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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Here comes Tax Freedom Day in the UK… …3 days later than last year. The Adam Smith Institute has announced that this year’s Tax Freedom Day will be tomorrow, 30th May 2004.
The ASI calculates this every year, providing a useful measure of one of the ways in which the state reduces liberty, destroys wealth and lowers overall living standards.
As usual, Tax Freedom Day attracts quite a lot of media coverage from the usual suspects. I wonder if any voters are actually noticing?
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To be somwhat, even totally out of the subject, Independent posted an article today, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=526051, and I wonder if someone even notices it as a clear violation of human rights? Anyone ever read Orwell, Boye or similar? The fact that good Mr. Blunkett said that sattelite surveillance was “a more secure system and that people can rest more securely in their beds” intimidates me at least. Comment on my comment??
Yes, Anton Waern. You are an extremely rude person.
Thank you for your comment, I can now go on with my life, and rest secure, for I am rude! I appreciate your enlightening comment to the extent that I will keep it written down, for later use. Thank you!
Tax freedom day to me is misnamed. Such calculations largely take into account the individual’s tax payment divided by the days in the year. But it doesn’t take into account quasi-taxation in the form of regulation and the business taxes embedded in the costs of goods. That is at least here in the States. Perhaps the European equivalent does take into account VAT taxes etc.
I always get offended when shameslousy rightwing thinktanks have the cheek to pretend to be the champions of ordinary working people. It depends on what kind of society you right-wingers want. I mean we could go down the US route and cut public spending massively giving people tax cuts and expecting them to pay for such things as health through private insurance. The trouble with that approach as I found out when moaning to an American friend about how much tax I pay is that a headline low tax burden turned out when all her compulsory private insurance was included to mean she was paying more out per month than me overall.
Many people actually dont pay enough tax. There IS NO “we” in this context – it’s “us” (poor people getting ripped off by paying far too much tax) and “them” (rich people taking the piss by paying far too little tax and even then not satisfied until their accountants have tried every which way to avoid as much of what they are paying anyway). What’s the betting that those tax freedom day people don’t toil for 150 days of the year for anything, but actually sit on their fat arses for one day a month being non-executive directors for a fortune, and play golf the rest of the time? I suggest the ‘tax freedom day’ people go to a hospital or a school or the soldiers in Iraq on 1 June and say – that’s it, no more money for you scroungers, we need it all.
And I always get offended when economically illiterate statists (left-statist in her case as opposed to right-statist) like libby actually claim to be more than supporters of theft-by-proxy. Such people are not supporters of ‘working’ people at all (which is why statist tax-and-spend countries usually have such high unemployment) but rather support the looting of other people’s money by the socialworking class whilst at the same time reducing employment opportunities for people who actually want to WORK, and lowering everyone’s standards of living in the process.
She is quite right about one thing of course… poor people do indeed pay too much tax. EVERYONE pays too much tax. If all we were paying tax for was the military and police (and even those can be partially privatised), just think how much lower all taxes would be for everyone!
You are in danger of undermining your case by overstating it, Perry. There’s plenty of expensive state interference that can be thrown out consensually without cutting to the police and the military. (For myself, I can do without common courts much less than I can cope without the police. And Britain’s breathtakingly incompetent defense procurers are first against the wall, provided the rifles are working that day.)
The important idea that seems to be passing Ms Libby by is that all these new civil servants, and tens of thousands of other public employees added to the rolls of the agencies, and local authorities in the same six months are being paid for by somebody. The burden inevitably falls most uncomfortably on the poor. The rich have discretionary income, as well as discretionary spending, so you can’t base any tax system on eating the rich, unless taxes are low. If you want big government, then everybody not actually employed by that government ends up paying a big slice for it.
Sorry but there just some things you cant run on a balance sheet and need to be state ran to be ran efficiently. Why are you complaining?
NHS budget up by billions, will have doubled by 2008. Police and education, up by billions. International aid budget up 93%. Tax credits going to those on lowest incomes. Increased childcare and SureStart. MIG for pensioners, and a winter fuel allowance.
The money is being spent on public services which benefit the majority of people at some point in their life – we have lowest unemployment for decades, steady growth, low inflation, low interest rates, improved NHS performance, improved school performance, highest number of students ever, least chance of being a victim of crime since early 1980s, highest number of people in work.
