Response to Tony Molloy, QC; Piketty and our Philosophy Bereft Judiciary; The Desertion of France Under High Taxation.

Tony Molloy, QC, wrote a piece for this weekend’s NBR: I don’t need to parse it here, the title says enough – Opinion: Piketty is Right About Taxing the Rich (paid content).

 

Below is my comment to that article, posted to NBR under my own name for the IRD data miners on Monday. Following that in update 1 is a clip showing what happens to a country when it follows Piketty's, and Tony's, prescription of taxing the rich; they leave. And the economist's home country no less: as a famous twentieth century philosopher said, you can ignore reality for so long, but you can't ignore the consequences - France, will the last one out close the door please. Well worth a watch.

NBR comment follows.

 

* * *

 

Tony Molloy, and his unholy desire for taxing the rich on the false cross of inequality, is an example of why IRD now win every major (and non-major) tax case, and why if you are a taxpayer it is pointless litigating a tax case before our socialist, worse, statist, judiciary.

 

For the record, Piketty's economics are full of holes, indeed, it borders on the simplistic unto negligent. Perhaps Tony might want to peruse these references: first economic; then philosophic. And many more: just Google.

 

For myself, could Tony answer to the following:

 

For him to take the view he does he must assume that wealth/capital is fixed in quantity, that if I take 'some' then that is not available for others, hence the rich ‘are the cause’ of the poor. That is a childish (socialist) viewpoint. For example, can Tony explain to me, if I create, say, $3 million from intellectual property, or from selling widgets, how does that stop someone else making $3 million also? From this, if a rich person's wealth does not explain a poor person's lack of wealth, then what use punishing the rich – who pay the bulk of tax as it is - by destroying their property rights (and with it, their privacy before the state)? If there is no connection, such state confiscation and redistribution, will not help 'equalise' the poor, indeed, via the creation of dependence through the welfare state, it may well just breed the poverty, thus inequality, men like Tony want to fix, compounded by destroying innovation and entrepreneurship and so the opportunities made for employment and increasing our living standards, via a vibrant business sector (with qualification I am referring to laissez faire, not our current crony command economies.)

 

It is not surprising in current times that innovation in the West is falling rapidly.

 

Finally, regarding another point made, can Tony cite one country where the overall tax take is down *and* state sector spending is down in dollar terms? It’s certainly not in NZ; every English budget has spent more than the previous year.

 

Every reasonable human being wants to end poverty, but Tony, as with Piketty, is typical of that socialist ethic that would emote on such issues, without thinking on them. Which is why the Free West has been lost to increasingly Orwellian surveillance states, as an individual’s right to be left alone if doing no harm, has been swept aside with collectivist relish by our state-centric judiciary quite willing to sacrifice every individual on the bloodied altar of the common good, (noting it was always my belief the legal system was supposed to be, historically, our buffer against an out-of-control state.) Not a skerrick of thought to property rights in Tony's piece: he, as with the rest of the judiciary, take it as granted our incomes, wallets and bank accounts - our effort and risk taking - belong to the government. And given this socialist rot, which takes us far from the classical liberalism and individualism that made the West once the pinnacle of civilisation, where the only role of state was to protect its smallest minority, an individual, is so far instilled in the judiciary, I assume there’s no way back. We’re stuffed.

 

One more thing: regarding Tony’s reference, and perhaps unholy reverence, of FATCA - aka US tax colonialism known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act - by which the US has broken the secrecy of Swiss banking (which even the Nazis weren’t capable of), I would note via the IGA - Intergovernmental Agreement - that implements FATCA in New Zealand, government is using IRD’s police state powers above our Privacy Act to implement what amounts to a surveillance program in New Zealand that has nothing, repeat, nothing, to do with our New Zealand tax take. If one government can misuse IRDs powers in that manner, to cynically, illegitimately override our privacy, so the precedent is set for every future government. What does Tony think about the ethics of that? I've made my opinion plain, and given IRD ignored the submissions against it in their totality, I'd love to see a QCs opinion on New Zealand's IGA from a legal perspective, especially in light of there will soon be a case brought in the US attacking FATCA for being unconstitutional.

