Hudson isn't going to sell very many Krugerands or water filters with talk like that
-
Listening to this latest dose of Hudson I was reminded, as I usually am when listening to Georgists, of the land ownership systems adopted during the Gold Rushes of the 19th Century.
Because the mining camps were set up in wilderness areas, beyond the reach of established governing systems or landlords, the miners got together and made up the rules for themselves.
The rules were simple enough; one person, or small group, could stake only one claim and the claim was no bigger than that person or group could work. If claimants did not work the claim they lost it
Whilst not a perfect system, it did restrict the scope for rent, speculation and generally poncing off people who actually worked for a living
Anyone who tried accumulating claims so that they could rent out or speculate with them, whilst sitting on their arse, ran a real risk of being hit repeatedly on the head with pick axe handles
Of course, this kind of thinking was suppressed as soon as the camps got properly civilised
-
It always baffles me when people 'of the right' dismiss the very notion of social welfare as being an unworkable utopian fantasy because they believe it results in a system where people are paid to do nothing
As if spongers being paid to do nothing is somehow a pitfall unique to left wing systems
Whenever anyone plays that card I find myself thinking of people like this twunt...
He left school with only one O Level, in spite of the best education money could buy, has done nothing especially productive or clever in his adult life and yet is one of the richest land-owners in the country. He lives entirely off the labour of others and has done absolutely nothing to deserve that privilege. Thanks largely to the fact that he'll pay fuck all tax, in life and death, he and his progeny will continue to accumulate capital and increase the amount they leach off everyone else in a way that simply isn't possible for us paeons
Whatever your political persuasion, I believe it's pretty difficult to make a case for parasitism of this nature. Those who have 'left wing' sensibilities will see it as unfair. Those with a 'right wing' point of view should see it as a pretty shit way of allocating scarce resources or stimulating productivity. The fact that many ordinary people with right wing views don't get what's going on is one of the triumphs of the plutocratic class
Though, for the life of me, it's sometimes hard to put my finger on which of the members of that class are the ones who are actually smart enough to keep this charade going
.
103 comments:
"The fact that ordinary people with right wing views don't get what's going on is one of the triumphs of the plutocratic class..."
Are you sure that ordinary people with right wing views really don't get what's going on?
It seems to me that ordinary people with right wing views mostly hold entirely sensible opinions. For example, they would rather have Queen Elizabeth as Head of State, Nominal Head of the Armed Forces, and Supreme Governor of the Church of England than, say, Gordon Brown, or David Cameroon.
I find that entirely rational since by limiting the power of politicians, the monarchy provides a bulwark against tyranny, a fact that liberal-lefties who delight in seeing members of the Royal family threatened by a mob are, it seems, incapable of grasping (http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/01/the_laws_of_phy.html).
Or to take another example, most ordinary folks with right wing views likely disagree with the idea of the majority of young people being supported for years at public expense to socialize at uni rather than joining the grown-up world and earning a living. This makes perfectly good sense too, since there is no evidence that university education will enhance the life-time income of the great majority of students entering university today or that it will in anyway improve the national economy.
I think it most probably, though, that most ordinary people of right wing views consider the tax system thoroughly unfair and would like to see huge private fortunes properly taxed, while income on ordinary working people like themselves is reduced or eliminated. On this, maybe I'm wrong, but why not try out the following question on a few ordinary right wing people:
Do you agree to a 1 to 2% annual capital tax on each person's world wide possessions (including assets held in a trust), but much lower income taxes on ordinary people, as in right wing Switzerland? I bet most would go for it.
As for who keeps the moneyed class moneyed, that's easy. There are plenty of people of both left and right wing persuasion, Tony Blair and David Cameroon, for example, who will happily do the bidding of the rich, provided they are can expect a measly few tens of millions as their ultimate reward.
This might take a while...
First off, I committed the cardinal sin of generalisation and neglected to qualify the line
The fact that ordinary people with right wing views don't get what's going on...
It now reads
The fact that many ordinary people with right wing views don't get what's going on...
On the subject of the value of the monarchy over elected politicians...
A choice between being governed by a corrupt political class or being the property of a monarch is no choice at all
Better to strive to make the political system less corrupt and ensure that it is backed by a decent constitution imho
As for HRH Prince Charles, I wouldn't be so sure that his encounter with the mob was entirely uncontrived. He is, after all, surplus to requirements
and, yes, whether it came about by accident or by design I've no taste or sympathy for that kind of behaviour
I disagree with you about the every day tory's view of taxation
My opinion is based on, um, pretty much everything. The output of the media, politicians, comments and views I've seen expressed in the real world, on-line...
You just don't hear much of a clamour for genuinely fair tax reform
The burden of taxation in the English speaking world has been pushed remorsely from unearned to earned income over the last 30+ years, with bugger all in the way of opposition
and the truth is that stories about broods of unemployed scroungers living a life a pampered indolence get endlessly churned out for an appreciative audience.
Whereas pampered indolence in the case of the parasitic overclass is presented as something to aspire to
The trick is that (many) ordinary right wingers have been conned into believing that their personal interests are closely aligned with the overclass
They ain't
As an increasing number of people who thought they were middle class are starting to discover
As for the university point...
In the scheme of things, the amounts that will be netted by the latest fee increases are trivial. Whatever the real reasons for the changes, PR or something else, they ain't about making significant changes to the national finances
There's also a bit of misunderstanding about the role of university education in 21st century Britain. Its purpose is not to produce top-notch technical graduates - the Koreans and Chinese have got plenty in the pipeline. Nope, the primary function of UK tertiary education is now to produce indentured debt bitches who'll do what they're told, when they're told, at a low low price
which is why the admissions were cranked up, the costs increased and scant attention paid to whether there was actually any demand for or benefit from the education being provided
...and I'm delighted to see that this blog comes #3 after wikipedia when I google 'middle class proletariat'
...I'd also like to point out that I started the post I just linked to (dated November 2007) with the line...
"And whilst waiting patiently for the imminent collapse of the world’s banking system..."
which means, at that point, I had another ten months or so of people telling me to my face that I was out of my tits
not that that has dried up entirely
I wonder if Marx got it wrong when he said, 'property is theft'.
Instead, perhaps he should've said,
'rent is theft' or 'rent for equity'.
There is no reason why it wouldn't be possible to outlaw rental payment without equity transfer.
Before someone says that no homes for rent would be built etc ... How would rentiers such as the Duke of Twuntminster replace their rental income, if not by building and selling more properties?
Just imagine such a wealth transfer if you can, and then ask yourself whether or not the current system exploits the poor and vulnerable.
Wow, Stef. Eight responses. I sure got your attention. But Do try to get the facts right, unless that is, you want to be taken for an constitutional ignoramus, which is to say an ignoramus on constitutional matters -- like former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, whose obnoxious, factually incorrect and thoroughly ignorant comment on the monarchy I referred to.
In particular, when you say:
"A choice between being governed by a corrupt political class or being the property of a monarch is no choice at all" you reveal that you are 322 years out of date, for it was with the accession of William III of England and Ireland (William II of Scotland) in the year 1689 that the notion of the devine right of kings was finally trashed in Britain.
For that we can be grateful, in some measure at least, for the willful dumbness of the Scotch monarchs, the Stuarts.
Perhaps the dumbest of the lot was James VI of Scotland, James I of England (once referred to as the wisest fool in Christendom), who wrote the book, literally, on the divine right of kings, in accordance with which theory he believed that the state and everything in it, including the people, were his personal property to do with as he wished.
But all the Stuarts seem to have been dumber than a bag of hammers. So notwithstanding that the people rejected the theory of the divine right of kings in the most emphatic way they knew how, namely, by whacking off the head of Charles I, James II blithely adhered to the family policy until, fearing the fate of his father, he did a runner and lived thereafter under the protection of England's greatest enemy, Louis XIV.
It was this act of pusillanimity that resulted in what has become known as the Glorious Revolution and the accession to the monarchy of William of Orange, who governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange (Dutch: Willem III van Oranje) over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic.
