She repeated her opposition to "major high-rise development" and proffered a grab bag of revenue possibilities: diverting a percentage of the existing hotel tax, imposing fees on Circle Line tickets and bolstering city and state support.
Other examples include a universal child-care plan and a wealth tax imposing an annual levy of 2percentt on Americans with more than $50 million in assets and 3percentt on those with more than $1 billion.
One such order, dated April Fool's Day, 2011, made a mockery of the country's sales tax, imposing a 0% rate on 184 items, including carpets, buttons and the willow wood from which cricket bats are made as well as "any other goods as may be specified".
To address its economic problems, the government introduced a program of fiscal adjustment, removing subsidies on basic foodstuffs, increasing the value-added tax, imposing levies on the tourism sector, limiting public-sector pay claims, and reducing capital expenditure by more than 23%.
Mr Miliband and his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, have pledged to tilt the tax burden further onto the wealthy by increasing the top rate of income tax, imposing a levy on expensive homes and reintroducing a lower tax band for low earners.
But the alternative tax is not indexed for inflation, which means that it is on track to hit 30 million mostly upper-middle-class families by 2010 (the truly rich, for a variety of reasons, almost always escape the alternative tax), imposing additional taxes on them beyond the requirements of the ordinary tax code.