 

This really is an interesting piece, but not in the way Tony intended. Wonder no more why everything is tax avoidance in New Zealand, now, and everything is illegal. And a last thought: perhaps Tony might want to read my piece on the evil that befalls us when we use the coercive state to force equality on a population, because he's playing for the wrong side.


Update 1:

Perfectly timed. A stunning clip just in for Tony: over half of France's young would leave France if they could as they see no future in a country that 'hates the rich' at political level; and French businesspeople are leaving the country in droves in protest at its 75% income tax rate on the rich and its unsustainable addiction to welfare.

Of course, as we know, ahem, Mr Piketty hails from France, a country which has adopted his recommendation to tax the rich to solve inequality. Not working too well. Perhaps his next book should be a retraction :)

 Tax it, destroy it, including countries, where whole populations can become equal in poverty:


 

[Reality Edition.] Thinking Not Feeling; Fall of France & US; Rape Culture and Identity Politics - Intermission.

The economic woes of Europe and the US are in no way solved, they’re growing, for reality hasn’t finished with socialism yet: not by a long way. 

On September 6, 2012, I penned a blog on how our freedom was being daily suffocated under that socialist fallacy of feeling about issues, rather than thinking them through. Good to see one of the world’s great thinkers agrees:

Talking about feeling on issues rather than thinking them through, New Zealand’s previous Revenue Minister, Peter Dunne, has again highlighted the contradiction of those statists residing in the Fortress of Legislation - and those who support the system they have come to represent - whom have destroyed the Free West. After Christmas Peter posted a link to, of all things, Edward Snowden’s Christmas message about the onslaught of the Western surveillance state. I can never let this double-standard, especially from a former Minister of Taking and the tax surveillance state, go unchallenged.

Important for everybody "@LePoint: VIDÉO. Edward Snowden : "La vie privée est importante" http://t.co/kiuCVt14Af”
— Peter Dunne (@PeterDunneMP) December 26, 2013

@PeterDunneMP Our privacy is more important than threat of terrorism, (true), but we r 2 have no privacy from our own tax state - explain?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) December 26, 2013

Of course there was to be no answer. But just as this ex-minister is determined to try and live in the delusion of contradiction, President Hollande of France is determined to show the world the destruction wrought by that Left delusion of feeling a country can live on theft of an individual’s hard-gained earnings, in order a socialist elite can feel good about itself. With that country’s national debt now on 93.4% of GDP, not only are the wowser socialists deliberately destroying their wine industry, but the entire economy. France is on the brink, again, and will most likely fall, again, as those who could save it, the wealth creators, are thinking logically, and prudently escaping with their families and loved ones from the vicious tax surveillance state that Hollande has forced on them:

Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent.

As a result, there has been a frantic bolt for the border by the very people who create economic growth - business leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, and top executives. They are all leaving France to develop their talents elsewhere.

And it's a tragedy for such a historically rich country. As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur. Where is the Richard Branson of France? Where is the Bill Gates?

"Do you see that man in the corner? I'm going to kill him. He's ruined my life!"

This angry outburst came from a lawyer friend who is leaving France to move to Britain to escape the 70 percent tax he pays. He says he is working like a dog for nothing - to hand out money to the profligate state. The man he was pointing to, in a swanky Japanese restaurant in the Sixth Arrondissement, is Pierre Moscovici, the much-loathed minister of finance. Moscovici was looking very happy with himself. Does he realize Rome is burning?

 

The economic woes of Europe and the US are in no way solved, they’re growing, for reality hasn’t finished with socialism yet: not by a long way. This is further proven by the US’s jobs-to-population ratio stuck at the lowest levels in a generation, despite a US$878 billion fiat money stimulus, that forms no part of a laissez faire capitalism.