William's accession to the English throne was supported by the most powerful men at court, including John Churchill, Duke of Malborough -- Winston Churchill's remote ancestor, because he agreed to rule in accordance with the law of the land (Magna Carta, habeus corpus and all that) and to recognized parliament as an independent authority.
This transition enabled Britain to evolve a fully effective parliamentary democracy without need of a bloody revolution as in France, Russia and many other parts of Europe. In the process of this evolution, the monarchy came to have a central role, not by virtue of its power, but by its capacity to deny absolute power to any grubby pole-climbing politician. In particular, by occupying the post of Head of State, Commander in Chief of the armed forces and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the monarchy denies to any charismatic wannabe dictator easy access to key levers of absolute power.
The evolution of Britain's constitutional monarchy, which was essential to the evolution of Britain's parliamentary democracy -- a system of government copied, incidentally, by dozens of nations throughout the world, including Russia, China, India and most other Commonwealth countries, some, e.g., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, even retaining the British monarch as their own head of state.
So, you see, the choice is not between monarchy or rule by corrupt politicians, but between the absolutism of monarchs or politicians, on the one hand, and on the other hand, a parliamentary government the ambitions of which are subject to a check imposed by the mere existence of a monarch holding the highest offices of state.
But don't rely on my account of Britain's constitution: read Thomas Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James II -- perhaps the finest historical work in the English language.
The problem today is that parliamentary democracy itself has been corrupted by the plutocracy to the point that it does not assert the will of the people. common people.
"But Do try to get the facts right, unless that is, you want to be taken for an constitutional ignoramus, which is to say an ignoramus on constitutional matters"
Whilst my appreciation of the situation not quite as detailed as you've laid out I was and am aware of the gist of what the deal is supposed to be
I do, however, take umbrage at being anyone's 'subject' and after, amongst other life experiences, a stint of having to check a shed load of correspondence to ensure that it included correct forms of address, I decided some time ago that I didn't care very much for the notion that I was supposed to accord certain people respect and status merely as the result of an accident of birth
As it happens, I used to adhere to a very similar point of view to yourself with regards to the value of a constitutional monarchy, rather than running the risk of electing retired gameshow hosts to presidential office, but if the price is that I and my fellow subjects have the status of serfs or chattel, then bollocks to it
...and whilst I appreciate that it was small beer compared to other revolutions, the English Civil War surely counts as a not altogether peaceful part of the transition to the current system
and fwiw I wasn't exactly what you would call a big fan of butchering the British House of Lords without having something better to replace it with on hand
the irony of the fact that the unelected Lords were sometimes the only thing that stood between British citizens and the excesses of corrupt, elected politicians is not lost on me
"I do, however, take umbrage at being anyone's 'subject' "
Yeah, much better to be Stalin's comrade and end up in the Gulag.
"..and whilst I appreciate that it was small beer compared to other revolutions, the English Civil War surely counts as a not altogether peaceful part of the transition to the current system"
You seem to be confusing the Civil War, which led to Britain's only dictatorship under Comrade Cromwell, and the Glorious Revolution, which lead to a parliamentary democracy subject to the check of a constitional monarchy.
Because James II fled on the arrival of the Dutch fleet, which was warmly welcomed by the inhabitants of Torbay, Exeter and other places on route to London, there were virtually no casualties.
False choices again
I'm not holding their efforts up as an example of perfection but the ex-subjects of the Crown in US felt no need to weave gulags into their system
Not till recently anyway
"You seem to be confusing the Civil War, which led to Britain's only dictatorship under Comrade Cromwell"
Nope. It was, however, a step on the path to where we are today. No Civil War. No Restoration
You just don't hear much of a clamour for genuinely fair tax reform... "
That is because very few people know anything about the tax system. That in turn is, as you say, in large part because of the " output of the media" and the care politicians take to keep the public misinformed. Thus, despite kindergarten to middle-age education most people haven't a clue, really, about how they are governed.
However, I maintain that if you were to undertake the test I propose, namely to ask your average person of right wing opinion whether they would support a capital tax, impinging almost entirely on the rich, in exchange for a reduction in their own income tax burden, I suspect a majority would agree. Well if they understood what you were talking about.
It is interesting to see how this might apply to the Duke of Westminster, to whom I must pay tribute on a regular basis, since he owns Vancouver's airport, or at least the island on which it stands.
His wealth is largely in real estate. Real estate returns perhaps 5 to 10% per year over the long term. If the Duke of Westminster was required to pay a annual 2% capital tax, it would be equal to 20 to 40% of his total income. Since the rest of his income is probably tax-sheltered, the change would represent a significant, if inadequate, step toward fair taxation.
I would introduce it now as an emergency measure at a rate of 3% declining over several years to a fixed rate of 1.5%. That would largely cover Britain's (or Canada's) budget deficit, without need of cuts to programs.
Cuts to programs are obviously much to be desired, e.g., it is insane for government spending to account for 85% of the economy in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, as is the case now, or 70% in the NorthWest of England. Such cuts would then allow the removal of large numbers of sensible conservative minded people from the tax rolls altogether. I sure they would support that with enthusiasm.
"I'm not holding their efforts up as an example of perfection but the ex-subjects of the Crown in US felt no need to weave gulags into their system
Not till recently anyway "
Well, there you are. You make my point better than I could have made it. Unconstrained by a constitutional monarchy, the American President is now a dictator free to assassinate, kidnap, torture, or bomb the shit out of anyone he likes without consulting anyone. And yes the fucker's got a gulag already set to go.
"Nope. It was, however, a step on the path to where we are today. No Civil War. No Restoration"
Hey, Come on!
That's like saying we wouldn't have had the second world war if April 28, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria not gone for a spin in an open car and got himself shot by a lone nut.
The fact is the Civil War and dictatorship of Cromwell merely interrupted but did not end the imbecile Stuart succession. Essentially, it was an irrelevance.
Yup
Thumbs up here for a lovely, hard to dodge, easy to collect, annual land tax
The interesting thing for me is that there are sound arguments for implementing such a system from both right and left wing viewpoints
It would, of course, necessitate a critical number of people understanding how tax, and money, work
Just a wee impediment...
"Essentially, it was an irrelevance."
Not a direct link maybe so I'll pass on that
"And yes the fucker's got a gulag already set to go."
Tree of Liberty... refreshed with the blood of tyrants... etc etc
CanSpeccy:
It is possible that have made some excellent points!
I honestly don't know if you have or not, however, as your writing style is so utterly fucking turgid as to be rendered virtually unreadable.
To paraphrase Basil Fawlty:
"Why don't you write properly?"
Great blog Stef.
Chats about constitutional matters do have a tendency to veer towards the turgid
which is why I always try to work in the occasional photo of a gorgeous model
S.
"which is why I always try to work in the occasional photo of a gorgeous model"
After following your link, I am noticeably less turgid than I was in anticipation.
Still, I don't feel like redrafting my account of the English constitution solely for the benefit of Martin Kearns, whose notion of turgidity may correspond with another person's idea of a reading material for grown-ups.
I have given him an explanation. I'm not obliged to give him an understanding.
It's true that bit about the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria could be a challenge. There seem to be a few words missing. But it wasn't a great point anyhow.
Are you sure that ordinary people with right wing views really don't get what's going on?
Everything you've written since that opening question proves that Stef's original 'unqualified' statement stands.
E.g.
For example, they would rather have Queen Elizabeth as Head of State, Nominal Head of the Armed Forces, and Supreme Governor of the Church of England than, say, Gordon Brown, or David Cameroon.
False choices ahoy!
the monarchy provides a bulwark against tyranny,
The monarchy is the tyranny.
the devine right of kings was finally trashed in Britain.
Good. So now they don't have the big invented man in the sky argument to feign claims of legitimacy.
This transition enabled Britain to evolve a fully effective parliamentary democracy
Even by your already low standards, this has to be a joke, right? I mean, nobody in their right mind would expect an expression like that to go unchallenged. Here of all places.
Plenty more examples of flat out nonsense in each and every one of your comments on this thread.
That's like saying we wouldn't have had the second world war if April 28, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria not gone for a spin in an open car and got himself shot by a lone nut.
and
It's true that bit about the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria could be a challenge. There seem to be a few words missing. But it wasn't a great point anyhow.
