmative action hire.

If you read about his parents and then him you will see that Britain has poached one of the best and the brightest families from Ghana. Their loss, the Brit's gain.

My kind of "conservative" supports him 100%.

[robowombat]

Reading his biography this man seems to be more English than the English.

[hoosierham]

Martin Luther King wished for all to be judged by character not color.

The opposite is the norm presently, which is most unfortunate.

[cranked]

Truss is no Margaret Thatcher or Margaret Thatcher 2.0, far from it.

And the tax cuts won’t help the British pound, which continues it slide past a 37 year low, nor will it help the overall British economy and the looming 22%+/- inflation projected to hit in January of 2023.

Cutting taxes and spending more.
Yeah, okie dokie.

Feeding stuff into Treasury models and grabbing the first thing that comes out the end that arguably results/resulted in a kamikaze budget best for actual kamikazes.

Rejoice everyone. We are making history and watching history unfold, all at the same time.

We are all literally watching the economic implosion of not only the US, but the EU, and the US. Wait, that basically encompasses the known Western world......

[cranked]

..economic implosion of not only the UK, but the EU, and the US...

[Peter ODonnell]

I will judge this entire government by what it does, and let’s hope Kwasi Kwarteng does not have a middle initial of K.

What has me a bit unsettled is that the leader gets along well with Charles, who Maggie Thatcher would have said was a bit wet.

[House Atreides]

My kind of “conservative” supports him 100%.
*********************************************

Yep, mine too. He would never pass muster to be a member of an American DemocRAT administration… he’s too smart and not racist.

[Jess Kitting]

Isn’t this the woman who refused to put White males in her cabinet? No thanks.

[cranked]

‘Nobody in parliament cares about vulnerable people in this country’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPl65Xen79I

[mewzilla]

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Note to the UK: You have the same problem we do.

The letter after the name means jack anymore.

The only reason political parties still exist is to give voters the illusion of choice.

A pol is either loyal to your former republic or to your Deep State.

Truss is Deep State.

[mewzilla]

Get a load of her latest...

UK's small businesses 'to be offered growth loans' as part of Liz Truss's swathe of economic recovery plans as new PM pledges to back Britain's entrepreneurs

Offering sinking biz a boat anchor to keep them afloat.

Looks like the commenters get it.

[xp38]

The dims aren’t gonna cut taxes but they have the spending more part down to an art.

[cranked]

Yes, indeed.