Through the looking glass

We had a friend over for dinner last night and as the conversation does tend to when I'm around, we got onto politics. She made a statement that made me slightly aghast regarding taxation:

"I don't resent paying taxes because I don't view the money as mine in the first place"

Admittedly she works in the public sector but when I pressed that point she insisted that whether in public or private employment, she still feels the same way. Her argument was that employers pay according to what they can afford in order to get someone to do the job and she would be just as happy with her post tax income whether under the current situation or receiving a lower pay packet that was not taxed. It's a fair enough point on one level, if I give you £1 it makes no difference if I hand over one coin or give you a fiver and demand £4 change.

At this point vodka and a vital game of Halo 2 intervened so I let the subject drop. However I believe that her view is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The situation described above is not what is going on. Instead of being offered £1 and paying change, you are being offered £5 and a third party, (government taxation), comes in and nabs £4. The fact that so much money goes into the pathetically inefficient government coffers, (see diseconomies of scale), makes us all poorer and depresses wages and GDP growth. A cut in, or abolition of, income tax does not allow employers to drop their wages because they would lose their staff to competitors. It would however, make us richer.

The other problem I have with her view is that by not seeing your pre tax wages as your money you have no incentive to hold the government to account for wasting your hard earned dosh. "What they've just wasted £X Billion on idiotic IT projects? Well I don't care it's not like they're wasting my money.", but they are. The money you earn is yours to keep unless there is a very good justification otherwise. Government should be held accountable for every damn penny they extort from us because the best person to spend your money is you.


The other weird view for this post comes from Neil "I fail to understand the basic concepts of Liberty" Harding, who is raging against the rumour that Boris wants to overturn the smoking ban in London, (not that he has the power to do so but it seems that all the candidates enjoy promising things they have no power to deliver, so we'll forgive him that one).

Neil, of course supports the smoking ban on the basis that he likes to go to places that are not filled with smoke. Fair enough but what takes the biscuit is that Neil has previously argued that the smoking ban increases Liberty and this time has come up with another gem:

"If you think this is a civil liberties issue (it isn't)"

Yes it is. It is obvious that it is because it's a restriction on peoples behavior on privately owned property whether or not the owner wishes such behavior to be allowed. I have argued with Neil about positive and negative liberty before and he seems unable or unwilling to grasp the point that a ban on things that do not cause harm to others, (even if you believe that passive smoking is the very scourge of the devil then you are not forced to go into smoky environments), cannot enhance but only diminish Liberty. By all means, support the smoking ban because you don't like your local to be smoky, or because you just hate smokers, or because you a nasty, sanctimonious little cunt but don't deny that it is a civil Liberties issue nor that it reduces Liberty.