Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.
Statists of all hues have taken to the word ‘fairness’ with the glee Chris The Fist Trotter has to the use of state violence, in order to make the theft that is compulsory taxation seem a little, well, fairer.
The slanderous union economist, for example, Bill (unfortunately named) Rosenberg, not letting facts get in the way of persecuting a minority, yet again, interrupted his Chardon-day, yesterday, to emote:
And if Messrs Dunne and English had a blog label cloud pinned to their foreheads, ‘fairness’ would be in a huge font, over-clouding everything else. Just Google ‘fairness’, ‘tax’, and either of their names and you’ll get pages of quotes.
And so my point. I have a simple question for these three men: what does fairness, in relation to taxation, mean? Plus what is a fair amount of tax, please? How do you derive it, both in terms of the amount taken, and morally? Explain it to me, because I truly don’t understand. There is nothing in any of our taxing acts to give any guidance on this, and yet going on your constant utterances, taxpayers are, daily, being crucified on it.
In the first instance I want a generic principle, clear enough to write into tax law, which shouldn’t be too hard, given you write so much law in the fortress of legislation. And secondly, or rather, ‘but’ secondly, to test this law, for once, before foisting it on us, please interpret it, here, in relation to the below three scenarios.
Taxpayer 1:
Single man, twenty three years old, lower order contract milker putting in seventy hour weeks, earned $186,000 last year. He’s doing it hard, on himself, because with cow prices reaching $2,500 his ability to be able to buy his first herd, and so be in a financial position to propose to his girlfriend, and start a family, is looking more and more remote.
Taxpayer 2:
Family, three children at state school, both parents working to bring in a total of $60,000 per annum, only, to the household. They can’t afford a house in the current market, and with the rental squeeze due to government making it unattractive to be a private landlord, they’re having to pay $750 a week rent for a sub-standard house in Auckland, after which, when they pay for the essentials they have no pay left: indeed, all their credit cards are maxed out.
Taxpayer 3:
Family, two children, dad’s a banker, earning $200,000 per annum, mum stays home to look after their new baby, plus their first child has genetic disease meaning he’ll never be able to look after himself, so mum has taken on that job, for life. The couple have paid over half a million dollars over the last two years traveling around the world to see specialists, for operations, and so forth, and have had to re-mortgage their Fendalton home, twice, to the maximum amount possible. Husband is having to put huge hours in to make it all work financially, and with so much stress and little time together, the marriage is floundering.
So, for the statists, surely this should be easy: please write in the comments the interpretation of the tax fairness law you write for us, in relation to these individuals?
Mark, clearly you feel strongly about something, and I admire that.
ReplyDeleteBut here in the states, we have a fraud called FAIRTAX -- everyone calls their plan fair. But briefly, they pretend it's a 23% retail sales tax, that replaces all other fed taxes. This includes social security and medicare taxes, which is often the highest tax.
So, if they really could make a 23% retail sales tax work GREAT - most of us, with social security and medicare -- pay more than 23%.
But here is the fraud. It's not ONLY a retail tax. That's just the ONLY part they tell you about. They also tax every city government, every county government, and every state. They even tax the FEDERAL government -- on everything! That's in the fine print -- this massive tax on every city county and state. They don't tell you that in their videos speeches and books - only in the fine print.
All considered, the tax on city county and states, combined,would exceed the possible tax people's retail taxes. 3/4 of the revenue would be from the "government tax' on itself, which is goofy as goofy gets. I had to check with official fairtax spokesmen and make sure that fine print actually was about them taxing the government on "all expenditures".
It's bat bat bat shit crazy, fraud, and they know it. They are not stupid or insane, they are lying bastards.
SO the moral of the story is -- tax codes are usually written by lying bastards who KNOW they are lying. So every tax scheme gets completely ++++++ over time.
It's easy to say -- oh, lets throw the whole thing out. Well, guess what fucking bastards are right there with their Orwellian nonsense? Fairtax type lying bastards.
My point really is the doublespeak involved. It's easy to bandy about this word 'fairness', but if pressed, I doubt the politicians could explain what they actually mean by it.
ReplyDeleteThat is what is wrong with labels -- Fairtax, liberal, whatever. Laissez faire capitalism. OH shit it ALL sounds so fucking great.
ReplyDeleteYou can read these guys who prove all things by, say, the "flat tax" for example, they tell you this country and that country does the "flat tax" and they prospered, and they can make it sound fucking magnificent.
Well, surely they wouldn't lie about that, right? I mean, they have charts, footnotes and everything .
FUCK YES they lie. What seems to have happened in the states is that what we used to call "think tanks" -- CATO and HERITAGE and American Enterprise Institute, are pretty much shills, shameless shills.
Which is fine if they didn't deceive so badly. But they are very sneaky, they parse words horribly, and if needed, just make shit up.
Its true -- if anything sounds good, some fucking liar has probably made it up.
No tax is moral. The government should be funded by voluntary contributions and, as an incentive to contribute, you should be allocated electoral votes in proportion to the voluntary tax you pay. That way we'd get representative, fiscally-responsible government.
ReplyDeleteKiwiwit, I think the West has to seriously look at the institution of democracy altogether, toward a constitutional minarchy.
ReplyDeleteTe Tari Tāke :-)
ReplyDeleteTaxpayer 1: $25,000. He can afford it. That's only ten cows - each and every year.
ReplyDeleteTaxpayer 2: $125,000. They can't afford it - they're bludgers now and their kids are clearly bludgers in future. They should do the honourable thing and remove themselves from society - or society should do the honours.
Taxpayer 3: $100,000. If they can afford it, fine. $200,000 is a very low salary for any half-way competent banker, certainly not enough for the spouse and kids not to earn. He should be able to get a raise, if not, they're bludgers.