Come back when you've progressed beyond nursery level history studies.
Cryptofascist said
"The monarchy is the tyranny."
Yeah, well I guess we can ignore everything else since we are clearly dealing with someone who is delusional.
But the hatred of monarchy is an interesting phenomenon, very suitable for exploitation by politicians seeking to deflect blame for their own corrupt and blundering actions.
"Come back when you've progressed beyond nursery level history studies."
Hey, Stef, are all your contributors full-time vituperators, or do you have the occasional constructive comment.
I mean, what is the point that these people are trying to make? That they hate anyone and everyone. Or they don't like anyone discussing facts or history or WTF is the matter with them?
But anyhow, here for the benefit of Morononymous, another dose of history, which completes my account of the monarchy:
HOW ENGLAND'S CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY MADE BRITAIN THE WORLD HEGEMON
Britain became a parliamentary democracy subject to the constraints of a constitutional monarchy as a direct result of the vicious stupidity of James II, whose ambition for absolute power provoked the Glorious Revolution.
But essential, also, to the events leading to the Glorious Revolution was Britain's unique position among the European powers as an island nation. Thus isolated, Britain faced no external threat from the time of the Spanish Armada (1588) until the onslaught of the German Luftwaffe in 1940. Thus Britain, unlike the continental states, had no need for a standing army, an essential prerequisite of an absolute monarchy.
Fearing James' absolutist intentions, Parliament refused to vote him the large military supply that he demanded. Thus denied, James set out to raise funds by illegal means. In the ensuing struggle, James was ousted and William and Mary were crowned in the understanding that they would rule in accordance with the law of the land, thus recognizing Parliament as an independent law-making body.
A consequence of the revolution was a great increase in the power of the landed interest, members of which made up the majority of both houses of Parliament. Thus ensued the enclosure of common land, which in turn, made possible the agricultural revolution. In the process, many in the countryside were displaced from agricultural employment and migrated to the cities where they provided a cheap labour pool that made possible the industrial revolution.
During the age of European colonial expansion, Britain was ideally positioned to exploit newly discovered lands and trade routes. Subject to no security threats at home, resources were devoted to the creation of a navy of unmatched power, which controlled the sea lanes of the world and secured Britain's widespread colonial and commercial interests. With the great profits that resulted from being the first to industrialize, Britain was able not only to administer a vast empire, but to supply at interest development capital to the world.
For more than three hundred years, England was on a roll. By virtue merely of being an offshore island, Britain led the world in political, agricultural, industrial, scientific and financial development. But the German V2 rocket and weapons of mass destruction put an end to all that. The best that the Brits can hope for now is recognition as a small, damp, overcrowded island not worth anyone's while to mess with. To achieve that end, they would be well advised to withdraw politely from the American Empire, while creating a well-organized citizen militia to deal with any foolish enough to intrude on them.
But the hatred of monarchy is an interesting phenomenon, very suitable for exploitation by politicians seeking to deflect blame for their own corrupt and blundering actions.
You're right. It really is that simple.
Politicians Vs The Monarchy, both of whom are on the same side.
For all your pretences to advanced constitutional knowledge, you're somewhat ignorant about the structure and operation of the pyramid of power.
The stakes in the pitched battle between the benevolent monarchy and the "corrupt and blundering" politicians are really hotting up.
Queen's head on stamps guaranteed by law
Sunday, 9 January 2011
The appearance of the Queen's head on postage stamps is to be guaranteed by law after the Government struck a deal with Buckingham Palace to protect the tradition.
Amendments will be put forward by ministers this week to close a loophole that could have allowed a foreign buyer of the Royal Mail to remove the monarch's image.
The change was confirmed by business minister Ed Davey, who said his department and royal officials had "worked extremely well together to prepare for this initiative".
While the legislation paving the way for a sell-off contains a clause giving the Queen a veto over any use of her image on stamps or other products, it does not insist that her head be shown.
Officials had justified the lack of a specific protection by saying it would be "commercial suicide" for any operator to remove the royal head - and that it had not be requested by the Palace.
German and Dutch operators are expected to be leading bidders in the sell-off and Labour accused the coalition of watering down protection to attract maximum interest.
But Mr Davey, who insisted that he initiated moves towards closing the loophole, said safeguards would now be included.
"After listening to views of members of both Houses of Parliament and the Palace, we have agreed this additional safeguard," he told the Mail on Sunday.
The stakes in the pitched battle between the benevolent monarchy and the "corrupt and blundering" politicians are really hotting up.
Queen's head on stamps guaranteed by law
Sunday, 9 January 2011
The appearance of the Queen's head on postage stamps is to be guaranteed by law after the Government struck a deal with Buckingham Palace to protect the tradition.
Amendments will be put forward by ministers this week to close a loophole that could have allowed a foreign buyer of the Royal Mail to remove the monarch's image.
The change was confirmed by business minister Ed Davey, who said his department and royal officials had "worked extremely well together to prepare for this initiative".
While the legislation paving the way for a sell-off contains a clause giving the Queen a veto over any use of her image on stamps or other products, it does not insist that her head be shown.
Officials had justified the lack of a specific protection by saying it would be "commercial suicide" for any operator to remove the royal head - and that it had not be requested by the Palace.
German and Dutch operators are expected to be leading bidders in the sell-off and Labour accused the coalition of watering down protection to attract maximum interest.
But Mr Davey, who insisted that he initiated moves towards closing the loophole, said safeguards would now be included.
"After listening to views of members of both Houses of Parliament and the Palace, we have agreed this additional safeguard," he told the Mail on Sunday.
"Hey, Stef, are all your contributors full-time vituperators, or do you have the occasional constructive comment"
According to Blogger most of them, including yourself, are suspected spammers
The blogger anti-spam 'service' is really starting to piss me off
@Canspeccy
"Hey, Stef, are all your contributors full-time vituperators, or do you have the occasional constructive comment"
I've toyed with various ideas over the years and, unlike many, I've found myself becoming less authoritarian as I've grown older. However, I can still remember, however misdirected I now believe I was in the past, why certain ideas hold an appeal for people I now disagree with
but I can also understand why people can be pissed off by those ideas
My take is that a collapse or failure of dialogue between ordinary people of differing political views serves the plutocrats and I will try to engage with all but the demented
and your thesis about the joys of constitutional monarchy would hold a little more water if, amongst many other things, it hadn't taken something like 200 years to even start to offer ordinary people democratic representation
what freedoms ordinary people have were taken, not given, and the existence of a constitutional monarchy is not holding back their rapidly accelerating erosion
The stakes in the pitched battle between the benevolent monarchy and the "corrupt and blundering" politicians are really hotting up - part 2.
If, even just a few times, the result of all this 'corrupt blundering' was a diminution of state power and plutocratic wealth I might be inclined to entertain that particular narrative
It doesn't so I don't
But, there again, I'm the kind of paranoid individual who thinks wrestling is rigged
You whackjob, stef! ^^
This is an enjoyable debate. My appreciation to all concerned.
Any more?
Re:
"and your thesis about the joys of constitutional monarchy would hold a little more water if, amongst many other things, it hadn't taken something like 200 years to even start to offer ordinary people democratic representation ..."
I wasn't suggesting that constitutional monarchy was a guarantee of eternal bliss. Nor was I suggesting that the Parliament that emerged after the Glorious Revolution was particularly democratic. My point was that the monarchy constitutes a check on the power of politicians, most of whom would grab absolute power without hesitation were it possible for them to do so. Since 1689, the monarchy has served to prevent them from doing so.
Incidentally, what would be so good about a true democracy in a world where most people are schooled by the state for twenty years and learn almost nothing other than how to be politically correct?
I would happily see the franchise sharply curtailed:
first by raising the voting age to 31 from 12 or 15 or whatever the politicians are pushing for now, in the sure knowledge that the more inexperienced the voter the more readily they can be gulled;
second, by requiring voters to pass some kind of basic test of literacy and numeracy, and political knowledge.
