I don't know if Ed Miliband actually used the phrase "privileged few" in his speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday, but he's come out with it several times recently, as have other members of the Party's front bench team. Clearly Labour's spin doctors are trying to get the idea into the public consciousness.
The message is simple. A privileged few were responsible for the financial crisis but have been largely untouched by it. They must be made to pay more to put things right.
Some of the flaws with this analysis are blindingly obvious and have been touched on too many times here to warrant a full exposition. The financial crisis happened because Western economies increasingly used debt to plug an income gap caused by lack of competitiveness. The bankers got rich enabling the rest of us to borrow. Even they hadn't been so keen to help us get in debt, a financial slow-down would have happened anyway, and probably sooner.
But that's by the by. A close family member of mine is one of the "privileged few" and so are quite a lot of my friends. Almost without exception they are people from very ordinary backgrounds who were bright, worked hard at school, at university and on pretty much every day since, including evenings and weekends. They are aware how lucky they are to be in their present position - essentially, having a good job - but I think that is the only privilege they would acknowledge.
Their affluence has been earned, not handed to them on a plate, as Miliband's slur calculatingly suggests. The cry often goes up for "the rich" to pay their fair share. And yet "the rich" are paying top rate income tax at 45%, and if they buy a house for half a million they will pay Stamp Duty at 4% rather than the 0% a cheap flat attracts. To be clear, they'll pay HMG £20,000 just for "the privilege" of buying a house. But apparently this isn't fair. How much tax would the "rich" have to pay, one wonders, before it would be fair? Advocates of fairness never say. For them fairness is on a ratchet. Onwards, but never back.
Miliband is I think preparing the ground for significantly higher taxes for "the rich". Leaving aside the uncomfortable fact that "the rich" are often self-employed, and higher taxes tend to make them phone for their accountants, taking money from them also reduces their spending power and thus tends to slow economic growth. According to a report prepared for HM Revenue and Customs published in 2012, the yield from Labour's increase of the top rate of tax to 50% "is much lower than originally forecast . . . and that it is quite possible that it could be negative". Yes, that's HMRC, who love money more than any institution I have ever come across, suggesting that Labour's 50% tax hike may have actually cost the taxpayer money.
But the real problem with higher taxes lies elsewhere, and I was wondering whether Miliband really understands the difference between a million and a billion. There are a relatively small number of people earning over £150,000, and, even if taxing them more brought in a few million, it takes an awful lot of millions to make a billion. One thousand to be precise. And our debts are measured in billions, not millions.
Last year the Government's deficit was about £120 billion. That is a gap which is not going to be plugged by taxing "the rich" a bit more. It is going to be plugged by keeping a lid on public spending, encouraging enterprise and getting the economy to grow. Higher taxes makes these things less likely, not more.
I sometimes think Labour has learned absolutely nothing from the debacle of 2008 and from their years in opposition. The people who palpably have - Alastair Darling springs to mind - have been marginalised.
None of this means Labour won't win in 2015. In fact I think they will. There are an awful lot of other people in Britain who think the clock can be turned back to the heady days before 2008, if only "the privileged few" shoulder their fair share of the burden.
