I Don’t Like Political Hypocrisy. (Nor Gareth Morgan's Independent Tax Setting Body.)

If you come from a party that believes in the big state, with its big tax take, you have no grounds, certainly not moral, for tweets such as this. File the below hypocrisy in that planet-sized bureaucracy called busy-body bossy left politics.

@DavidClarkNZ And how does a govt that believes in 'hands on' regulation, & that needs a higher tax take, intend to reduce compliance?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) June 27, 2013

@DavidClarkNZ It's called eating your cake, eating my cake, then having them still, David. U only achieve that thru bogus religion.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) June 27, 2013

Needless to say, I got no answer. David was trying a cheap shot, and took off his toe again.

I also note this week Gareth Morgan writing of the need for an independent tax setting body to take tax decisions out of the politicians hands – he now sees this as the only way of taxing housing, property, business equity (I seem to remember), that is, capital. Sorry, Gareth, as bad as these politicians are, it’s called representative democracy. I am worse off with a technocrat setting tax policy – and let’s take it for granted I’m not going to agree with your technocrats – than a politician, because at least I have this tiny, incey wincey possibility of helping to vote a politician out of office, whereas I will have no control or voice, whatsoever, in the role, decisions or careers of permanently established Humphrey Appleby technocrats. Technocrats will be as open to self-interest as politicians are, but will be utterly beyond my reach. Worse, this then truly does institutionalise the notion of taxation in our society, and freedom lovers like myself, libertarians, the very odd librarian, classical liberals, are implacably opposed to that. We’ve all forgotten how much of our taxation, certainly income tax, is a very recent concept, and the only revolution that has had lasting good, that American one, was rightly set off by the imposition of taxes at minute levels our current parliaments pass annually without comment, even through excises (forget the really big taxes).

We need a conversation about tax, alright, but that conversation starts in philosophy, and the role of government in our lives, and whether the West is about freedom, or this surveillance state we find ourselves in.