As Jay Z says, if people had a breakdown of what their taxes paid for, they would feel better about paying it – and it would be less of a political hot potato
But I do know what it’s being spent on. And I vigorously object. So, yeah, I’m all for people being told where it is pissed up the wall. Hopefully, more people will feel the same as I do.
The idea of increased taxes is only sellable to the public when we see value in bringing our resources together to collectively pay for social goods. Dominant political ideology in recent decades has eroded this sense of collective wellbeing. Many now see themselves in a rat race, needing only to look out for themselves and their families. Facts just don’t seem to work in the face of such deeply held and emotionally inflected beliefs. The real challenge is not just to offer progressive policies on tax, but also to find ways to remind people why they are worth paying at all. Here are some suggestions on where we could start:
Progressive means as is usual, wasting our money on crap we don’t want and don’t need. We most certainly do not need increased taxation. What we need is a government prepared to look at the profligate waste and cut it. Not just cut, but slash and burn. Then we can afford what we need collectively without increasing any tax. Indeed, make a good job of it and we can reduce taxes and still afford those things we need collectively.
This brings us back to Jay Z who argued “If it [tax] was for healthcare and for education and to help people – I think most people with a conscience and some integrity and moral fibre wouldn’t have any problem paying more taxes.”
So what’s stopping you writing a cheque? They will happily take it and spend it on what you are donating it for? Oh, yeah, that’s right, what you actually mean is everyone else should be forced to fund those things that you think the money should be spent on – meanwhile, HMG is pissing our money up the wall like there is a magic money tree or something. Go fuck yourself.
What’s clear is that with wealth inequality at near record highs and income inequality predicted to worsen, we can’t afford to leave things as they are. It’s time to “sex up” tax.
No! it’s time to cut it and slash government spending. I don’t expect to pay a penny more than the eye-watering amount currently stolen from me.
Typical Left bollocks argument. If you disagree with my opinion, you lack integrity and moral fibre
What a wanker
“wealth inequality at near record highs and income inequality”
We’re back to this inequality shit again aren’t we. When are they going to get it into their thick skulls that inequality is built into life itself. Men and women aren’t “equal” to start with.
This is the basic problem with lefties – they see the world as they think it should be, whereas the rest of us mortal souls see it as it really is.
Quite. I will never be able to earn the same as the CEO of a multinational and would be unable to do the job. I suppose their earnings should be reduced to the same level as mine and redistributed to me….
I would bet that the reverse is true as well though. So why should that CEO get paid so much more than you. I happen to agree that the inequality between different pay is pretty hard to justify from a moral perspective. I genuinely believe that the head of a company should not get paid many times the national average while paying minimum wage to the people that actually do the work.
A private enterprise should be free to pay whatever the market value is for a service. Nothing to do with the state. There is nothing moral about it. I didn’t much like Working at Sainsbury’s for minimum wage. However, what I was doing required no risk on my part and no skill. What skills I have are now being used doing what I do best – and I do as the CEO at Sainsbury’s does; I charge the market rate for my services.
Precisely. Its all about the market. Your skills as a worker at Sainsbury’s are so common anybody could do it. Most of us however don’t have the skills necessary to be a CEO. In short (and I’m talking to Tony Halford) here, the rarer your skill the more you can demand for its use. Look at most footballers – thick as two short planks most of them (Rooney being a case in point), but he hasn’t be hired for his intelligence has he? He was hired for his alleged skill at putting a football in a goal. Morality doesn’t enter into the equation.
Indeed. My skills as a trainer/assessor are increased in value because the area I train and assess is a very small market with limited availability of skilled people. I’m in demand albeit on a small scale, so I can charge a decent rate for those skills. And I do.
If everybody just accepted the way the world really is we would never have got out of the Stone Age. Seeing the world as it is and wanting to change it are different things. I pretty much accept that some things in life are grossly unfair however that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t support change to even things up a bit.
Change is driven by enterprise, not the state. The state is a drag on progress.
Tony, there are some things you can change and should, likewise there are some things you can’t change, nor should you. Wisdom is knowing the difference.
I keep saying that Right leaning governments the world over are missing a trick. In this day and age of IT it should be perfectly possible for there to be a voluntary tax code that you can opt into. One with far higher rates than the standard one. Lets say 30% basic rate, 50% higher rate, 75% top rate. Plus the usual NI of course. Implement it, then every time some tosser demands higher taxes, point them to it and say ‘Knock yourselves out’. The take up would be vanishingly small of course, but it would put the glitterati and the Leftists on the spot. It would be public too, so no chance of lying about whether you’ve opted in or not. Its the perfect way to skewer the hypocrisy of the Left, constantly demanding higher taxes on other people that they won’t voluntarily pay themselves.
I’m all for that. And a lower one for those of us who feel robbed enough already 😉
@Jim
+1
Presumably successive governments are all too aware of what would happen if they advertised to taxpayers the kinds of things that their money is being spent on. Rather than saying that they now appreciate why they have to pay taxes for all the wonderful munificence that the government bestow upon us, the reaction would be outrage at the sheer scale of all the waste.
There was a plan, promoted by Ben Gummer, to provide tax payers with details of where their taxes were spent, or so I understood, but I have never seen one.
Waste:
Prior to Council elections last week last Scotland created more council seats
New seats = more politicians and their entourage of taxpayer funded
friendsemployees.City of Edinburgh Council – 63 Councilors
+ 6 City of Edinburgh MSPs + 7 County MSPs + 5 City of Edinburgh MPs – and 6 Scotland MEPs
New seats? We need a cull of seats/politicians – 30% fewer would be a good start.
I like this:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-09/first-time-you-can-track-every-dollar-government-spends
“Despite paying trillions in Federal taxes every year, Americans’ requests for a clear, detailed breakdown of where their money goes every year, have gone unanswered and been ignored by both Republican and Democrat administrations for one simple reason: transparency has an unpleasant way of mutating into accountability, which is the scariest thing imaginable for any career politician.
Not any more.”
Interestingly I left a comment on that article making the point that I was not going to be lectured on my tax responsibilities by a columnist who uses Google and Jaz-Z as her primary references.
And guess what, I’m now in the sin bin for CIF commenting for what was a perfectly accurate observation. Not all comment is free, you see. Can’t insult the stupid snowflakes who write there.