Reality, as the saying goes, is a harsh mistress. Although that’s probably sexist, if deconstructed, isn’t it?

Coincidentally, I'm currently working on a piece about rape culture feminism; an -ism based on identity rather than individualism. My thinking has changed on this, from an initial unthinking feeling of a rape culture as correct, as given to me by the media, to a questioning of the underlying assumptions of a rape culture premise based on distorted, and distorting, views of human relations. Readers of this blog will know from my posts over the latter part of 2013, this topic has become increasingly important to me, as it should be to all of us who dream of the free, civilised society. For this is the further inveigling of neo-Marxist brutishness into the lives of individuals: radio announcers Willie Jackson and John Tamihere were silenced by a rape culture seeking not dialectic, but vengeance. I will show it is quite possible these two men were fired from their show for merely doing their jobs - running a talkback show: talking to callers; questioning callers; bringing items of public interest up for debate. But rape culture feminism, in a move pregnant with symbolism, found them guilty in the questioning, so went for the boycott in a campaign instigated and run by white male Marxist Giovanni Tiso. Indeed the instance of a white male strutting in with his righteous indignation to rescue the little women is so full of irony it's hilarious, at least, if it were not so serious. And what Tiso did was serious, because he shut down not only Willie and JT's radio show, but diverted all the properly directed energy there had been in the debate surrounding the horrible Roast Busters, and the violence of rape in our society, to two radio jocks who were paid to be controversial, and there the energy from a useful discussion was dissipated entirely. I've not even heard of the Roast Busters since. What a waste that deflection was. Nothing is ever gained by silencing. Nothing. That point is quite possibly the only point on which I agree with Chomsky:

I will also show, thereby, in this piece I'm still writing, quoting almost wholly two feminists who believe in reason and individualism, how neo-Marxist rape culture feminism has become a feminism seeking only the oppression of an insidious Left-centric conformity which wants forever to stomp on the face of an individual human being, and to do that sadly via the ruthless mechanism of the state - the latter especially regarding the enforced gender quotas, in public and private office, which form part of this agenda, and are possibly only one election away in New Zealand. And as Willie and JT found out, when dissent is made an example of against conformity, the tactic is always initially to sully the reputations of those deemed to be drunk on their privilege, a tactic from which even the Law Review Girls were not immune. Just as for the sin of a single tweet into her timeline, on Twitter - social media - and on a matter not even regarding gender politics, the anonymous Thorny proceeded to write an entire blog on how drunk on privilege I must be, with the clear inference I'm a misogynist. And that ludicrous, slanderous post is still up. I'm calling bullshit to this. Further case in point, a sadly typical tweet by such an identity mired feminism on Twitter:

‘Men attention seeking’ is the catch cry shrilled by this feminism at those who would reason against it, seemingly ignorant this was the very tactic of Edwardian men against the suffragettes - diminishing their reality by calling them attention seekers. These neo-Marxist feminists have become what they despise. Albeit in the face of such a tweet as this, all I can say - meeting matronising with patronising - is stop drawing attention to white men, then, dear. You've scored an own goal, just like Tiso did. More importantly, as I have to mansplain it to you, stop feeling about men so childishly as mere identity – the stereotypical generic male invented by a rape culture feminism – because we men, unsurprisingly like you women, if you care to think about it, are all complex individuals, damn near all of us, not rapists. And understand how rape culture feminism, even this tweet, thus forces society into a confrontational paradigm between the genders. What is gained by that? My piece will show there's a constructive alternative that can set us all, women and men, each race, each religion, free to pursue our happiness - classical liberal individualism; because the opposite of sexism is individualism, just as the opposite of racism is individualism. An individualism, poignantly as regards this debate, that shows gender, race and belief stereotypes for what they are: stereotypes.

