We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – We’re against easing the pain of paying tax Yes, yes, we know, paying tax is the price of partaking in civilisation. But that’s still a price, a cost. We think that people should see, up close and personal, the cost of that civilisation being built on their money. We are therefore against this:
Income tax will be automatically deducted from state pensions for millions of retirees under plans being considered by Labour, The Telegraph understands.
Not because the state pension should, or should not, be taxed. But because this is easy taxation. Some to many will not really even note it. Tax should be painful so that proper consideration be given to how much is being demanded.
– Tim Worstall
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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The whole system of PAYE insulates the vast majority of the population against how far into their pockets government have got their hands. If everybody had to fill out a self-assessment form they would be horrified how much money is being sucked out of them – as I am every year when I do mine.
You see this evident when people are up in arms at council tax bills – because they get an actual BILL demanding money – yet are completely oblivious to the magnitude more money secretely being drained from their wages before they ever see them.
In the US, of course the biggest (at least partly) hidden tax is made through payroll deductions. There, at least, the numbers are laid out if one cares to look.
I sometimes hear European visitors snarking about “not knowing the price” on retail purchases until checkout, because sales taxes (which are multiple and local) are explicitly added at that time. I like this.
In California, a major energy supplier once broke out all the taxes and fees on their retail billing statements, in an attempt to show that they were not the sole cause of high prices. The state made them stop. (This case is a bit more perverse, because the state’s Public Utilities Commission also regulates the notional “price” the supplier may charge.)