{"id":17647,"date":"2012-10-08T10:03:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T09:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=17647"},"modified":"2012-10-08T10:03:44","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T09:03:44","slug":"tory-mps-pomoting-the-virtues-of-theft-and-tax-cheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/10\/08\/tory-mps-pomoting-the-virtues-of-theft-and-tax-cheating\/","title":{"rendered":"Tory MPs promoting the virtues of theft and tax cheating"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading 'Britannia\u00a0Unchained<\/a>' - the right wing Tory 'shadow manifesto' but five of the 2010 Tory MP intake over the weekend. I hated parting with payment, but you have to know what these people are thinking.<\/p>\n

It's an\u00a0extraordinary\u00a0book, not least because it is so badly\u00a0researched and so many of its claim are so obviously unfounded (for example, that 40-45 of adult lives are now spent in\u00a0retirement a claim that would require people, on average, to\u00a0retire\u00a0before their 54th birthday). But it's not what it gets wrong that worries me (much). It's the philosophy inherent in it that is most troubling. Of this there are almost countless examples, but let me take one which has not, as far as I know, been\u00a0highlighted\u00a0elsewhere.<\/p>\n

On pages 88 and 89 there is a section called 'Black\u00a0Market\u00a0Buccaneers'. In essence the argument is that innovation can't happen when there is\u00a0regulation\u00a0and so we should be grateful for the existence of the black market -\u00a0including\u00a0Chinese counterfeiting - as this is where true innovation \u00a0now occurs. It's an amazing claim that those who cheat and steal others ideas are to be applauded. But they go further. This is the\u00a0concluding\u00a0paragraph of the section:<\/p>\n

Clearly, law and order,\u00a0intellectual\u00a0property rights ad\u00a0consumer\u00a0laws exist for a reason, and are on the whole\u00a0beneficial\u00a0 But as a sheer experiment in what the poorest entrepreneur's can achieve when nearly all of\u00a0society's\u00a0strictures\u00a0are\u00a0relaxed\u00a0the informal economy is pretty hard to beat. The tradeoff between risk and reward is more visible here than anywhere else. As Steve Jobs once famously\u00a0said, 'It's more fun to be a\u00a0pirate\u00a0than to join the navy.'<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is an\u00a0extraordinary\u00a0claim.<\/p>\n

They happily\u00a0acknowledge\u00a0that this free-riding sector may be worth $10 trillion a year - a least one seventh of the\u00a0world\u00a0economy. I believe it a little more - at $11 trillion. Either way, about $3 trillion of tax is lost as a result<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That tax, if paid, would end the need for aid.<\/p>\n

That tax, if paid, would have saved Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal.<\/p>\n

That tax, if paid, would end child poverty.<\/p>\n

That tax, if paid, would\u00a0educate\u00a0the poor.<\/p>\n

But the Tories ignore that: they only see the individual goal of being a pirate - making a virtue of theft in the process. They ignore the collective and all the value it creates.<\/p>\n

And they also\u00a0implicitly\u00a0endorse tax cheating. It's a sickening philosophy. And it's alive and well in the Tory party,\u00a0which\u00a0explains why they really aren't trying to close the tax gap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading ‘Britannia\u00a0Unchained’ – the right wing Tory ‘shadow manifesto’ but five of the 2010 Tory MP intake over the weekend. I hated parting
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