Tom Hart

@thrh.bsky.social

406 Followers 811 Following

Public finance, global development, health @odi-global.bsky.social.

Two Buttons Meme with the buttons being 'Keir Starmer won't take difficult decisions' and 'Kemi Badenoch hasn't done her homework'
Chart showing Non-pensioner benefits have been stable over many decades as a % of GDP
Screen shot with text from the article: Tamsyn Barton, Icai’s chief commissioner until July 2024, said that arguing Icai should be cut because there are cuts in aid “does not stand up”. “When there is less money to go round, it is all the more important that independent scrutiny ensures that it is well spent, and that if not, it is called out,” she said.
"Ghana’s government doesn’t see Afreximbank as having preferred creditor status — we do not believe that their debt is senior to any other restructurable debt,” Minister of Finance Cassiel Ato Forson said in an interview Friday. “The Afrexim debt is part of our restructurable envelope.”
The drama broke into the open on the morning of January 31st, when David Lebryk, the bureau’s longstanding boss and a career civil servant, suddenly resigned. Until then, the bureau was among the most anonymous of federal offices. According to Don Hammond, a former official there, Mr Lebryk often told staff members that if the bureau is in the news, the country is in serious trouble. Ever since he stepped aside, it has been in the news an awful lot.
Text from Stephen Bush's 5/12/24 Inside Politics newsletter reading: "The 2019 Conservative manifesto remains a near-perfect summary of where the “centre ground” of British politics is. But the problem is that not all the promises in it — reduced immigration, more money for public services, no increases in income tax, VAT or national insurance — can be reconciled with one another. Although you can soften some of the edges by reforming Whitehall or the public services, you can’t get away from that basic problem: and just as that caused Boris Johnson and his successors any amount of trouble in the last parliament, it will be a problem for Starmer in this one. "
Abstract of the 2014 paper "How Can Scandinavians Tax So Much?" by Henrik Kleven. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28 (4): 77–98. "American visitors to Scandinavian countries are often puzzled by what they observe: despite large income redistribution through distortionary taxes and transfers, these are very high-income countries. They rank among the highest in the world in terms of income per capita, as well as most other economic and social outcomes. The economic and social success of Scandinavia poses important questions for economics and for those arguing against large redistribution based on its supposedly detrimental effect on economic growth and welfare. How can Scandinavian countries raise large amounts of tax revenue for redistribution and social insurance while maintaining some of the strongest economic outcomes in the world? Combining micro and macro evidence, this paper identifies three policies that can help explain this apparent anomaly: the coverage of third-party information reporting (ensuring a low level of tax evasion), the broadness of tax bases (ensuring a low level of tax avoidance), and the strong subsidization of goods that are complementary to working (ensuring a high level of labor force participation). The paper also presents descriptive evidence on a variety of social and cultural indicators that may help in explaining the economic and social success of Scandinavia."
Two stick men. The first says: "A weighted random number generator just produced a new batch of numbers." The second replies: "Let's use them to build narratives!" The caption reads: All sports commentary.