The UK government tax collection agency says…
…all your money really belongs to us anyway, so why not just skip the middleman: you!
Perhaps it’s only a matter of time, although for now the proposal is still considered “radical:”
The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.
The proposal by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.
Please read the whole article. In it, the proposal is criticized, to be sure. But the main arguments seem to be whether it would really save the government money or cost money instead, and whether errors would be likely to be made. Liberty? Never heard of it.
[Hat tip: commenter Artfldgr.]
[ADDENDUM: If you believe that the same mentality doesn’t exist here, note Paul Krugman’s recent remarks:
And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it.
Why, why, why—how dare they!
And lest you think that’s an isolated instance from Krugman, see his use of the word “giveaway” in the eleventh paragraph of this column.]
There’s never a revolution around when you need one.
“all your money really belongs to use anyway” I think you meant “us” Neo. Feel free to delete this comment.
“All your paycheck are belong to us.”
C.S. Lewis:
The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint … but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
In
GodGovernment We Trust 🙂Right Nyomythus? 🙂
I’m glad we live in America, where that kind of thing could never happen.
Perhaps the Brits might now reconsider their opinion of that minor kerfuffle in the colonies a couple of centuries ago regarding taxation policies?
Do they have any Gadsden flags handy, or would they like to borrow a few of ours?
Oh wait, we ARE talking about the Brits here.
They’ll just keep a stiff upper lip to prove how tough they are at enduring the unendurable, all the while foolishly losing what little liberty they have left through inaction.
Thank God my ancestors saw fit to leave such a country!
Adrian Day,
Well, now we’re jinxed for sure.
Weird thing about Britain, it is supposed to be a democratic country. Look a bit closer and it appears to be an old boys network/aristocracy, a nation of sheep where the shepherds only look after other shepherds.
I guess we owe Obama that much, he revitalized the middle class, usually the least ready to rebel.
Note that the HMRC says this is about “improving the competitiveness” of the tax system–a nice bit of Orwellian language.
This is the logical ending point of liberalism/socialism.Being-a-Democrat/ fascist/communist.
That is because of the starting principles.
They will all end there. Some sooner. Some later.
There is no principle upon which they can make a stand to not go all the way, in the end.
The Democrat is at heart a tyrant. That is a good visual of what tyranny looks like in the economic realm.
They most emphatically do not hold these truths to be self-evident, that there are any inalienable rights.
If the only right yo have is one they have granted you, you have no rights.
That is what, I’ll say it again ’till I get blue in the face, ALL Democrats, who still are, effectively are now, today, at this moment.
You tell yourself otherwise you are just being nice or in denial due to the horror of it.
Instead of “Guarding the Change”, it is time to Change the Guard.
Thats ok, here they are talking about seizing retirement accounts and replacing the cash in them with treasuries
Re: Krugman’s column
He states in the next paragraph you quoted:
“The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people”
basically why he believes it’s not their money – they didn’t earn it so much as have good luck. Since they came by it due to luck or perhaps they cheated someone – see the next paragraphs in which he discusses their undue influence to avoid paying whatever their ‘fair’ share of taxes to be.
The idea that all income belongs to the government is pervasive on the left and in common use. Whenever you read some tax cut ‘costs’ something that is the bias showing through.
Well this is yet another illustration of the fact that a major (if not the major) basis of freedom is property rights. If you can’t exert prior claim over your ownings, you aren’t free.
I recall reading once, years ago (I wish I could recall where), that in the negotiations over wording in the Declaration of Independence, the original proposed phrase describing our unalienable rights was, “. . . life, liberty, and property.” It may have been an early species of political correctness that moved the Founders to change that to, “. . . life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . .” Because, after all, who can justify the kind of selfishness and greed that makes property a basic right? And, concurrently, who can argue with claiming a right to pursue happiness?
If my memory is correct, the Founders erred in allowing the property right to be replaced with this vague right to “the pursuit of happiness.” It sounds like being free to chase soap bubbles and moonbeams. The truth is that, without the right to property, no other freedoms are real–they depend on the State’s generous mood, and we are left with the old Russian babushka’s saying: “Best government: Good Czar. Worst government: Bad Czar.”
Czar, nevertheless.
I recall reading once, years ago (I wish I could recall where), that in the negotiations over wording in the Declaration of Independence, the original proposed phrase describing our unalienable rights was, “. . . life, liberty, and property.” It may have been an early species of political correctness that moved the Founders to change that to, “. . . life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . .” Because, after all, who can justify the kind of selfishness and greed that makes property a basic right? And, concurrently, who can argue with claiming a right to pursue happiness?
“betsybounds,” you are aware that back in the Founders’ days, “property” included slaves, right?
