Welfare payments risk turning us into high-tax jurisdiction

RISING spending on social security is in danger of making Guernsey a high-tax jurisdiction, the States was told yesterday.

Chief Minister Lyndon Trott said that social security expenditure and growth had risen by 19% in real terms from 2007 to date.

Deputy Trott had asked economist Professor Geoffrey Wood, who compiled the fiscal policy review released on Monday, that if the growth was to continue, whether within a generation the cost of providing social security would double.

Deputy Trott said the professor agreed. He then asked whether if as a result of that, could Guernsey move from a low-tax jurisdiction to a high-tax one.

The professor said ‘yes, that is a real threat’, according to Deputy Trott. (gep)

I think it's a case of 'pruning' the CC's who work in this department - I asked the SS about something before I left for Oz and two letters came the next day - stamped and signed by different people - then another one came the next day signed by yet another person!! Three stamps, three administrators - and I know I'm not the only one to experience this!!! Not surprised about the I/T :-((((

make some of these youngsters who dont work or wont work get off their arses and find a job instead of relying on benefits....of course to do this they need to stop employers giving the jobs to people coming in to the island for 9 months to work and then running off back home and claiming all their tax back...

LINKEY

Ours is less than 1%

Thistle wrote:make some of these youngsters who dont work or wont work get off their arses and find a job instead of relying on benefits....of course to do this they need to stop employers giving the jobs to people coming in to the island for 9 months to work and then running off back home and claiming all their tax back...

I agree with that Thistle - but I also think they should look to their own wasteful ways before correcting other people - like most Civil Servants they conveniently forget that the money they are being so wasteful with comes out of the tax payers hard earned pay......read this and ponder on the truth of it:-


1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.
-- John Adams

2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
-- Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-- Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat, French economist(1801-1850)

11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-- Ronald Reagan (1986)

12. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-- Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!
-- P.J. O'Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire (1764)

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!
-- Pericles (430 B.C.)

16. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
-- Mark Twain (1866)

17. Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.
-- Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-- Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-- Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-- Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

22. There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress.
-- Mark Twain

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
-- Thomas Jefferson

25. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
-- Aesop

FIVE BEST SENTENCES

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for...another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!