Compare that identity-bound tweet above telling generic white men to butt out, thus bringing stereotyped white men front and centre into the very frame the tweeter wants them removed from, to this tweet, informed by an adult individualism of a woman who is thinking, and who is simply, gloriously, herself:

I'm a grown woman. I can do whatever I want. #lifeofamuslimfeminist #Beyonce
— Aysha Syed (@ayshaspace) January 11, 2014

Unfortunately, however, I will not be able to finish my piece until April. Just as with socialism, reality exacts its price on us all. At the beginning of this financial year through boredom and burnout I took my eye too long off the reality of my workflow. Consequently - because under an individualistic ethic there are consequences - I am now having to work twelve and thirteen hour days until the last client’s work is completed. Other than the odd tweet – (follow me on Twitter) – there will be no further blog posts until that time. I won’t even have time, most likely, to answer to comments that you are free to post in the meantime. That said I'll end this post where I began, Mr Sowell. 

Another of my hobbyhorse topics has always been the doublespeak around the notion of fairness. From my post Taxing Language - Fair: What Do You Mean Please?

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.

And so, Sowell to that wrecker of a country, President Hollande:

Catch you in April. In the meantime, I'm afraid I have to call intermission ….

Political Subversion in a Wine Glass. Scarlett Johansson and the Context of Joy.

I raise my glass to those who enjoy life, acknowledging the ludicrous fact that glass heft up in the air is now a subversive act ...

Alcohol seems to be the theme here currently. On the back of this silly policing of New Zealand’s off-licencing regulation last month, and Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway’s wowser drink-drive bill of this month, comes nothing short of the death of the wine industry in France. Not by some disease in the vines, but via a disease called the joyless socialist mind, that has grown like a virus through their judiciary.

When will we wake up to the fact the statist do-gooder monsters of this piece, in seeking to destroy the joie de vivre of life itself, are pure evil? When even enjoying a glass of wine on camera is politically subversive, and this in France, once considered the home of wine, how over-regulated must our lives be in the West circa 2013? Even the Soviets were left alone to their vodka.

Moet & Chandon recently ran this series of photographs of Scarlett Johansson with their charming product in French glossy magazine Paris Match.Those pictures have now cost them a fine of thirty thousand pounds. This new French farce the product of their meddling socialist government, as interpreted by their meddling French judiciary. Just as the New Zealand judiciary have killed individual freedom in our tax courts, so have the French finally squeezed the last pips from life in that country. Quoting The Times:

“… wine drinking is being viewed by Gallic judges as an offence to common decency whose adverts should be censored.

Courts are interpreting French law as meaning that it is illegal to publish adverts of people enjoying wine.

Professionals are urging President Francois Hollonde [of 75% income tax infamy] to review what they say are crazy health and safety regulations.

…

Paris Match, the glossy magazine, also fell foul of the law when it ran an article about Scarlett Johansson taken by Moet & Chandon as part of an advertising campaign. The magazine was ordered to pay thirty thousand pounds in damages after a court ruled that the photos “show a famous young actress … with a flattering commentary that clearly goes beyond the authorised terms”.

The court said it was illegal to associate alcohol with a “festive context”.

The Free West didn’t end with a bang, it ended with that last sentence. There’s an offence to common decency here alright: but it’s sitting on the high-chairs where French judges arrogantly perch themselves. I have nothing but contempt for them.

I can’t post the photographs of Scarlett here for reasons of copyright, but I can post the Youtube of the photo shoot itself. And the worse thing is, not only would French judges censor this, I suspect so would that radically stupid branch of feminism which features here from time to time, because as will be the subject of my next post, a feminist professor of law in England has just crossed the line known as the rule of law into pure evil. Next time.

In the meantime I raise my glass to those who enjoy life, acknowledging the ludicrous fact that glass heft up in the air is now a subversive act. Albeit there can be no form of political protest I’m better suited for; indeed, I’ve been practising for years. Take it away Scarlett, to the Western Spring …

David Cunliffe and the End of the Free World, Again.

