One current paradox in England is that while Conservatism and its works are still deplored by most of the electorate, Conservative philosophy remains intact. The dominant discourse of political debate still prohibits the advocacy of tax-funded public spending. The intellectual hegemony of Conservatism remains in place. And at present the signs are that New Labour remains imprisoned by the ideas it learned to ape and is limiting itself to governing within the parameters laid down by its predecessors.

Some of the best instruments available to governments to fight inequality, poverty and social marginalisation are public spending and taxes. Public goods like education, health and transport cannot be provided without public spending.

However two things are too often forgotten in the public debates on tax and public spending. The first is that public spending makes up a crucial component of effective demand. The second is that there is no more economic logic in giving 'interest' to the rich than in giving social credit to the poor or a guaranteed wage to all.

Any economic debate on income tax versus a Henry George land tax or a Carbon Tax or any other form of public sector revenue raising measures should hinge on the differences in the marginal propensity to save and consume of the various recipient and contributing groups.

Any move to enforce pension saving by the poor, for instance, can only make economic sense if linked to some form of confiscatory tax on what the Fabians always quite rightly called 'unearned income'. Otherwise, as with usury itself, all one is doing is shuffling money out of the pockets of the middle class into the bank vaults of the super-rich. The poor of course have no money. They just shuffle their feet.

And at this point the nonsense of this 'in one pocket and out the other' game becomes so transparent to must sensible people that they start to wonder why the public sector doesn't get on with it just like they always used to...in the golden age of The Swedish Model.

Left to discuss then is the question of who should be the 'competent receivers' for the public treasuries and at what 'level' the holders of the public purses should be located...New York; Frankfurt; Stockholm; Visby, Ystad and Umeå; or Borgsvik, Ekerö and Mörbylånga.