But we can expect nothing of the sort. What we have is a crypto-plutocratic system, under which the popular belief is controlled by the MSM, Hollywood, etc. Restricting the franchise to those who might actually know where their personal interest actually lies would obviously destroy the system.
Incidentally, what would be so good about a true democracy...
Not a hell of a lot, which is why I wrote in an earlier comment...
"Better to strive to make the political system less corrupt and ensure that it is backed by a decent constitution imho"
Pure democracy is the tyranny of the majority over the minority and boils down to someone strolling up to you and saying he and his mates had a vote and decided that they were going to tell you what to do and if you don't like it they'll imprison or kill you
And I'm not sure applying eligibility criteria would change that at all, as the very act of selection will simply strengthen the powers of the vested interests favoured by the selection criteria.
The old, for example, would be interested in driving up property values and enhancing retirement benefits at the expense of the young and literacy, in itself, is no guarantee of common sense, good judgment or empathy
Masking authoritarianism and state violence with democracy, however pure, is like sticking lipstick on a pig
It's still a pig
@stef said,
"Pure democracy is the tyranny of the majority over the minority and boils down to someone strolling up to you and saying he and his mates had a vote and decided that they were going to tell you what to do and if you don't like it they'll imprison or kill you"
Supposedly, Human Rights are there to <strike>prevent</strike> constrain the above.
"The old, for example, would be interested in driving up property values and enhancing retirement benefits at the expense of the young and literacy, in itself, is no guarantee of common sense, good judgment or empathy ..."
Well, let's exclude from the voters roll all those who (a) work for the government or (b) derive their income from government, e.g., recipients of the old age pension, welfare, etc.
Agreed, there are many literate folks without a clue, but you think the illiterate have a better idea of what's going on?
Agreed, though, that any test of voter qualification would be fixed to exclude all but the politically correct, brain washed and brain dead.
What to do then?
Here's my idea: Pick six hundred people at random from among those who are in someway usefully employed, i.e., not civil servants, not on welfare, not in gaol and not retired, and have them run the government.
Sounds, daft, I know but with a bit of tuning it might work better than what we have now. For example, if you replaced one third of this truly democratic parliament every year, there'd always someone with some idea of what's going on. Televise all debates. Make every speech in Parliament open to public comment on some kind of Parliamentary blog. Shoot bribe-takers, whether the bribes are taken in office, or as is normally the case, after office. And why not some effective referendum mechanism?
I'm not sure I'd share your view as to what qualifies as usefully employed
Given that our current system is predicated on the destruction of the surpluses industrialisation has presented us with, the majority of people, whether they like it or not, are involved in pissing wealth up against the wall; in the private as well as the public sector, regardless of whatever those people dreamt of becoming when they were school children
Jury rules would do = any sane adult without a serious criminal conviction would be eligible
As for what to do as a general question, personally speaking I realised some time ago that that I disliked the concept of state coercion and the state's monopoloy of violence intensely
which made me a libertarian
but I also was no fan of inequal distributions of wealth which have come about through violence, dishonesty and exploitation; rather than through genuinely contributing to the common wealth
I also think it's possible to believe in providing for those who need assistance, because that is a decent way to live, and not because I've been brainwashed by some Luciferian 'Marxist' plot
which would make me a Left Wing Libertarian
an aspiration which I believe to be no more, or less, doable than any of the other guff out there
particularly if a decent number of people truly started to appreciate the interplay of left wing, right wing, authoritarian and libertarian points of view
@gyg3s
"Supposedly, Human Rights are there to constrain the above"
something like this perchance?
it doesn't have to be very long, or include distractive bollocks like access to broadband internet or state-funded cosmetic surgery
my problem is, as someone opposed to violence and coercion, is how would you put such a thing in force, and keep it there
"Jury rules would do = any sane adult without a serious criminal conviction would be eligible"
Well if you don't want literacy and numeracy qualifications for an otherwise randomly selected House of Commons, I would certainly avoid the sanity test. I mean, it's fairly easy for someone to show that they can read "the cat sat on the mat" or count to ten, but to prove that they are sane? How?
Sure as anything interest groups would find scientific evidence that advocacy of free speech or the right to bear arms was certain proof of insanity.
So I think we'll just have to have a purely random assortment of folks, including one or two who may make a habit of entering the debating chamber naked and shouting "thank yer Jesus" from time to time.
But that's OK. That's what we want. A truly representative assembly. And every member could have a staff to do research, write speeches, put on their make-up, etc., just like real pols.
But we still have to deal with the rich, who are, as Jesus said, always with us. Or was it the poor? But in any case the rich will certainly always be with us, whereas with a half decent government we might eliminate the poor entirely -- I mean by helping them to be not poor, not by eliminating them, if you see what I mean.
The thing is to eliminate the hidden hand of plutocracy. In its place we must have a second house of Parliament: the The House of Riches, or whatever, which would replace the obsolete House of Lords, which now comprises nothing but a raggle taggle collection of broken down aristocrats and asian billionaires, and gaol birds such as former Canadian, Conrad Black, currently out on bail from a Florida correction institute.
The upper house, like the Lords will have the power to delay or suggest amendments to legislation, but it will have no control over the money power. Membership will be based on the amount of taxes paid, thus allowing more or less honest billionaires some kudos for not evading every penny in tax due. In fact, incorrigible tax evaders should be allowed purchase a seat in an open auction, the bidding to start at, say, 100 million.
As for the bill of rights, I'd prefer the English version to the American, which as Mr. George Bush so accurately stated, is just a goddam piece of paper.
Given an ignorant, compliant population any kind of a constitution is a waste of time
As for the negative income tax I'm currently enjoying the idea of a flat land tax coupled with a flat citizen's income and not much else at all
And when discussing reduction of the state and the number of useless eaters on the payroll it's worth remembering that the captured state is an even bigger friend to predatory capital as it is to the public sector jobsworths the conservative press is so obsessed with
- No more trillion $£$ offence spending or tax-funded 'pork' generally
- The end of the immortal, heads I win, tails you lose, powers of limited liablity corporations guaranteed by the state
- No more state enforced monopolies, subsidies, quotas
etc etc
...most of the seriously wealthy people I've met in this life, and it's been a few, directly owe their disproportionate haul at least partially to some form of state sanctioned chicanery and not because they invented a process that turned loaves into fishes
"Given an ignorant, compliant population any kind of a constitution is a waste of time"
Well if they're so completely ignorant and compliant after 20 years of publicly funded education, and I'm not saying they're not, it pretty well makes my case for abolishing state, so-called, education.
"... I'm currently enjoying the idea of a flat land tax coupled with a flat citizen's income and not much else at all ..."
Nah, not a hope. the only land of any significant value is urban land with houses or commercial and industrial buildings on it -- which are already taxed. If you make the Council Tax a flat tax, i.e., the same rate for every household, then the Duke of Twunt pays less and you pay more for the same total revenue. A good idea?
All the land used for farming and foresty amounts to damn all as a percentage of national assets, and it all reaps a huge public subsidy.
Why not wipe out the subsidies for sheep and exotic conferous tree species before thinking about taxing the land?
As for a flat citizen tax, didn't Maggie Thatcher try that one, you know, the poll tax. When someone asked Willie Whitelaw what he thought of the proposal he said, his jowls quivering, TRRRROUBLE.
Exactly, since half the population do not earn enough to live on, how you gonna get 'em to pay the tax? You'll finish up housing and feeding them at public expense in gaol.
What you've got to do first is see why the government needs most of yer money, which of course it doesn't. As you point out, it pisses it away killing Pakis and Afghans, Eyerakis, whatever, just so's BP, British Aerospace, etc. can make a quid. Then they spend the rest on some phony education programme.
Here, in glorious Canuckistan, more than half the employees of the Toronto school board with a teacher's certificate do not teach. That's right, if your a teacher in this benighted country and you find yourself in a classroom teaching kids, you know you've failed in your profession.
'm loving this discussion, fellas. I've loads to say on all this but no time to articulate it all at the mo.
I wish I could meet you all in the pub over a few! We would totally sort it all out. ;)
Are any of you near Cumbria?
@CanSpeccy
There would be many plus points to a land based system. The first few that come to mind...
