One of the vile things about the UK's current taxation system is that it reaches so far down the income scale. So says Tim Worstall in an article in The Guardian, arguing that the statutory minimum wage should not be increased. Worstall pointed out that "it is possible to be working part-time on the minimum wage and be paying income tax. Indeed, a full-time worker who gets that pre-tax £13,400 will be paying about £1,500 a year in income tax to say nothing of further National Insurance deductions. That £13,400 minus £1,500 is £11,900 – which is just about the amount a full-time minimum wage worker will make before tax. So, if we weren't taxing the working poor then, by the measurement of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, they wouldn't be poor.

"Or if you'd prefer the whole thing in a nutshell, if we want to make the working poor better off, then we should stop bloody taxing them."

Yes. And if existing taxes on labour were replaced by LVT, there would be no need for a statutory minimum wage at all because employers would not be able to get anyone to work for penurious wages. In a programme for the introduction of LVT, the first taxes to be abolished should be those on low-paid workers, which would be achieved by raising tax and national insurance thresholds. Those working for 40 hours on the statutory minimum wage should not be paying tax. Only it is not the employees who pay it. The burden falls on employers and forms part of labour costs. By reducing the cost of employing people, raising thresholds is the most effective way of getting as many people as possible into employment.

The government seems to have an unhappy knack of getting into a mess with property taxation. The latest wheeze is a tweaking of the Council Tax so that people who live in nice area pay more. Labour planning secret tax on 'nice houses'

We do not usually find ourselves in agreement with the IMF, but we go along with their chief economist, Oliver Blanchard, in his criticism of Gordon Brown's £12.5bn cut in VAT. Blanchard has dismissed it as "not a good idea", warning that European governments faced a new Great Depression if their stimulus packages proved inadequate.

These ongoing interest rate cuts are obviously achieving nothing, so why persist with them? People who are in debt and feel insecure about spending their money are not suddenly going to rush to the shops to buy things that are not essential, and certainly not with borrowed money, at any interest rate. In fact, anyone sensible person enjoying an interest rate cut will continue with the same repayments and clear their debt quicker.

Britain's Captains of Industry have always been foremost amongst the advocates of free market economics, but not, it seems, when they themselves are in trouble. Now they too have joined the queue of benefit claimants and have got their begging bowls out. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and the Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMIF) have sent a joint letter to the chancellor, the Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, and business secretary, Lord Mandelson, regarding the impact of the current economic crisis on the UK motor industry. The letter suggests a number of initiatives, designed to stimulate the UK vehicle market and mitigate the short and long-term effects of the economic downturn throughout the sector. The industry is calling for special measures.

The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee slashed its key rate by an unprecedented 1.5 percentage points to 3%, the lowest since 1955, emphasising its growing concern over a contracting economy. The ECB cut rates by half a point to 3.25%. But after allowing for inflation, interest rates are already negative and that is before tax. How much lower does anyone imagine they need to go to have any effect? Since it is land prices and rentals that are the real problem any effect of cutting interest rates will be next to nothing. Inflation (=theft of people's savings) will help by reducing real land prices by depreciating the currency. But the underlying problem is that land prices are sticky downwards because we do not have land value taxation.

Why is everyone doing just about anything apart from dealing with the real problem? And the silence from the two opposition parties is deafening.

"Negative growth" means contraction. The UK economy shrank by 0.5% in the 3rd quarter of the year. Who has become worse off and in what way? Some people have lost their jobs, their homes, or their life savings. Things seem set to get worse.