Are We Nearly Scared Yet ?
Tonight’s documentary Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story was a real eye opener. I knew most of the economic points it made in advance, but having them laid out so simply and clearly was shocking even for me. Still, the context in which the show was broadcast makes me awestruck and angry.
We, as an involuntarily associated collective, owe each other and the Chinese enough money to reach into space if printed on £50 notes. Simply throwing it out of the window would take 3000 years. Adults have borrowed from children and children are borrowing from the unborn and from their own future earnings. The student who climbed to the top of Millbank Tower this week in order to attempt the murder of a policeman was doing so in order that he be allowed to steal his own salary and his neighbors’ salary for the rest of his life and the salary of his children for most of their lives as well. He was willing to kill at random rather than pay his own way as he goes.
Anyone who accuses a pro-liberty pro-market capitalist of being “nasty” this week is, to put it kindly, missing something.
How does this relate to the Libertarian Party? Only the Libertarian Party will abolish taxes on labour by ending income taxes and reducing state spending to year 2000 levels. Only libertarian politics and libertarian philosophies have clearly identified both do-gooding non-jobs and corporate welfare as essentially immoral. We would set the bankers free to fail, and cheer as we watch them succeed.
Only the Libertarian Party understands that by getting out the way, and then leaving people alone we’d all be a good deal better off.
About £77,000 better off, in fact.
SJ Gibbs – First posted on the Libertarian Party Blog
The Libertarian Party Manifesto can be found here.
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November 12, 2010 at 10:53 -
“… the Libertarian Party will abolish taxes on labour by ending income taxes and reducing state spending to year-2000 levels.”
The means of defraying the costs of the state (even if we assume a drastic reduction in those costs) must be found from somewhere. (I assume you’re not proposing Labour-style unlimited borrowing.)
Taking income tax alone — accounting for around 30% of U.K. taxation — it’s true that that scale of reduction (back to the year-2000 level) would be called for ; if you include N.I. contributions (income tax by another name), another 20% would have to be found. You don’t indicate an important element of the plan : the time over which this reduction in public expenditure would take place.
Assuming a balanced budget and a time-scale that would not plunge the economy in to chaos — sc. one that would entail a reduction of expenditure commensurate with compensatory growth in the real economy (private sector) — if you abolish taxes on income, you’re left with taxes on only spending and capital.
Are you then saying the Libertarian Party (L.P.) supports an increase in capital taxes — death duty, gift tax, property tax and other imposts on possessions bought out of funds already net of tax ? (I agree that, with the passage of time in the absence of income tax, ever fewer assets would have been bought out of net income ; but has the L.P. drawn up plans for transitional relief ?)
Does the L.P. propose, on the other paw, to raise the rates of taxes on spending — sales taxes such as V.A.T., fuel duties &c. — which are regressive in their effect (i.e. hitting the poorest hardest) ?
ΠΞ
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November 12, 2010 at 10:58 -
“The student who climbed to the top of Millbank Tower this week in order to attempt the murder of a policeman was doing so in order that he be allowed to steal his own salary and his neighbors’ salary for the rest of his life and the salary of his children for most of their lives as well. He was willing to kill at random rather than pay his own way as he goes.”
Well put. And let’s not forget, the likes of the Labour MPs who cheered him on via Twitter have been pursuing the same picy, writ large, for the last ten years…
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November 12, 2010 at 12:47 -
Worth nopting that the yob pictured may not have actually thrown the extinguisher. Apparently there was more than one extinguisher on the roof. Still, this does not alter the political views that were expressed at the time.
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November 12, 2010 at 12:56 -
Aren’t those Politicians guilty of Incitement. Or is this sort of carry on part of The MP’s Package of Parliamentary Privilege? Stealing from The Tax Payers seems to be.
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November 12, 2010 at 14:55 -
It was interesting seeing the success of Hong Kong in that program. Especially the entrepreneur who arrived there with only one dollar in his pocket and ended up a billionaire.
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November 12, 2010 at 15:32 -
In some respects a useful programme but it went off the rails unluckily. I have posted on this. But how to really get the problems over to people?
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November 12, 2010 at 16:07 -
November 12, 2010 at 17:14 -
You should have put a caption on the fire extinguisher reward phot.
“Future Labour minister weilding fire extinguisher”
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November 12, 2010 at 17:15 -
We simply don’t have the mindset to deal with this problem.
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November 12, 2010 at 18:03 -
That Channel-4 film is worth watching, if you can spare about 70 minutes. There’s nothing in it we didn’t already know (or shouldn’t be) but it’s well presented and some of the photography is nice.
If all you cannot spare all that time, then watch the last four minutes : particularly liked the bit with Brendan Barber, Secretary-General of the T.U.C. — demonstrating Labour’s detailed grasp of macro-economics.
ΠΞ
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November 13, 2010 at 13:01 -
Essential viewing. A four minute taster here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cGIS3-T7hc&feature=player_embedded
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