- It could replace most, if not all, other taxes and be relatively cheap to collect and administer
- It would be impossible to dodge through creative accounting, use of trusts, offshoring etc.
- It would not penalise productivity
- It would penalise speculation
- It would help ensure that those who control a disproportionate share of a nation's natural assets - assets they did not create - would contribute a commensurate level of tax
I used to think that, with the onset of industrialisation, land ownership was no longer as significant as it once was. I now realise that's nonsense.
As an example of the advantages of a land-tax in action, Putin in Russia played a nice stroke a while ago by sticking taxes directly on the natural resources 'looted' by the oligarchs - rather than chasing down the oligarchs or their offshore holding companies. As Vlad realised, the resources weren't looted at all and hadn't moved anywhere
Abolition of subsidies would be a given
A flat rate citizen tax is a terrible idea, of course, because it has no connection with ability to pay and you can't do anything to rid yourself of the liability
The obligations arising from a flat rate land tax would be extremely easy to rid yourself of. That would have all sorts of implications for land values and usage, most of them quite positive
A citizens income, rather than poll tax, however, is not a terrible idea at all and is not that different in principle to the concept of a negative income tax - just a lot easier to deliver. It would have all sorts of implications for people's attitude to work, most of them quite positive. As a general rule, people like engaging in productive work, provided they're not being fucked over, and those that don't or can't, won't, whatever the system
Abolition of a boat load of other benefits would also be a given
As for the public education thing we're drifting back to the realms of bitching about the 'marxist' take-over of our children's minds that the conservative press and right wing loons like to bang on about
The top priority of state education is to indoctrinate children, completely regardless of whether the state is left-wing, right-wing, swing wing, gull wing or whatever
I've recently spent a year working in primary education in another of Her Majesty's former colonies. The teacher's were uniformly excellent and deeply concerned about their student's education and well-being. Current literacy and numeracy rates, as well as less quantifiable qualities, make the UK system look like a sick joke
And, for some reason, conspiratorial or otherwise, the current education system in NZ is in the process of being morphed into the ghastly Blairite UK model. It's like watching an impending car crash in slow motion
I feel like I've just cheated myself of four or five posts by banging in all these comments
Are any of you near Cumbria?
I walked right across it a couple of months ago, admiring all the bits of Roman masonry that used to be wall-shaped and are now barn-shaped
Coast to Coast in four and bit days, wheezing like a middle-aged fat boy who was pushing himself too hard all along the way...
A well decent part of the world to be imho
Stef, I don't understand your land tax proposal at all.
Why tax this one asset class? It would be totally inequitable. Bill Gates is the richest man in the World, or was, but to get that rich he didn't need to own any land at all.
Likewise Rupert Murdoch. His largest asset may well be a network of satellites in outer space.
A tax on all assets would raise more and be much fairer. All individuals and corporations based in the UK or wherever would pay tax on all assets. A rate of 1.5% would raise about 100 billion a year in the UK, which is a handy amount but nothing like the 45% of GDP the UK Government currently spends.
Sad to hear NZ education is being trashed in the interests of the New World Ordure. At least, I assume that's the reason.
If you've got an hour to spare, you will get one view of what's behind the NWO here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN_LYk1nDEY&feature=related
A slightly lurid account of Cecil Rhodes secret society and its aftermath.
Craggy,
Right now I'm eight thousand miles from Cumbria, so I'll have to take you up on the offer of a pint some other time.
Cheers.
While all this year zero stuff is quite interesting, why not just go for maximising the current tax take by removing opportunities for tax 'management', remove the NI ceiling and aim for full employment.
Revenues go up, benefit demands go down and deficits recede. In addition, people might be freed from the yoke of insecurity.
Of course, these are not anything current governments wish to see, but they are certainly possible.
As for public education, the problem is at the policy level not the fact that it is public.
I have no real complaints about the education provided to me by the government.
/ retrieves Paul's comment from the Google spam bin, wipes it down a little and pops it back on-line
"While all this year zero stuff is quite interesting, why not just go for maximising the current tax take by removing opportunities for tax 'management', remove the NI ceiling and aim for full employment."
The Year Zero tone creeps in frequently with these kind of discussions and I'm often struck by it when talking with (proper) Marxists. I think the idea with most of us is that we're talking about a direction in which to head with no real expectation of getting to a final destination
And a LVT was put on then swiftly taken off the UK political table in years gone by
As for increasing employment taxes and closing up loopholes it'll never happen and even though I've got a background in this stuff I think I'd be tempted to go off hunting unicorns rather than trying to even out the existing system
Task me with disappearing income from asset holdings and I could get the job done in time for an early lunch and half a bottle of something cheeky
The balance between taxation of labour and the taxation of unearned income has been tilted remorselessly towards labour and that is feeding the imbalance between the minted and the unminted and standing in the way of the full employment of which you speak
As for education, I don't have many complaints about the one I received either but that's because state education policy was captured by forces I'm currently well disposed towards
Times have moved on though and the number of eccentric history teachers with an unusual take on things is currently at a cyclic minimum
"Stef, I don't understand your land tax proposal at all. Why tax this one asset class?"
A short answer is that a land tax isn't really a tax at all. It's rent.
The underlying philosophy of a land tax is the proposal that everything found in nature, especially land, belongs equally to all of humanity. If you want more than your fair share then you should compensate the rest of us for crowding us out and restricting our access to the fundamentals of Life
I can, and do, choose not to contribute to Gates' or Murdoch's wealth by not buying their services. I have no choice about having to find somewhere to live, food to eat, fuel and clothing; tangible things which are all ultimately derived from the land.
The reason why I currently wouldn't make a very good communist is the fact that afaic if someone chooses to work harder than me to buy more junk, I personally don't see why I should expect a share of their increased earnings. If they choose to save those extra earnings for a later time I don't see why I should expect a share of that either
...provided they don't expect to generate unearned income from those savings at the expense of others; through rent, speculation, arbitrage, usury or any other form of exploitation
If you start stripping medieval shit like that out of society you wouldn't have to collect so much tax, as people wouldn't be having their faces ripped off by bankers and landlords
Why tax labour, productivity and savings when there are so many much more deserving parasites out there? Especially when the idea is to come up with a taxation system which is seen to be fair by as many people across the political spectrum as possible
No, a flat land tax on its own would not be a panacea. Other things would have to be done. But, as I've already said, any tax on paper 'assets' would, as it always is, be entrusted and offshored into ineffectiveness in next to no time. Leaving, yet again, the people with middling or piddling amounts to bear the brunt
and thx for video tip
I haven't seen that particular pitch by Griffin before and will rectify that presently
He is, of course, one of the Godfathers of the 'All Bad Things are Marxist' school of conspiraloon thought and someone who detects the foul stench of collectivism lurking behind pretty much every social advance since about the 13th century. A True Master of connecting the dots, no matter the distance
My problem with Griffin and others of his ilk is that they seem congenitally incapable of comprehending that concepts such as giving people a fair shake and looking out for those fellow travellers who need a hand might actually be legitimate aspirations and not just an exclusive product of Illuminati machinations.
It's also possible, just possible, that groups of people have sometimes banded together in the past because they were sick of being treated like cattle and not because their masters were really, really nice chaps who just happened to get on the wrong side of the Rothschilds
Griffin is reasonably sound 90% of the time but he really fucks the duck with the other 10%
I wasn't suggesting increasing employment taxes (apart from the NI ceiling) but cracking down on the 'tax gap' r murphy works on.
Having received this vacuous document today I agree my ideas might be as fanciful as any others.
I think this ed character might not be as red as he is made out to be.
"any tax on paper 'assets' would, as it always is, be entrusted and offshored into ineffectiveness in next to no time."
I don't believe so, unless the laws are made to be circumvented, which is often the case.
What I'm proposing is a tax on an individual's world-wide assets, with the penalty for evasion equal to the total value of the assets. I think that'd scare the shit out of most wannabe tax evaders.
For companies, rather than individuals, the capital tax applies to all assets employed by the business in the country where the tax is imposed. That way Poop Murdoch's NewsCrap could register ownership of his satellites, etc. wherever he likes, but he'd still pay tax on those used in his business in the UK or wherever.
