Tax is something that will, doubtless always be with us. Given this, it should be as low as possible and spent as efficiently as possible. Yeah, I know, there’s a whacking great flaw right there – the state is inefficient and always will be. Spending other people’s money is always going to lead to a money tree mentality.
Allister Heath argues for lower tax – that will get the arsehole “tax and spend” scumbags hot under the collar.
Hiking the top rate of income tax is the exact opposite of what Britain should be contemplating.
Indeed. Unlike the plans put forward by people who never grew out of adolescence – yeah, I’m looking at you, Owen Jones (you fucking idiot) – Heath recognises that actually, we should keep more of our own money and that we, those who actually go out to earn it are the best arbiters of how it is spent.
One problem at the moment is that nobody realises how much tax they pay because of the stealth nature of National Insurance.
Indeed. Also, PAYE tends to hide the full impact as well. When people never see the money they have earned, they don’t miss it. We self-employed folk have to hand money over after we have earned it and it makes you realise not only how much is being extorted from us, but that we have earned it and now have to hand it over. The more we hand over, the more painful it becomes. If everybody had to feel that pain, perhaps they might be less willing to vote for scumbags who will arse-rape their wallets so freely.
Just a thought.
Heath is right – we need a dramatic cut in tax – and, no, cries of “front line services” should not be heeded. Because, long before we get to those, we can slash those useless, bloated government departments, funding to the quangos and fake charities and stop all foreign aid. When all that lot’s gone, I might start listening. Until then, nope. And, being self-employed, I have an advantage over those who labour under PAYE – I can manage my accounts and rate of work to minimise my exposure to this robbery and have every intention of depriving the state of every penny that I legally can.
“We” could easily go through a list of government departments with a red pen, but “we” aren’t in charge.
And “they” won’t because it’s not in their interest, I’ll let Thomas Sowell illustrate:
“Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency’s budget were cut, what would it do?
The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.”
Indeed we aren’t in charge. If we were, the state would be slashed to the point where it would be almost non existent and the parasites would have to get real jobs instead of sucking on the taxpayer’s teat.
And we have already seen the phenomenon in action with the libraries. Local authorities faced with trimming their budgets chose libraries rather than back office bureaucracy precisely because it would grab attention and get people angry.
‘Front line services’: if money was left with the taxpayer, they could pay for ‘front line services’ from private suppliers in a free competitive market, as individuals, mutuals, insurance.
The poor? Private charity… why is State charity better?
For every £1 collected in tax, because of deadweight on economic activity, administration, only 75p gets spent on government provisions of services.
I am hard pushed to find anything beyond defence/security which requires central government provision.
Criminal justice.
I have said to people for years that probably the biggest single thing that could be done to re-engage Politicians with the electorate and also reverse the declining trend of voter turnout would be to scrap PAYE and make everyone write cheques.
PAYE… one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation of the 20th C. If, as you say, everyone had to write a cheque the amount stolen by the State would soon drop.