When one considers that, maybe the wording was was actually a good thing after all.
Simon Vander,
Hmmm. I don’t know, but I’m not persuaded. You don’t mention anything I didn’t know. But the Founders were not shy about slavery–many of them didn’t like it, didn’t want it, and in fact freed the slaves they, themselves, owned–but they never (as far as I know) tried to write it out of the book or pretend it wasn’t there. It’s worth noting that the 3/5s compromise was a result of honesty about the matter, rather than being the result of an attempt to subsume it.
I agree, and have always done so, that slavery was the awful hobbling institution that it undeniably was, and the founding was less pure because of it than it would otherwise have been.
However, what more penance and purification can have been exacted from that founding sin than the Civil War? In fewer than 100 years after its founding, this country fought a war over basic human freedom that paid penance, in blood and treasure (but most particularly in blood), for that sin. The entire event included confession, repudiation, and cleansing. I do not understand what more we could have done.
Having paid so dearly, are we now to think that there is no absolution to be had?
So–all that having been said, I still think that recognizing the rights of ownership has to be part of a free society. What is owned is less consequential than the fact of ownership. It has to do with the primacy of the individual over the primacy of the State, and what is owned is not nearly so consequential. The important matter is, who, in the first instance owns it?
Neo, There is a couple that i know thru extended family members that are trying t permanently immigrate from Scotland. The lady was telling me how, because of Trade agreemennts with theEU, The Scotts could not grow sugar beets for sugar production- they had to shut down old facilities. And the scotts were forbiden to grow certain types of potatoes in their own gardens because the others were “not up to EU standards”. She said the approved ones were big, but tastless. Farmers are also not allowed to hire local help, but are required to hire foreigners (eastern Europeans).
there may be a point at which locals can be hired if not enough foreighn help is found- but still…
At this point I think that anyone who responds to the phrase “Founding Fathers” with “slavery” is behaving like Pavlov’s dog. They have been well-indoctrinated by the public education system.
Sweet Mother Mary! I saw the story on Drudge–a major resource today–and emailed it to my Tea Party friends. Some thought, at first, it was a joke.
If we do not prevail by peaceful means, violence is ultimately not avoidable. If so, the longer deferred the more costly it becomes in lives lost. Krugman surely needs to be strung up if any fat cats are. He/they are so wonderfully, revealingly open about their tyrannical intents.
And woe betide the cowardly Euros.
betsybounds,
I would say the whole “pursuit of happiness” vs. “property” discussion came out better in the choice of words that was made by the Founding Fathers.
My reasoning is simple.
The right to property can encompass physical as well as intellectual property. I can own a book, or I can own the rights to a book – both are property.
However, my “pursuit of happiness” may be that I want to actually read that book in the local park on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
If I deny the rights of no one else in doing so, under what authority would the state have the power to deny me that small happiness?
By wording the document in the manner they chose, they avoided laborious lists of freedoms that may not include activities they could never dream of in the future.
If the activity you choose to pursue makes you happy, and doesn’t interfere with the rights of others, and doesn’t interfere with the legitimate responsibilities the government is tasked with – then by what pretext could government deny you the freedom to pursue what makes you happy?
The wording chosen ensured far more freedom and liberty for us than a simple reference to property would ever have accomplished.
Simon Vander
You do realize that the Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Other Islamic states, Russians, and Africans all still practice slavery? [some of them child slavery]
Your preaching to the wrong people, as you are referring to a time period when most of us were not there, and to people who planted the seeds of the destruction of slavery.
why are you not right now in China holding up a sign about their few thousand year history of slavery? why are you not over at a porno palace run by the russian mob in which the women are cattle? why are you not in UAE, on the street with a sign denouncing the slaves of the princes?
because you would rather protest what happened 200 years ago in the safety of your home rather than actually do something about some condition that exists now!!!
I should point out that the first black elected to the (progressive) democrat party happened in 1935.
The first black elected to an office in Russia was this year!
Look to this list and see that your side is the racist side! i can also show you the pinkerston trial testimony where democrats cut her breasts off to prevent those in landry parish from voting radical republican.
and i should also point out that the progress that was made below as completly rolled back by the socialist progressives, which is your side! they sided against the southern black man who came north and took jobs: ergo the “white mans union”. something the left liberal progressive communist labor movement was offering as a product to join. having ZERO morals they work whatever power base they think they can rile up (like you) to give them power.