Then you'd need some provisions to avoid double taxation, which should not be beyond the wit of a competent finance ministry.
But to get the bastards off the backs of the average working person with virtually no assets, that's simple. Eliminate the income tax, eliminate VAT.
Then, to balance the books, just cut government spending by 44%.
That's simple too. Just cut "social protection" whatever that is, education and health, and you'll have cut government spending by 56%, leaving plenty of spare cash for a negative income tax scheme that in effect guarantees employment to all.
Now you can leave it to individuals to pay for the education of their own children, their own health insurance and their own "social protection". A return in otherwords to a world of responsible individualism.
Would largely solve the problem of mass immigration to a crowded island, too. No free lunch, not many asylum seekers, I should think.
@CanSpeccy
We do appear to agree on the principle that it might be worth trying to tax the asset, rather than the individual
If I saw a move towards that principle I'd consider that a result, whether it was primarily focused on land or not
And whilst I'm clearly over to your left some way I share your antipathy towards income tax as well as a coercive state. I don't see why if I spend the day growing veggies on my own patch I don't pay any tax, yet if I spend the day growing veggies on someone else's patch in exchange for wages I do start paying tax.
It's an exchange of labour and I'm not making any profit/ unearned income. The guy I'm owrking for might be and asking him to give up a share of something he didn't work for works for me
We could also agree that a fairer distibution of unearned income would enable a reduction in the much maligned welfare programmes that people get so sweaty about
@paul
I haven't read Murphy for some time but, as I recall, he has a major hard-on for enforcing the current UK inheritance tax. As fine a mechanism for ensuring the overclass retains a monopoly on capital accumulation as anyone has devised. They simply don't pay it
Doing an Edward Griffin impression for a moment, Murphy strikes me as one of those left wingers who advocate apparently left wing solutions which, in practice, favour the extremely wealthy. Though like I said, I haven't been following him so I might be being a tad unfair
In contrast to an IHT, an annual asset tax, levied regardless of whether the asset was 'gifted', held in trust or offshored, would be a piece of piss to collect
"Having received this vacuous document today I agree my ideas might be as fanciful as any others"
there are some truly inspired, out of the box solutions being offered by the faithful in the comments section...
"An innovative way to help tackle the deficit, a tax on SMS messages. A simple 1p on every text message sent in the UK would bring in around 1 billion pounds per year, saving thousands of jobs facing harsh cuts. You send 200 texts in a month? Just £2 on your bill. Small price to pay, but considering that in 2009 96.8 billion text messages were sent, it will add up."
why bother with the arbitrary involvement of SMS messages and just go for a £24 p.a. 'Pay me and I won't shoot you in the face' tax?
when exactly was it when allegedly progressive parties and their supporters started to develop such a chubby for regressive taxation?
Stef said:
"I don't see why if I spend the day growing veggies on my own patch I don't pay any tax, yet if I spend the day growing veggies on someone else's patch in exchange for wages I do start paying tax."
Yeah, but don't talk about this or the totalitarians will be taxing yer back yard veggie patch -- like they do in Sweden so I've heard. Which is why the Swedes don't do much lawn mowing -- they get taxed on the imputed value of the labour expended. Or is that just propaganda to slow the flow of Asians and Africans to Sweden?
wtf
that Swedish story is news to me - I'm off to check that puppy out now
and I acknowledge your concession in the use of the term 'totalitarian' rather than 'marxist'
There are plenty of lefties I know who dislike totalitarian behaviour and as soon as someone labels that behaviour as 'marxist' the potential opposition to that behaviour gets split
The migrant thing I am quite consciously shelving (for now)
74 long comments and counting is a test of anyone's endurance
I liked this one:
Put the emphasise on wealth creation rather than wealth distribution. I suspect that the country is already in danger of distributing more than it is creating! As a start I would suggest the introduction of a flat tax.
That'l put us right up there with Latvia.
While I'm all for rebalancing the taxation of labour and capital, I don't see anything wrong with social protections at all, in fact I see them as one of governments highest, if not only, purpose.
My reading of murphy's view on IHT is that he thinks it isn't extended enough:
That’s true of this objective statement as a whole. It is, in fact, simply wrong. Capital taxes exist for the following reasons:
1. To tax wealth which otherwise avoids any form of taxation, so broadening the tax base;
2. To ensure that the tax base is progressive;
3. To provide for the reallocation of wealth and the reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor - which is enormously socially destructive;
4. To prevent leakage from income tax;
5. To raise revenue.
and
Put simply, if you believe in an enterprise economy, Inheritance Tax is a good thing. I agree.
The trouble is the British believe in privilege.
A fairly reasonable position.
I'd swap the %s about on mr Griffin.
Stef,
You're right about Edward Griffin's ratio of fact to fantasy, and the problem is that the fantasy tends to warp one's perception of the facts.
His talk about Cecil Rhodes' secret society suggests that Carroll Quigley, the American historian who wrote an account of the society, was some kind of conspiracy theorist and that his books have been suppressed.
In fact, Quigley was invited to write the book, presumably by folks connected with the society. He did his research for the book during a sabbatical at All Souls, Oxford, which college served as the intellectual home of the society.
And I bought all of Quigley's books from Amazon -- so much for their suppression. (And all are well worth reading. Tragedy and Hope is a brilliant review of World history from around 1800 to 1965. His account of Rhode's secret society "The Anglo-American Establishment" reads rather like a dictionary of biography -- an enormous list of names with biographical details and social connections, but it tells you a lot about the way in which a supposedly democratic society was actually run.)
Griffin states that Rhode's secret society still exists as is manifest by among other things, the Council on Foreign Relations.
There's no doubt that the CFR and such organizations as Chatham House in London, the Royal Institutes of Foreign Affairs (in various countries) exist, and were the creation of Rhode's society. However, it is not clear that the secret society itself, the Circle of Initiates, as it was known, still exists.
Moreover, according to Quigley's account, the society had more or less fizzled out by 1939, with leading members such as Leo Amery deserting the society and Neville Chamberlain in their quest for appeasement of Germany. (But then perhaps Quigley was providing cover for the renewal of the society in America, as the founders expected might happen. In this connection it should be understood that Quigley fully approved of the motives and methods of the society and may have been more intimately involved in it than he admits. He did, after all, sponsor Bill Clinton for a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, the rest as they say being history -- still in the making, with Hillary at the State Department.)
So it is possible that the society does exist today in America,, but Griffin offers no firm evidence.
Re. Griffin
The Griffin % is eminently negotiable
He's switched me onto a lot of material which was useful to me, once I'd stripped his take on its significance out of the equation
Re. IHT
Just on practicalities alone, ditching an eminently dodgeable 40% End of Life tax and replacing it with a not very dodgeable, much smaller, annual levy would be a much more effective device
in practice, IHT has served privilege, and anyone who has practical experience of UK taxation who is claiming otherwise is peddling whoppers
The post at the top of these comments included specific reference to the Duke of Westminster. I'll wager a crisp, virtual fiver that he and his mates would be a lot more concerned about an annual levy than the prospects of IHT ever catching up with their dynasties
Paul said:
"I don't see anything wrong with social protections"
My chief point about abolishing the "social protection" programs was that it is totally arse backwards and perverse to deny people work and then provide them with comprehensive social support.
What this achieves is a society where about 25% are demoralized and corrupted, losing the inclination and competence to work while becoming resentful toward those upon whom they rely for support, and where another 25% earn a living providing "social support" in the most bureaucratic and inefficient way while becoming contemptuous of those they help, and arrogant in their attitude to those who pay their wages.
Once ensuring the right of ever citizen to work at a living wage is acknowledged as a fundamental obligation of the state, most "social support" functions become inessential. When someone has a living wage, they can care for themselves under all but exceptional circumstances. Then the need for a massive and hugely inefficient and corrupt state apparatus of "social support" is eliminated.
As Stef said, death duties are merely capital taxes that fall in a haphazard and totally arbitrary way and are easily avoided.
