Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

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.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Damien Grant’s Herald Op-ed of 12 August


I love reading Damien’s bi-weekly Herald Op-eds: he’s a breath of fresh air amidst the fetid statism usually served up there. However, for once, I don’t agree with him this week, in his contention that it’s the middle class who pay tax disproportionately to the wealthy. I’ve covered this plenty of times on my blog.

Because Granny  Herald tends to be an old fossil trying to run an internet portal like the internet doesn't exist, and I can never guarantee a comment going up (and certainly not in real time), I’ll simply copy my comment to his thread below. But keep up the good work, Damien.

Have to disagree with you on this one. It's not the middle class paying tax: why? Middle class welfare.

Greg Manikew in the States has shown that since 2009, under the stimulunacy of  net tax transfers to the middle class, their middle class are net tax takers, with the bulk of their tax thus paid by the 'rich'.

In New Zealand under Working for Families, just under 50% of middle class families, also, pay no net tax. Indeed, the latest study shows that 40% to 50% of New Zealand's total tax take is paid by those in the top 10% income bracket.

The tax burden in the West definitely falls most heavily on the wealthy, that's why the IR's have so much resource allocated to persecuting them. Oh this twisted world we live with morality turned on its head.

Did you know that outside of the Olympics Usain Bolt will not participate in track events in England because their tax laws not only tax 50% of his earnings from a meet there, they tax his world-wide endorsement earnings while he is in England, meaning to take part in a track and field event in England incurs a higher tax payment than what he actually earns by his appearance fee to participate. 'Tax them' and he'll run, all right, but not on a track near you, if you live in the UK. And the policy makers who achieved that level of idiocy, call us freedom lovers mad.

Why will politicians never understand that there's no big pot of money out there they can just go and take without consequences. It's people's property.

(Hattip Liberty Scott).

6 comments:

  1. Thanks Mark,

    In my defense though, I was only writing about money raised, not how the middle class were impacted by net transfers.

    Cheers,

    damien

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  2. True, but one should never miss a chance for a blog topic. And I'd hate people to be left thinking that the 'answer' to any problem is more tax on anyone, especially those who pay the bulk of it.

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  3. Actually I was saying that there is no point taxing the rich not that we need to close loopholes to force them to pay more!

    I liked the idea that taxing the rich was pointless because it raised no more money, as opposed to saying it is immoral, which is how I usually frame the issue.

    Seems I was not explicit enough.

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  4. No, you were. You've crossed over my comment ... I was referring to how 'people' would take your post :)

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  5. By the way, do you ever go back and look at the comments to your op-ed's? I imagine that would be frustrating.

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  6. Usually not, I'd be tempted to post back and I do not think that is a good idea. The vast majority of readers do not post, so those that do are an unrepresentative sample, you can spend a life time debating with them.

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