I have only had time to scan the New Taxpayer's Alliance report on tax in the 21 Century, and will be in a conference all day today, but it is clear that key assumptions are:
1) Inequality not only does not matter, but inequality is good
2) Equality of opportunity is not really worth paying for - so there are limits to the value of education for all
3) Unemployment and other benefits are bad - people should be forced to work for whatever is available in wages
4) Most currently public services should be paid for
5) There is some reason for providing universal healthcare - but only some
6) Charity should replace benefits
7) Markets work - and externalities such as pollution, health and safety and catastrophic failure are not the business of government.
It's a horrdi world view.
It also makes the claim that the average family will be better off horribly untrue. This is a plan to deliver them to grinding poverty to support the rich.
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For the average family–don’t be unemployed, don’t get sick, don’t challenge the position you are born into.
That’s it
i9s there a link to the report?
http://www.2020tax.org/2020tc.pdf
Haven’t I I read this report somewhere before? Oh, yes. ‘Nothing can be so base and so wicked as the political canting language, “The Labouring Poor.” Let compassion be shewn in action, the more the better, according to every man’s ability, but let there be no lamentation of their condition. It is no relief to their miserable circumstances; it is only an insult to their miserable understandings. It arises from a total want of charity, or a total want of thought. Want of one kind was never relieved by want of any other kind. Patience, labour, sobriety, frugality, and religion, should be recommended to them; all the rest is downright fraud. It is horrible to call them “The once happy labourer.”‘
It’s Edmund Burke’s ‘Thoughts and Details on Scarcity’ from 1795.
The superb social and moral philosopher, Michael Sandels was on ‘Start the week’ R4 this morning. He and a Russian guest, Gregory, were making the case that without a deep rethinking of social and moral values, there is no way to overcome our problems. That there had been a switch, so that people are now to serve the markets instead of economics being a subset of moral philosophy.. and even more importantly that modern economics ignores the roles of the banks and the institutions.
I’m drawing attention to it because it was so different from the usual R4 fare, the very antithesis of the Taxpayers Alliance, and completely consistent with your assumptions in “The Courageous State’.
(There was also a more regular economist who was effectively drowned out and sounded uncomfortable.)
I’m in Copenhagen so missed that
Will try later in the week to catch up with it
Having scanned the 2020 report, written by affluent individuals who have scant knowledge of the world experienced by the vulnerable or elderly, it is evident that the only concern is for the well-off to benefit from the drop in tax level. The less well-off can then assume the tax burden, as the statement that no group will lose from the changes does not equate will what would happen to pensioners, for example, who would find their tax burden on pensions increased as well as on their savings.
Some of the so-called supporting ‘essays’ appear to be pretentious clap-trap, attempting justification.
If reducing complexity is the aim, surely introducing extra local income taxes as recommended in the report would be counterproductive.
And as to how weathy individuals are motivated philanthropically, I will believe it when I see it. Personally, I don’t want to rely on charity and doff my hat to my so-called betters!
George Gray
Well…..from page 94 of their “report”:
“The successful hunter knows better than to resist the theft, and he still garners
some rewards — in terms of gratitude, prestige and sexual affairs — for his success.
Among hunter-gatherers, even the tiniest inequality translated into more babies
on average. The man who killed the most game, or killed the most enemies, got the
most sexual opportunities. That’s the startlingly simple calculus that we still walk
around with in the back of our heads. There’s been a lot of water under the cultural
bridge since then, of course, but it is not obvious that it changed the instinct. It was
still the same in early agricultural societies: the man with the most corn or cattle
had the most wives or concubines. And it is still true today: even in an age of work-
ing women, sexual continence and gender equality, the man with the most money
still gets more sexual opportunities than the man with the least money. Ask them”
http://www.2020tax.org/2020tc.pdf
A project of the
TaxPayers’ Alliance
& Institute of Directors
Pretty damned sad that their analysis is quite so, shall we say, primeval
I note in his foreword that Alister Heath mentions an increasingly anti capitalist public mood. I fail to see how this can be addressed by introducing a more extreme form of capitalism. Unless he takes the view that anti capitalists’ opinions don’t count. I suspect this is very much the case.
The associate editor of the Sun and Murdoch cheerleader, Trevor Kavanagh refers to it in his column today. Needless to say he doesn’t mention that the main beneficiaries would be the super rich. What else would you expect from a Murdoch mouthpiece?
Who actually IS the TPA?
I was wondering the same thing Henry. Who is behind this group? Who are the individuals?
The founders were Matthew Elliott of the Guardian and Andrew Allum. Allum is a business consultant with L.E.K. Global strategic consulting firm ( http://www.lek.com/experts/andrew-allum ) For more info on Elliott check out the wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Elliott_%28politics%29
What I’d like to know is : who is funding them? Unless I missed something there was no information on the TPA site that alluded to this.
Richard do you have any info on this?
They always refuse to disclose their funding
Isn’t the Guardian chappie Larry Elliott?
Private Eye, No. 1260, page 8, 16 April — 29 April 2010, from “Those Tory Donors in Full”. “Arbuthnot Banking Group, which used to be called Aitken Hume when it was run by the disgraced former Tory MP Jonathan Aitken, supports the Tory party with a £5m loan. Arbuthnot’s boss, Henry Angest, supports a number of right-wing causes, including the Taxpayers’ Alliance.”