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Tax

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:13 / 22.02.02

I tend to think of money I pay to tax as being given to the government to do good things with. It does not occur to me that that the money is still, in a sense, mine, in that it has gone into a collective chest, whose purpose it is partly my right to decide.

Now, if I think of that money as 'gone', I'm not liable to care so much what's done with it, nor to expect returns on it in the form of services. On the other hand, if I think of it as 'invested', of course, I will.

The French seem to take the latter course. Most of the people I know here, the former. The US...I don't know.

Thoughts?

11:26 / 22.02.02

At the moment I think of it as 'gone' more than as an investment - but I suspect that that is because I don't use many of the facilities for which it provides (don't drive, no children, still healthy enough not to be too bothered about doctors etc, live in pikey bedsit but in relatively affluent area so council facilties aren't noticeably bad, can afford to buy books so not bothered by decline of provision for libraries, haven't needed too much contact with the police lately, and so on and on...). When I do need to use those things, I suspect I will start to wonder where 'my' money went (that is, 'our' money), and will start to be annoyed that I have *no* say in what happens to it after I have cast my vote for my MP...

Morlock - groupie for hire

11:27 / 22.02.02

So if a government does 'bad' things with tax money, how does that make you feel?

Who decides what 'good' things the government should be doing with the money? You do, I hope. That's what elections are (/should be) all about.

Edited to say this was all aimed at Nick's post.

[ 22-02-2002: Message edited by: Morlock/1 ]

11:32 / 22.02.02

Unfortunatley the system of parliamentary representation is such that the kind of 'decision' any voter can make is bound to be a very fuzzy one - you can say 'well, I'd like to pay a bit more into the kitty and see it go to hospitals and schools, becasue I believe that education and health provision are human rights which ought to be available to everyone - and since the Lib Dems are the only party who say they'll do that, I'll vote Lib Dem' - but even then there's no guarantee that your party will get in, or stick to their pre-election promises if they do; and there's no way of ensuring that councils will spend money responsibly at a local level (cf the ongoing problems in Doncaster)... and there is NOTHING you can do except write to your MP.

So, no, you *don't* decide. There might eb general agreement about what things are 'good' (hospitals, public transport, etc) but the reality is that the govt can do pretty much whatever it likes. Hence plugging the holes on PPP schemes and PFIs with the taxpayers money, so that their shareholders don't lose too much profit (which as you know happened with Railtrack for ages and still didn't bloody work. Grrr.).

Edit: whoops, sorry Morlock...

[ 22-02-2002: Message edited by: Kit-Cat Club ]

11:38 / 22.02.02

Bush's big rhetorical move in the 2000 campaign was to call the government a thief for holding onto a surplus instead of refunding tax-payers "their" money. Which doesn't make too much sense to me, but there you go.

The thing about taxes w/r/t the way they are eventually disperesed is that money is a fungible resource. Even if you like some of the programs the government is doing and are appalled by others, by giving money to one you're freeing up resources for the other. The only recourse really is to withhold ~all~ tax money, to avoid funding programs you don't like.

I think the Republicans have transformed the discourse on taxation so much in America that the general public really does see it as a burden and a theft rather than something that benefits them in any way.

11:43 / 22.02.02

Well, if you start off at 'No Taxation without Representation' it seems logical that the obverse would be 'No Taxation means no Representation'... which is a pretty terrifying scenario. Imagine that there was *no* taxation and things such as defence were funded by corporations (probably big global armaments and oil firms) - would any of them care about civilians or diplomacy?

11:48 / 22.02.02

Actually, the mantra seems to be "Run Government as if it were a business," which is equally terrifying because that would presumably mean we'd have to pay for all our social services.

That's what really frosts my cupcake about the political dialogue in the U.S. - the deliberate confusion of democracy with free market capitalism and the deliberate confusion of governance with running a business.

The Planet of Sound

13:11 / 22.02.02

"If 5 per cent appears too small, be thankful he don't take it all."

It's interesting that you never see percentages of your tax money and where it goes published, in the same fashion as those 'when you buy a CD, X amount goes to the management' things that were so fashionable a while back. I would like the Government to at least tell me, in detail, where my money is going, in the same way that major businesses have to make their accounts available. Slightly odd that this is never done?

The Planet of Sound

13:18 / 22.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Mr. Todd:
the deliberate confusion of governance with running a business.

This is surely a societal problem, generally. People look at the affluence of successful businesses, and start to see those behaviour patterns as a model of behaviour, when it's obviously not relevant. Can we see parentage as a business? Painting, poetry, social work, the NHS? When you see the monumental wastage involved with much business/corporate patterns (XX billion losses over Enron?), and try to apply that to other forms of behaviour ("Well, I was babysittin', and I only killed 52,000 of the babies! It was a good nights dealin'") you see the inherent corruption in that kind of thinking.

And what's so big about standing in a marketplace, shouting your wares, anyway? When did that become our ideal? ("Freeeeeeeessshhh Fiiiiiiiiisssh"...)

17:07 / 22.02.02

quote:It's interesting that you never see percentages of your tax money and where it goes published, in the same fashion as those 'when you buy a CD, X amount goes to the management' things that were so fashionable a while back. I would like the Government to at least tell me, in detail, where my money is going, in the same way that major businesses have to make their accounts available. Slightly odd that this is never done?

I think this might be a great thing to campaign for...then people would be fainting when they saw how much of their money went to things like the military. Sort of like the "Nutritional Facts" found on the back of the food products we buy...seems fair...