On 28/07/2018 08:52, michael adams wrote:
You seem there to be equating net fiscal contribution with contribution to
the UK economy. I thought one usually looked at total public spending as
a proportion of a region's GDP (or more probably GVA).
One might indeed normally do that. But in this case had one been
reading the newspapers over the past two years - ever since the
referendum in fact - one might have been struck by continual
references to the fact of London's contributing such a large
percentage of the GVA both of the UK and of England.
Of course had one forgotten this, although I find it hard to
imagine how one possibly could, one might I suppose need to
refresh one's memory.
Total GVA (£ million) GVA per head
UK 1,747,647 26,339
England 1,498,221 27,108
London 408,479 46,482
South East 258,902 28,683
North East 50,675 19,218
North West 166,542 23,068
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/gross...duk/1998to2016
All those figures are positive. So if you knew all that I fail to
understand why you claimed that "London, followed by the South East, and
to a very small degree the East of England are the only areas of the UK
which actually make a positive contribution to the UK economy".
Otherwise workers who receive, say, £3,000 p.a.
net more in benefits and public services than they pay in taxes,
duties etc score as a "net loss" to the economy, even if they are
responsible for a net positive £10,000 p.a. contribution to GVA/GDP.
That would only make sense were one able to produce any kind of
satisfactory explanation as to why people who receive more in
benefits than they pay in taxes should be consistently more
productive than anyone else.
So can one ?
No - because my example of the worker contributing £10,000 to GVA makes
no such claim about productivity. Look at your own figures above for
GVA per head - which are per head of population including the
economically inactive population. So the £10,000 worker (even if only
working part-time) is less productive than the average. But is still
making a net contribution to the economy. This was not an accident.
--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid