Babelfish launches Peoplenomics: four people-first policies, modelled by NIESR and CEBR, that could add £36bn to UK GDP and cut inflation. Put people first.
Peoplenomics in Brief: Banks, Tax, Energy, Solar, Housing
End £30bn bank benefits, tax wealth like work, break the gas price link, launch a rooftop solar revolution and build 1.4m homes. Peoplenomics in five steps.
Banks
Britain's Banks are super successful at making money. So why are they on benefits?
Not the benefits we usually talk about, for those with little or no money - but benefits for the super-rich. What else can you call the payment of around £30billion a year, for nothing?
And to companies that make so much money we regularly talk of imposing windfall taxes on them.
But rather than a windfall tax - the last one raised only a handful of billions - the better thing to do is to stop paying this enormous sum, for nothing. Cut the windfall profits and we don't need a windfall tax.
It couldn't be easier. Switzerland and the EU have already done it.
If we end "banking benefits" we save £30billion a year. And we can spend that on policies that help people and grow the economy, such as restoring the personal allowance for income tax.
Tax
Britain's tax system doesn't work for Britain – not for all of us. It works best for people that have money.
If you make money with money, through investments for example, you'll pay half the rate of tax that someone who makes their money with a job. There's no justification for it. And no economic benefit – in fact the opposite.
We starve the state of tax revenue this way. The special rate of capital gains tax costs us £12billion a year.
Meanwhile income tax has been going up, by stealth – through the Tory freezing of personal allowances, that's robbed working people of around £600 a year. Money that many badly need and money they will spend.
Our modelling shows the economic benefit of giving that money back. And the foolishness of taking so much tax from people with so little – that we then have to give them in-work benefits.
Energy
Unless you are one of a handful of large companies, Britain's energy market is not working for you. In fact, it impoverishes millions of Brits, making our businesses uncompetitive and holding back our entire economy.
The single worst part is "the link" – the senseless market mechanism that allows the global price of gas to set the price of our own green energy, preventing us having the benefits of home-grown green energy visible on our bills.
Instead we're tied to regular global energy crises that send our bills through the roof. In the most recent, we paid £43billion more for our electricity than we needed to, in just one year.
We got nothing for that, no investment in infrastructure, no jobs, nothing. The link makes no sense, serves no purpose, does nothing for Britain.
We must break it – for real this time. And make Britain's energy market work for Britain.
Solar
Britain needs a rooftop revolution. We need to go street by street installing solar power on to millions of homes.
Starting with public sector housing, knocking £500 off annual power bills while generating a business-like return for the state.
We can make a significant amount of the green energy Britain needs this way - avoiding the grid delays that beset large projects now. The very best place to make power has always been where it gets used.
Let's give millions of people more affordable energy and a taste of the green economy - and have the massive economic boost that comes with it.
The key is to go street by street, driving down the cost of installation and transforming the economics, as Sky did with their dish rollout and others with broadband. A rooftop revolution will give us jobs, social benefit, green energy and economic growth. And returns way beyond the simple monetary ones.
Housing
Britain's housing market doesn't work for Britain. It works for the small number of big developers that dominate it. Every year our population grows by more than we build new homes for - and every year the crisis deepens. It doesn't have to be so.
Private firms can't deliver what we need, their interests conflict with ours. We want plentiful, lower-priced homes - they want the opposite.
We can change it. We should make them pay for delayed building, tax their landbanks. And build homes ourselves, with a national housebuilding programme.
Starting with brownfield land where 1.4million homes are possible - half of them already with building permission. The economic benefits will be profound, the impact on lives even more so. Let's make our housing market work for Britain.
Other relevant stories
From King John's 1203 wool tax to the poll tax that sparked riots, 800 years of UK tax history show unfair taxes provoke revolt – and fair ones build nations.
Survation polling finds 59% of Britons back a 2% wealth tax on fortunes over £10m, while 63% say the wealthiest don't pay their fair share. Over to you, Andy.
Peoplenomics: price control, rooftop solar and tax reform put money in people's pockets – and could double UK growth. A new orthodoxy for Burnham's Labour.
The Bank of England has paid commercial banks £100bn in interest on reserves in three years. The EU stopped doing it in 2023 – Dale Vince says Britain must too.