Robert Paston

speaker

388 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 10 Jun

Robert Paston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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The Rest Is Money · 282. Are politicians living in a tax-and-spend dream world? · 27 May 2026 podcast

No, no, but I'm talking about the funding.

I'm talking about the ability to raise more locally.

In general, we need a wholesale reform of the whole rates and transfer system.

And broadly, money should be raised locally and deployed locally.

One of the policy objectives that pretty much any government would want to have is to provide incentives both for people in work to work more or people who are on part time work to do more work or indeed to get people who are not working at the moment back into the workplace.

So if this is an example of something that is sort of nice in theory, but potentially disastrous in practice, what would be, you know, if you had to choose, you know, one or two things that could increase the size of the workforce, you know, fairly significantly, what would they be?

Lots of employers say they can't get the people they want, even at a time when unemployment is rising.

But I thought you were a believer, Paul, in equalising capital gains and income tax.

And I'm going to do you a favour now, because I'm going to tell our viewers that behind you are your two latest books.

Very strategically placed behind your noggin.

You've made a career out of trying to help governments understand essentially numbers.

And one of the things, though, that I would ask you was a sort of philosophical question.

is, you know, politics is often driven by political parties coming up with some wheeze, like a wealth tax.

For example, the Greens, for example, create the impression that a wealth tax is going to solve everything.

But even if they could raise the sort of money that they think they can raise, which is, I think, sort of 15, 20 billion, as you point out, it is a drop in the ocean

of actually the tax needs of the economy.

How do we educate voters, as it were, to distinguish between what you might, you know, call, you know, even if these are real taxes that might possibly be levied, but taxes that in the end might make us feel better because they play to some sense of the fairness of the system.

We, you know, we...

Just had Gabriel Zucman actually on the podcast.

And he, you know, I think a lot of his appeal is, you know, he plays into a view, which I completely agree with, which is that billionaires do not pay enough tax, right?

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