This post is largely inspired by this one, and the resulting comments. I'd advise anyone reading this to read that too.

I'm an economic liberal. I think that some regulation is necessary, but that we have more regulation than we presently need, and that this tends to act in favour of the large corporations who can most easily absorb the costs of this regulation. I think that the government wastes enough money at present that it has the scope to their cut taxes or redistribute money in a far more straightforward and direct way. I believe in the ability of people to have their own values and decide, as much as possible, how best to spend money in pursuit of those values. I believe that diversity and competition are important both in their practical effect of raising standards and in their liberal principled effect of giving people choice and freedom.

I also believe that people should pay fairly for the costs of their actions and their unearned benefits. They should pay for the pollution that they cause, and they should pay for wealth that they have received purely through the acts of others. I believe that nobody should live in poverty and that educational opportunity should be freely available to all, at least to the level of a person's first degree or equivalent. I believe that universal health coverage should be state-funded, but I'm very suspicious of monopoly state provision, and that suspicion applies to most state activities. I generally approve of private ownership, but I'd like to see a lot more employee-ownership, cooperatives and mutual societies.

I believe in an engaged society where freedom provides the main protection from oppression. People who feel that large corporations are negatively affecting their communities need freedom to organise alternatives. Sometimes this means simply choosing not to deal with that company (which requires vibrant competition and diversity to provide an alternative), but it might also mean investing directly in local companies in order to support them. We need to eliminate any and all regulation that stands in the way of creative, entrepreneurial individuals who want to take on their more powerful rivals. Regulation, done incorrectly, will choke off the underdog long before it brings the powerful to heel. Regulation sets hurdles so high that only those who already have power and money can afford to jump over them. Our present regulatory environment is a mirror of our tax and benefit environment, which crushes the aspirations of the poor with eye-watering marginal tax rates and leaves the poorest paying more tax than the richest as a proportion of income. If you're on minimum wage and get an extra £50 per week in your pay packet, you'll lose more of that £50 in tax and benefit reductions than if you were a millionaire earning the same amount extra.

To sum up, I'd say that liberals are on the side of the least powerful, and we should want to set them free, not trap them in the machinery of the state.

This is what I believe the meaning of economic liberalism is. And yet, economic liberalism is something that is often derided as 'a bit right-wing', referred to disapprovingly as little more than warmed-up Thatcherism. Personally, I can't understand why. But I want someone to explain it to me, in the hope that perhaps we might realise that we, as liberals, all have a lot more in common than we think, and that divisions between 'economic' and 'social' liberals are mostly misunderstandings. So, who wants to take up the debate?

One of the most obvious things one can say about the present government is that they have increased public spending. From low (by 20th century standards) levels in 1997, public spending has increased substantially under Gordon Brown's Chancellorship. It was always obvious that taxes would have to rise in order to pay for this, and that was part of the implicit bargain New Labour made with the electorate. But has this actually led to a fairer society?

Chris Dillow has pointed out some evidence that it has not: look closely at the table on page 7 of this PDF and you will see that the poorest quintile of the population are paying 36.4% of their income in tax, whilst the richest pay only 35.5%. Let me reiterate: the poorest in Britain pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the richest, according to the government's own statistics.

This is an outrageous situation for a supposedly progressive government to have created. And it's not as if Gordon Brown's latest Budget did anything to reverse the trend; the abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax will hit the poorest most of all. Increasing focus on environmental taxation also hits the poor, which is why the Lib Dems advocated a substantial increase in the personal allowance as part of the 'Green Tax Switch' proposal. Green taxes raise more revenue for the government, and a responsible government should make sure that the poorest in society are properly protected from these taxes by equivalent cuts in taxes that they pay.

Of course, Gordon Brown would respond that the poor are helped by tax credits. But the tax credit scheme itself is descending into farce, the latest fiasco being the revelation that the total overpayments made by the scheme since its inception has reached £9bn. At heart, tax credits are actually a good idea, but their implementation bears all of the hallmarks of New Labour's greatest mistakes: an intrinsically good idea has been badly implemented due to over-complication and a reliance on the ability to process lots of complicated and variable information. Overpayments happen when a person claims tax credits when their income is low, then does not cancel their claim when their income rises. For the poor, whose income is very volatile, even from month to month, it is almost impossible to put in an accurate claim for tax credits. They are left with a choice between claiming and hoping that they get to keep what they receive, or not claiming at all; some 2 million potential tax credit claimants opt for the latter.

It has been common for commentators to give Gordon Brown a relatively easy ride over the last 10 years. The economy hasn't collapsed under his stewardship and there has long been a sense that we wouldn't see the best of Gordon Brown until Tony Blair has made way for him at Number 10. But the evidence is mounting that Brown has done very little to help those most in need in society and that, for all of the money spent, we have not seen the improvement in public services that we might expect. It is time for the Liberal Democrats to become much more robust in attacking Gordon Brown's mistakes, and exposing the genuinely outrageous aspects of the tax system we have today. The Conservatives seem to be embracing almost every aspect of the Blair-Brown project; it's up to us to provide the alternative.