Mark Ravenhill writes a fairly pompous article broadly in support of the theatre getting taxpayers’ money and he’s writing plays for free so that people can perform them in a “day of action”. It wasn’t that, particularly, that caught my attention – it’s just the usual leftist pomposity at work. No, it was a comment below the line that hit me between the eyeballs and pushed my brain through my eardrums.
The fair way would be to tax everyone not just money, but also time. Let people choose what to do with those hours (to some extent), but everyone has to ‘work for free’ for x number of hours each year. ‘Unpaid internships’ would count, but could only be done up to the ‘tax hours’ owed. Which means those with trust funds wouldn’t have an advantage over those without.
This has been tried before, of course. In recent centuries they used the idea in the cotton fields of the USA and in some parts of the world is is still going on. People giving up their time, for free, against their will. There’s a word to describe it. It’s an ugly word; as ugly and wicked as the people who come up with such evil ideas. That word is “slavery”.
Dude, they’re taxing my patience.
If you put it like that, compulsory donation of free time against your will is indeed one definition of slavery. But since money is, in effect, stored labour, isn’t taxation the same, but at one remove?
I’d say it is.
It is. I would accept that it is a necessary evil providing that it is kept to an absolute minimum. However, that one extra step, my body and my time belonging to the state in enforced servitude is one step too far.
Right I’m with this, so if we are entitled to a rebate HMRC will send someone round to do the washing up or dig the garden ? This opens up a whole new world of avoidance, the Guardian will be setting up offshore work camps as soon as it comes in.
“This has been tried before, of course.”
Thy name is ‘conscription.’ But as you pointed out, slavery is the less PC word for it.
Slavery drives home its repugnant nature more forcefully.
I have two letters to describe it…. Foxtrot Oscar.
What a thoroughly nasty authoritarian idea.