So, yes, I think getting a swell of support for a capital tax would really put the wind up Westminster's crowd. Let;s go for an emergency rate of 5% and negotiate down to 3% as long as the Government deficit exceeds 3% of GDP.
"That'l put us right up there with Latvia."
there are flat taxes and they are flat taxes
if they're applied to individual in the style of a fixed poll tax they would be regressive and unpleasant
if they were applied to, to coin a phrase, the means of production they might help achieve objective of matching the burden of taxation to access to wealth
from the Daily Mail, of course...
Councils that won’t collect rubbish, power giants that couldn’t care less if you’ve no electricity...why the people who serve us just don’t give a damn
Right-wing libertarianism does look like it could be the next Disco
My chief point about abolishing the "social protection" programs was that it is totally arse backwards and perverse to deny people work and then provide them with comprehensive social support.
Well I did say a government should be directed towards full employment. The fact that 'social protections' have been subverted and perverted into a support mechanism for persistent underemployment is a crime.
What this achieves is a society where about 25% are demoralized and corrupted, losing the inclination and competence to work while becoming resentful toward those upon whom they rely for support, and where another 25% earn a living providing "social support" in the most bureaucratic and inefficient way while becoming contemptuous of those they help, and arrogant in their attitude to those who pay their wages.
That is the goal I think, one of the quid pro quos of the arrangement is that a strata of jobs have been created for the middle classes to manage this misery.
Once ensuring the right of ever citizen to work at a living wage is acknowledged as a fundamental obligation of the state, most "social support" functions become inessential. When someone has a living wage, they can care for themselves under all but exceptional circumstances. Then the need for a massive and hugely inefficient and corrupt state apparatus of "social support" is eliminated.
In work or out, universal health care and education, is a pretty attractive option to most, and you are free also to make your own arrangements. It's certainly cost effective.
As Stef said, death duties are merely capital taxes that fall in a haphazard and totally arbitrary way and are easily avoided.
As you said before, just because a tax is avoided or not implemented effectively does not mean its impossible or even a bad idea.That the current version is absurd is not an argument against the principle.
So, yes, I think getting a swell of support for a capital tax would really put the wind up Westminster's crowd. Let;s go for an emergency rate of 5% and negotiate down to 3% as long as the Government deficit exceeds 3% of GDP.
No objection to an asset tax.
I take it you mean the deficit does not exceed 3%.
Arbitrary restrictions on government deficits are all the rage here in europe and fuck knows why.
The government deficit should be whatever it needs to be to maintain full employment.
This or this
in hindsight, Black Lace clearly were encoding allusions to the dangers of the false left-right paradigm in their lyrics
@ Stef
"Right-wing libertarianism does look like it could be the next Disco"
I don't think the things we've been discussing should be called right wingism.
Right wingers want to preserve the hierarchy and the status quo. But what we've been discussing is (A) the right to work, (B) the dismantling of the state welfare apparatus, and (C) a genuinely progressive, albeit lighter, tax code.
Item (A), to supplement the wage of anyone who's market wage is less than a living wage, thereby rewarding effort and making people independent, is surely a very left wing idea. Certainly it is the only way that I am aware of (short of full-blown commie tyranny) to put into effect the socialist programme: from each according to his ability; to each according to his need.
Item (B) involves pulling down the present social order and wiping out a vast hierarchy of overpaid civil servants, i.e., the new middle-class. That is surely a leftist proposal too.
(C) Is obviously an enlightened leftist program, to make the 1% who own 80% of the assets pay their fair share of the operating cost of the society upon which their prosperity depends.
That the tax programme should lighten the overall burden of taxation is not only libertarian but a matter of survival. We are competing against a furiously competitive and ambitious asian world where taxes on enterprise are much lower than in the west. If we want to survive the contest, we need to unleash a new wave of investment based on the accumulation of earned income.
The right to work
what we're talking about certainly does include leftist elements
what I'm not so sure about is if those elements would be accepted by, say, the established Libertarian parties in the US or UK
I had a glance at what was laid out on the UK Libertarian party ideological stall a while back and concluded they'd be more accurate describing themselves as the UK Misanthropic Alliance
@Paul
Well I did say a government should be directed towards full employment.
But governments in Britain since the days of Harold Wilson are not so directed. They create mass unemployment with a minimum wage and their stupendously extravagant "social protections" program.
Why?
Because they need the vote of the bureaucracy and the don't give a shit about the unemployed who are mostly too disillusioned, demoralized or mentally ill to vote at all. That's why folks need to attack the "social support" programmes. They are the cause of of evil, not the solution to it.
That is the goal I think, one of the quid pro quos of the arrangement is that a strata of jobs have been created for the middle classes to manage this misery.
Yeah, so not only are these people living off the misery of the underclass and burdening the regular working class with a massive and perhaps unpayable burden of public debt, they are also failing to make any positive contribution. Let all those middle rank civil servants loose to fend for themselves and at least a few of them will find they have real talent for creating wealth -- and jobs for other people, while the rest will discover they are just ordinary folks who have to make do with a mundane and overtaxed job.
Arbitrary restrictions on government deficits are all the rage here in europe and fuck knows why.
The 3% limit is not arbitrary. It's what you can get away with by inflating the money supply without people really noticing.
The government deficit should be whatever it needs to be to maintain full employment.
Oh yeah. Running at about 100% in the US and still near 25% real unemployment.
Nah, deficits don't create jobs except in the short run. In the long run they create increasingly unmanageable debt or hyperinflation, both of which destroy jobs.
The Keynsian idea that you can employ unutilized resources at no real cost by printing money only works if the investment you make with the printed money earns enough to cover the carry charges and repay the principle. Look at what government deficit spending goes on today: "social protection services", LOL.
And anyhow, you will never get most of the long-term unemployed back into the workforce as long as you have a minimum wage and tons of welfare. The labor of most of the long-term unemployed does not have a market value equal to the minimum wage. The minimum wage creates unemployment. The minimum wage is what creates a need for "social protection services."
Get rid of the mimimum wage, supplement low incomes through a reverse income tax and you provide everyone with a job opportunity and you provide entrepreneurs with a labour force that is competitive with that of the Asian sweatshops.
But if we don't act on this soon, we'll be so broke we'll just have to let the whole system collapse, and let the poor go under: I mean die of malnutrition, hypothermia and untreated illness.
...and when I say right-wing libertarianism could be the new disco I'm talking about the kind of thinking we've been talking about here, I'm talking about the strains of libertarian thinking I am seeing discussed elsewhere. They are most certainly to the right
"...and you provide entrepreneurs with a labour force that is competitive with that of the Asian sweatshops"
If you start paying people asian sweatshop money how are they going to be able to support the landlords and bankers? If you're renting or paying a mortgage in the UK you have to find a couple of hundred quid a week just to service your feudal obligations.
Which means you have to charge more than an Asian worker before you even think about buying food or talking about a minimum wage
@Stef:
what I'm not so sure about is if those elements would be accepted by, say, the established Libertarian parties in the US or UK.
I don't think libertarianism is going nowhere nohow. It is offensive to the basic conservatism of the mass of the people.
The nationalists are the people with something like a sane programme.
Elsewhere, I have argued that that is the point of the BNP, to smear all reasonable policies (end mass immigration, tariff policy to protect local industry, pull out of Afghanistan immediately, pull out of the EU, devolve power to the lowest possible level -- see all this under the policy tab on the BNP Website).
In particular, I suggest, that is what the Cambridge-trained lawyer, Nick Griffin, is doing very effectively. He's smart enough to keep the party faithful -- the tiny band of nuckle-draggers and crypto fascists -- in line, while repelling everyone else by privately made racists remarks, which are immediately publicized widely and implausibly denied.
Likewise, the total BNP cock-up over the election, with Griffin at one point boasting that by bloodying a Times reporter's nose they proved the party hadn't gone soft, and then charging his own campaign manager with attempted murder. Plus that bizarre thing with a jar of Marmite.
Then there's Griffin's association with Fiore, wanted by the Italian police in connection with a (?Gladio) train station bombing.
Gladio was set up by NATO after the war to discredit populist left wing parties. Griffin's BNP looks and acts like a mechanism to discredit any populist, anti-imperial movement in Britain.