The dreadful No Right Turn summed up Keynesian Socialist David Cunliffe’s victory nomination speech yesterday well enough:

#Cunliffe promises to raise taxes on the rich in accordance with Labour's policy platform #FuckYeah
— Idiot/Savant (@norightturnnz) August 26, 2013

Note his delight in the scale of theft he knows David will enact. It’s sick. It’s the ‘fuck yeah’ of Chris Trotter delighting in squeezing my pips until they squeak.

Here’s an interesting notion, those of us bloggers writing political blogs, put up on our menus the income tax we’ll be paying over the coming twelve months. Let’s see which of the statist’s are living by their principles. I don’t have to because this blog is about my privacy, and how I have so little of it, but tomorrow I’ll be paying a third of this year's provisional tax, and it’s five figures.

This is David’s true slogan:

New taxes and spending.

New taxes and spending.

New taxes and spending.

Same old.

Same old.

Writing from a house in that 27% of households paying 70% of the tax take, and constraining ourselves and our finances this year to pay our tax bills so mum of nine can have the extra room for her Sky decoder, I ask David, who used the word fair seven times in a one and a half page speech, to take my fairness test please, because not a single politician has felt themselves up to the task yet.

As a man who has had to have my privacy and right to be left alone before the tax surveillance state taken from me, because apparently David knows how to spend my money better than I do, let's first replace fair with serfdom.

Then looking further through David’s speech in place of community, let's write dependence. Community can only exist on voluntary relationships and the voluntary transaction, not on David’s viciously coercive tax state and the welfare that corrodes self-respect, self-responsibility, and the bonds of natural love and affection between families by incentivising the most imprudent life choices.

And the sad thing is we have all the evidence we need at where his Keynesian socialism leads economically: let’s take at random any country in Europe, say, France:

France's Socialist government has admitted that the country cannot cope with any further tax rises and promised no more hikes just days ahead of the country's largest ever tax bill.

Returning from their summer break, the French are about to discover stinging rises in tax bills in their letter boxes – the result of a series of new levies enacted by President François Hollande as he seeks to plug the French deficit and bring down public debt – now riding at 92 per cent of GDP.

But the extent of the hikes has apparently even shocked the very Socialist ministers who implemented them.

The total tax pressure (taxes and social security contributions) will account for 46.3 per cent of GDP this year – a historic high – compared to 45 per cent in 2012.

Some 16 million households will see an automatic 2 per cent rise in income tax as calculations are no longer mitigated by inflation.

The rich will see the highest rises, following Mr Hollande's decision to raise the rate to 45 per cent for those earning more than 150,000 euros – effectively 49 per cent due to an additional levy.

And here’s the truly offensive bit:

“The problem in France — for both the Left and Right — is that nobody has the bravery to slash state spending, which has now reached 57 per cent of GDP. Just how high can it go?”

Really, is that what we want for New Zealand? Because that’s what David Cunliffe and the cluelessly vicious No Right Turn will bring us. And No Right Turn is further clueless in his campaign against the GCSB Bill, last month, when he takes this blood lust thirst in the tax surveillance state – figure it out. The Left double standard.

Talking of double standards, recalling my blog post from yesterday I am also disappointed that after wanting gender quotas just last month, not one Labour woman MP has tried to contest the leadership away from this dreadful man, and save us from him. Apparently Labour women do expect to be given by quota what they don’t have the gumption to contest when they have equal footing. There’s plenty of capable women Labour MPs, why aren’t any of you contesting? You know you’ll be getting this shameful hypocrisy pointed out to you when at some stage in the future you’re furthering the coercive state by legislating gender quotas on the private sector, because we know that’s the agenda.

Finally, unlike No Right Turn, who certainly lives up to the first part of his name before the forward slash, none of this post is about money. It’s about the voluntary society versus the planned economy dependent as that is on our centrally planned and surveilled lives.

If David makes it to the sandpit in the Fortress of Legislation in 2014, I’ll be either semi or completely retiring: I won’t be  his serf.

Because if David wins, it really is the end of the free world, again.


Update 1:

Ele Ludemann has a great post up, also, on the foolishness of taxing and spending Cunliffe.