The Spite-Ridden Politics of Envy

I’m a bit late to this as I was away when the IPPR report(pdf) on road taxation hit the news. However, it’s worth picking up on it as it lays bare the sheer nastiness of the Marxist left that would rule over us.

Now the idea that road taxation is likely to implode due to changes in technology and road use is a fair comment. The logic that perhaps the state should cut its cloth to match falling incomes does not occur to the hard-of-thinking thieving shit-bags that write reports such as this, because that is the simple solution. No, these people want to keep up government theft to as high a level as possible. But, perhaps more sinister, is the idea that the tax increase – and you can be sure that any change is merely an excuse to increase the take – is to be used to change our behaviour.

The technological options available today are numerous: wireless transmission of mileage data to fuel stations; GPS tracking using ‘satnavs’ or mobile phones; or using the same technology as pay-as-you-go insurance. These can be utilised to create taxation structures that encourage behaviour change through multiple means, such as seasonal pricing to encourage active travel in summer; charging comparatively more for shorter journeys; charging polluting vehicles more than less polluting vehicles; and linking motor tax levels to personal information held by HM Revenue and Customs to make motor tax progressive. It is theoretically possible to create a system that targets individual unnecessary journeys and makes allowances for people’s incomes. However, there are three big barriers to reform: the tension between the need to raise revenue and the need to encourage behaviour change; the practicalities of reform; and public acceptance.

Our behaviour is none of their business. It is not their place to change our behaviour; it is ours to change or not according to our own free will. It is not for them to decide which journeys are unnecessary – it is for us to decide and if we choose to travel by motor vehicle then we have decided that it is necessary. There is no need to raise revenue, there is a huge need to slash the state and reduce the amount it extorts from us.

So, we have a proposal that punishes success – if you earn more having worked hard and made your way in the world, you will be charged more than the feckless layabout who couldn’t be bothered; that is designed to modify behaviour to that approved by the fascists of the green lobby – we must walk or ride bicycles, no matter how inconvenient or unsuited to the task in hand – and is designed to prop up the state’s ever increasing greed.

This, then, is the naked politics of greed and envy that so defines left-wing thought – and I use the term thought very loosely here, for if you really do give it any thought, you realise very quickly just how misanthropic socialist dogma really is; relying as it does on the state forcing people to do things they would rather not, for the benefit of the collective as defined by the state, not the individual members who might prefer to decide for themselves on the basis of mutual benefit.

Then there is the matter of who decides. Realising that such a proposal would bomb at the ballot box, the writers of the report suggest that such inconvenience be bypassed and the people who would suffer not be allowed a say.

Referendums should be avoided if possible, or alternatively held only to validate mandatory but temporary reform.

I don’t have much truck with democracy, but even I, in my most cynical and misanthropic moments, don’t come close to these people who treat the very notion that we should have a say in how we are governed and taxed with absolute contempt, for they are themselves contemptible.

And, added to all of this is the wet dream so beloved of the left – taking the identity cards idea one stage further – no, it never really went away did it? Black boxes in our vehicles so that they can monitor our journeys – where we go and when, the state will know all. And, of course, the state is always benevolent, isn’t it? And, added to that, HMRC, linking to the DVLA will steal your money directly. Two of the most venal and incompetent organisations on the planet having access to your bank account – wow, doesn’t that just send a shiver down the spine? Not that they will ever get it wrong, at all. A misplaced decimal figure and you get wiped out. Nah, couldn’t happen, could it? They are paragons of virtue and competence after all…

But, put aside the propensity for these organisations making mistakes and the trail of woe that will inevitably follow, the real concern here is that of liberty. The liberty to go as we please without being tracked by the state. And, of course, the nasty, pernicious idea that robbing people who earn more at a higher rate – the so-called progressive taxation – is truly evil. But then, progressives are evil, for if they thought for just one moment about what they are proposing and were reasonable, decent human beings, they would either reject it out of hand or do humanity a huge favour and cut their wrists. The whole idea is so utterly misanthropic that any rational human being would recoil in horror. Surely no one hates their fellow man with such intensity that they would propose such an odious idea. Joe Stalin, meanwhile, were he alive would be applauding his protégés.