Yes, it’s terrible this awful Labour tax burden. Why won’t somebody please set us free? I can’t bear to live another day in this communist gulag, where tax is set at 110%, and all property and wealth is confiscated and given to the revolutionary working class.
And I am supposed to think all those are good things? The economy works because we are LESS regulated that other places and I want to keep it that way. Libby is like a mafia don reporting his protection racket receipts are up and crime is down and expecting people to be grateful! The NHS is a national disgrace and anyone who has seen the many non-fully socialized healthcare systems around the First World would agree the NHS is money very poorly spent (hell, I got better medical care wartime in Croatia than I did in the UK once and was pretty well looked after in Ghana too). Every time I hear a socialist defending aid to the Third World it just makes me sick when they are the people who are so keen to prevent globalisation with their big business and union friendly trade barriers that keep out new market entrants and impoverish millions in the Third World whilst at the same time raise the prices of food in the First World. And just to make it all the more fun, foreign aid (particularly food aid in less that absolute famine conditions) often destroys the fragile markets in the countries the aid is intended to assist (which is why sometimes it is actually better off ending up in the Swiss bank of the ruling class rather than actually being spent)… but then foreign aid was never <really about actually helping the Third World, but rather about making people in the First World feel good about themselves and making jobs for NGOs, so it is hardly surprising Third World reality rarely matched the expensive glossy literature the aid agencies dish out in such vast quantities.
The statist left are as revolting as the statist right, the only different being the right is inexplicably pompous whilst arrogantly defending their imposed rent seeking hand in hand with help of the state whilst the left is nauseatingly sanctimonious whilst ignorantly defending their imposed rent seeking with help of the state.
The reason why private healthcare insurance is better than a State healthcare system is that power is shifted from those that provide the service to those who use it. This has two consequences. The services provided are ones that suit those who use them rather than the ones who provide them, and because the costs of running the service are paid for by those who run them, they have an interest in improving their efficiency.
This is not to say the State has no role in health care. In order to protect the chronically ill and the poor, those who are not chronically ill or poor, should help to pay for such people to get health care insurance. Of course some of these people are this way because of their own choices in life, but I do not believe that a civilised society withholds treatment from somebody whose addiction to drugs leads them to get HIV, or whose idleness results in them being homeless, because while it may be possible to make a distinction between deserving and undeserving, it does not help me much if I have to step over dying people in the streets to know that their situation is their own fault.
What a society can afford to provide will of course depend on the wealth of the economy. This then raises the question of what the State ought to do promote the generation of wealth. The State also has a role in public health, and this clearly involves infringements of personal liberty. But if for example State funded compulsory purchases of slum housing can prevent cholera, I for one would not object.
The issue as usual is one of balance. What is so pernicious is to invoke the State as the solution without trying to find out if it is the best solution. When somebody assumes that the State is always the best solution, and therefore anybody who opposes taxation to pay for State control is automatically a bad person by virtue of this fact, then you know you are in the presence of somebody whose has no interest in anybody other than themselves.
It depends on what kind of society you right-wingers want. I mean we could go down the US route and cut public spending massively giving people tax cuts and expecting them to pay for such things as health through private insurance
I’d suggest you take a look at the Federal budget over the last 40 years or so. Human resource spending has quadrupled while spending on defense has been cut be 2/3rds. The Federal Budget is $2,400,000,000,000, greater than the entire GDP of 3/4ths of the countries of the world, 3/4 of which (or $1,800,000,000,000) is spent on ‘Human Resource’ spending. Social spending, from the New Deal and the Great Society have driven the US into debt. Confiscation of the credit market has damaged this country near irreparably.
The top 1% of earners pay approx 40% of the taxes so your populism has misled you once again. Try reading from direct sources versus the slanted media.
And as for accountants, proper accountants use the laws in their client’s favor. The rules are the rules, and simply understanding and using them isn’t a crime. No one has an obligation to pay anymore taxes than they are required to. Accountants who participate or condone fraud (clearly determinable) are stripped of their ability to practice.
That’ll do, I guess.
Ms Libby, try decaf.