Here are two handy quotations:

It is very hard to be optimistic about revenues. The problem is not just the recession, for that has barely begun. The problem is structural. Too much of the revenue comes from high-earners… The top 1 per cent of income-tax payers contributes more than 20 per cent of income-tax revenue.

People reasonably bleat about bonuses, but those bonuses make a huge contribution to tax revenues.

Plus:

The rich and successful and dynamic are voting with their feet and voting to go and settle somewhere else. In New York City, 1% of the residents of New York City pay 50% of the taxes.

One is Hamish McRae in the way left-leaning Independent. The other is Mark Steyn, Columnist to The World.

Are they by some chance related?

Hamish again:

… this has gone beyond politics. The harsh arithmetic makes radical measures inevitable, and the difficult task for the next government will be to sustain support for these measures.

This leads to a bigger issue, which is that we are getting a taste now of the sort of fiscal constraints that will govern political choice for a generation.

The UK’s present plight is partly a result of recession but much more one of structural imbalance. We don’t pay enough tax for the level of spending we have sought to maintain.

That applies well enough to the UK. How about the EU?

Watch the churnings get ever-more frantic as national governments have no choice but to tighten the national belt – and expect EU-level spending to undergo the same discipline.