I raised this possibility over on Craig Murray's site and instead of a rational response I was repeatedly and with totally lack of honesty or even sanity, smeared as a racist and a crypto-Fascist.
Interesting?
Murray, as you may know shares with Julian Assange the Sam Anson award for "integrity in intelligence" (awarded annually by a bunch of ex CIA spooks). Wonder which branch of intelligence Murray and Assange are in.
@Stef
If you start paying people asian sweatshop money how are they going to be able to support the landlords and bankers?
It's not a problem. What you have to realize is how much the government pisses away on things people don't need in the least and how small is the amount it refuses to spend on allowing a mass of ordinary people the right to work.
Take 25% of the work force, say 7.5 million people, whose labour is worth less than the minimum wage, which is what? six quid?
OK, assume the average market value of the labor of this group is three quid an hour, assume they work 1800 hours a year, it will cost the government 1800 X 3 X 7.5 million to supplement their wages to the minimum wage: That's a piddling 40 billion quid. Double it, double it again, and it's still a minor part of the budget.
And when you supplement those wages, you eliminate most of the cost of welfare. You also enable people to gain job skills and so increase the market value of their labour. Given a start, some of them will go on to be millionaires.
And in the process, you are diverting money from useless welfare programmes to the support of British industry which can now pay market wages (and by that I mean world market wages) to the local labour force and thus compete in the world.
Basic income guarantee
vs.
Negative income tax
and if the BNP, and the EDL, aren't some kind of psyop MI5 isn't doing its job properly
and I've stuck up for Craig Murray in the past, but this Assange business represents a watershed, separating those who'll swallow a stunt like this uncritically and those who'll exercise at least some caution
The Trikipedia article on the negative income tax makes the basic idea clear, although some of the arguments for and against seem bizarre.
While the notion has long been popular in some circles, its implementation has never been politically feasible.
i.e., it has never been done because it has never been done?
This is partly because of the very complex and entrenched nature of most countries' current tax laws: they would have to be rewritten under any NIT system.
Not if the NIT were introduced together with a flat tax as this article considers. Then you'd just delete the whole five billion-page tax code, and put all those tax avoidance lawyers and a whole lot of dodgy accountants out of business.
They create mass unemployment with a minimum wage and their stupendously extravagant "social protections" program.
That is what has happened, what I am suggesting is what they should do
That's why folks need to attack the "social support" programmes. They are the cause of of evil, not the solution to it.
No, they are a symptom of the sheer hatred the plutocracy has for its hosts. They want unemployment and they want insecurity. However they have to pay somebody off.
The 3% limit is not arbitrary. It's what you can get away with by inflating the money supply without people really noticing.
And what is the point of not inflating the money supply?
Oh yeah. Running at about 100% in the US and still near 25% real unemployment.
I do not view the USG as any example. That they do not want to employ their people and instead use their deficit to cut taxes and invade countries is their decision.
Nah, deficits don't create jobs except in the short run. In the long run they create increasingly unmanageable debt or hyperinflation, both of which destroy jobs.
Depends how you use them, productively or wastefully.
No debt if you fund the debt yourself as a sovreign currency.
Hyper inflation happens when demand grossly exceeds supply. This is hardly the position most western economies are in.
you provide entrepreneurs with a labour force that is competitive with that of the Asian sweatshops.
And I thought it was the socialists that wanted to bring everyone down to the same level.
If the Asian sweat shop workers don't get their negative income tax, surely the asian sweat shop entrepreneurs will have an advantage any way.
@ Stef
and if the BNP, and the EDL, aren't some kind of psyop MI5 isn't doing its job properly.
Yeah, if you assume that the British National Party is a crypto-totalitarian Fascist party. But why should it be, any more than the Welsh Nats of the Scotch Nats?
Get rid of Griffin and the old Nazi's he promotes and you have a reasonable populist, left of centre party?
I conclude that the reason to make the BNP non-operative as a political movement is not because it is Fascist (at least in its avowed programme) but because its avowed programme is anti-NWO. In other words, it is essentially anti-Fascist, i.e., against globalization, centralization of power, and the destruction of national identities and national cultures and even the existence of the European nations as distinct biological entities -- all aspects of what Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term, considered to be genocide.
@ Paul
If the Asian sweat shop workers don't get their negative income tax, surely the asian sweat shop entrepreneurs will have an advantage any way.
No. The point of the negative income tax is to make wages globally competitive.
Then, what cannot be done for minimum wage in the west, is done for less than the (Western) minimum wage in Asia.
Eliminate the minimum wage, but make work a prerequisite of a government income supplement and Western companies have a level playing field as far as labour costs are concerned.
The reason that government's don't like to inflate much faster than 2 or 3% is that it makes people mad because it causes perceptible price increases.
And although you are correct in saying that deficit spending can work if you have productive investments, the problem is finding those productive investments. Here in North America the rule for stimulus spending seems to be that whatever we couldn't afford to do in good times is what we should be doing in bad times, which suggests that the return on investment will be quite poor to non-existent, especially since war spending seems to be the big thing to piss money away on.
Your idea that the elite regard the masses with such malignity that they deliberately create unemployment may be correct, but I suspect it is the result of mere indifference. Screw the workers in Britain, Michigan or wherever, if it pays better to put the plant in China, do it. Then if there's unemployment at home make the middle class pay the taxes that support the welfare programmes.
While your sums are compelling, if you count the total cost of low wages + cost of negative income taxation as a cost of production, how can you beat low wages with no cost of negative income taxation?
..plus the arbitrage of lower overheads such as acceptable working conditions.
As for the BNP etc I have often wished for a more gaullist aspect to politics but fat nick (cambridge or not law is glorified clerical work) is no de gualle
@Paul
if you count the total cost of low wages + cost of negative income taxation as a cost of production, how can you beat low wages with no cost of negative income taxation?
Well for the employer, the cost of the negative income tax is not a cost of production. Sure, society pays that cost, but it is going to pay that cost anyway in the form of unemployment/welfare/increased crime, etc., loss of workforce skills. So there is no reason to count the negative tax payment as a cost of production.
@Paul
...plus the arbitrage of lower overheads such as acceptable working conditions.
It would remain to be seen how important this factor is, e.g., the cost advantage to Asian producers of lower environmental standards in some countries, or the absence of strict workplace health and safety regulations. It is probably, however, that maintaining decent working conditions, hours of work, etc. contribute to productivity and if they are not actually profitably they may nevertheless not constitute a major competitive disadvantage.
But anyway, a wage that, depending on labour market conditions, might fall all the way to a penny an hour would give European producers a huge advantage over those who currently must pay the current minimum wage.
Yes, to achieve any impact the nationalists in Britain need a party and a leader that does not constantly hark back to Enoch Powell's "Tiber foaming with blood" speech. The BNP brand is hopelessly compromised, and anything that sounds similar will have no chance -- which as I maintain is the point of the BNP.
Possibly if UKIP abandoned its pathetic pink website, changed their name to something snappier, e.g., the Independence Party, got a credible leader who could be trusted not only by the indigenous population but also by legal immigrants, then the interests of the British people might get some consideration.
And the nice thing about adhering to western workplace health and safety standards and legislation limiting hours of work, is that you'd probably not have workers constantly jumping to their deaths from the factory roof like at the iPad factory. That's got to be worth something to an employer, if only lower cleanup costs.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tenth-worker-at-ipad-factory-commits-suicide-1982897.html
And when I said a party leader who could earn the trust of both the indigenous and the legal immigrant populations I was referring to that population of legal immigrants ready to adapt to the British way of life, abandon their plan for a minaret on every street and a Muslim elected in every Parliamentary constituency, and who will refrain from trying to keep their foot in the door to admit an endless stream of folks of their particular native race and culture.
As for a new Party, I think it might best be called the Independents Party, and would distinguish itself from the others by denying party headquarters the right to veto candidates picked by the constituencies, provided only that the candidates adhered to the party's core program.
That way, there'd be more genuine regional representation and members could not be bullied into accepting the party whip by the threat of being denied accreditation at the next election.
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