Europe

[Furunculus]

I know that it is not that high, and there is no way you can consider middle classes having to endure the woeful burden of a few extra taxes (Inheritance tax! Stamp Duty! TUITION FEES! The HORROR!) to be as immoral as one in three children in Great Britain growing up in poverty. I guess it's only Great for 66% of us, huh?

Possibly. But then again, the modern pension system, when subject to increasing lifespans is essentially the world's biggest Ponzi scheme; you need more and more suckers to buy into it and work to provide the money for pensions of old people, in the hope that they themselves will have a golden retirement.

Making financial services act responsibly does not equal cutting them down. Besides, the government seems to be quite skilled at destroying things we're good at which aren't banks (See their support of record companies over musicians, and their neverending crusade to rid Britain of good computer games developers), so maybe the banks have the government by the balls just as much as the unions did back in the 70's.

maybe if we taxed less, the productive part of the economy would be able to achieve more.

again, we had the best private pension provision in the world................. until gordon decided to tax it.

oh yes it does. if we become over-regulated (read: european) financial services will move elsewhere, much as it moved to britain after sarbanes-oxley over-regulated the american financial services industry.