Monday 8 September 2008

Unions call for a 'fair tax"

At the TUC conference we see many barking mad, back-to-the-70's ideas from the Unions such as widespread strikes over wages, calls for increased government borrowing - Jesus wept! - and what they describe as "fair taxes", which is in fact even steeper redistribution.

The barking mad idea that what we need is to entrench any recession or turn it into a full blown depression by expanding the economy via government spending/printing money is so laughable but useful - for is shows how utterly clueless the Unions are.

Back to fair taxes.

There are four alternatives for "fair" as far as I can see.

1. Every adult pays the same absolute amount. 
2. Every adult pays the same percentage of their salary 
3. Every adult pays the same percentage of their expenditure
4. Every adult pays the same percentage of their expenditure excluding essentials  

The Libertarian Party favours the last option, which, by definition, means abolishing income tax, IHT and Capital Gains.

The TUC do not want a fair tax, they want to squeeze the rich. They want Envy Politics. They are wrongheaded. To ask a minority to pay significantly more in both absolute AND percentage terms is a Tyranny of the Masses, pure and simple. 

Result: the rich and companies will LEAVE the UK and the only employers will be the state. Ergo, a "victory" for the Unions as they will have monopoly control over the monopoly employer. The Unions should watch out, though, for once the State gets into a Nationalisation frenzy, it will surely nationalise the Unions themselves as they would be a threat to the monopoly power of the State and, once that happens,  the Unions will become worse than useless for the actual welfare of their members.

I would have thought the Unions would would want to do the sensible thing and assist workers to form Mutual Societies or Co-operatives, especially in the areas where people are said to be most exploited, e.g. Remploy and environs. The workers would then balance the amount of bids they win vs the wages they get - no point having a high wage rate when no bids are won, right?

No, the Unions are not interested in that. For shame.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spot on. Would you mind awfully cross posting to the LPUK blog?

Henry North London 2.0 said...

Roger Good to see you posting regularly again