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FIRST BLACKS WERE ALL REPUBLICANS
John Willis Menard (1838-1893); Republican — Louisiana; Term: 1868
Joseph Rainey (1832-1887); Republican — South Carolina; Term:1870-1879
Jefferson F. Long (1836-1901); Republican — Georgia;
Term: 1870-1871
Robert C. De Large (1842-1874); Republican — South Carolina; Term: 1871-1873
Robert B. Elliott (1842-1884); Republican — South Carolina; Term: 1871-1874
Benjamin S. Turner (1825-1894); Republican — Alabama; Term: 1871-1873
Josiah T. Walls (1842-1905); Republican — Florida;
Terms: 1871-1873, 1873-1875, 1875-1876
Richard H. Cain (1825-1887); Republican — South Carolina; Terms: 1873-1875, 1877-1879
John R. Lynch (1847-1939); Republican — Mississippi;
Terms: 1873-1877, 1882-1883
James T. Rapier (1837-1883); Republican — Alabama;
Term: 1873-1875
Alonzo J. Ransier (1834-1882); Republican — South Carolina; Term: 1873-1875
Jeremiah Haralson (1846-1916); Republican — Alabama; Term: 1875-1877
John Adams Hyman (1840-1891); Republican — North Carolina; Term: 1875-1877
Charles E. Nash (1844-1913); Republican — Louisiana;
Term: 1875-1877
Robert Smalls (1839-1915); Republican — South Carolina; Terms: 1875-1879, 1882-1883, 1884-1887
James E. O’Hara (1844-1905); Republican — North Carolina; Term: 1883-1887
Henry P. Cheatham (1857-1935); Republican — North Carolina; Term: 1889-1893
John Mercer Langston (1829-1897); Republican — Virginia; Term: 1890-1891
Thomas E. Miller (1849-1938); Republican — South Carolina; Term: 1890-1891 (He was adopted by slaves)
Slaves who adopted a white man! who grew up to become a republican in the house!
George W. Murray (1853-1926); Republican — South Carolina; Terms: 1893-1895, 1896-1897
George Henry White (1852-1918); Republican — North Carolina; Term: 1897-1901
U.S. SENATE — FIRST BLACKS WERE ALL REPUBLICANS:
Hiram Rhodes Revels (1822-1901); Republican — Mississippi; Term: 1870-1871
Blanche Bruce (1841-1898); Republican — Mississippi;
Term: 1875-1881
AND DEMOCRATS?
UNTIL 1935 DID DEMOCRATS ELECT THE FIRST BLACK TO CONGRESS
67 years after Republicans is when Democrats elected the first African American to represent them in Congress.
Arthur Wergs Mitchell / Democrat Representative — Illinois Term: 1935—1943
Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that became the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.
While Republicans fought to end slavery, Democrats fought to expand slavery.
and you arent too bright, since you fail to notice that if slavery was the norm and the desired end, it woudl have been easyier to put it in the constitution.
but it was the southern slave states that threatened the union during the signing of the declaration, and later with the civil war.
you should take the time to read Douglas’s speech in Scotland (16 pages long), as to how the constitution and other things amounted to an ANTI SLAVERY missive when, as you said, slavery was the norm.
with Wilberforce in England the founders in the US, slavery as a norm became an evil. However, Germany, Russia, china, Cuba, and other places practiced work camp slavery. Our liberal leaders ahve seen fit to overturn the anti labor parts of the US laws to allow prisoners to be cheap labor, as in Germany. (van Jones the liberal wants to expand this gulag system (his words) and connect it to the economic system).
I fail to see your point unless the point is that no country which starts imperfectly can be considered ok in your eyes, and has to have a imperfect bloody revolution with millions dead to make it right. the civil war does not count, and the continued crimes of the other countries, despite the modern era being now, and the prior era being more primitive.
your basically arguing that since america once had slavery, its no good… and can never be good. so the solution is state slavery of all men, and their labor be given to a few white men in power!
your not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?
It’s worth noting that the 3/5s compromise was a result of honesty about the matter, rather than being the result of an attempt to subsume it.
actually not… the 3/5s is discussed in Douglasses speech i reference in the prior post.
the 3/5s compromise was because the south wanted to count the slaves as full humans with full votes to count that their owners would vote for them.
the issue here was that the north argued that property cant vote… so the south, which had a lot of slaves, was to be politically cut out because without the blacks vote being voted by the slaver, they didnt have any majorities.
the arguments got quite far out. because the north, which was more mechanized, then countered that if a slave has a vote, his harvestign machine gets one, and every farmer can vote every machine he has on property, just as south slave holder wanted to vote his harverster.
the reason that slavery ended here is for the same reason that they are removing religion. judeo christian religion pushes slavery out as a choice as over time one cant reconcile gods love of the INDIVIDUAL and their UNIQUENESS being sacred.
the state cant enslave the people and take all their property if they are judeo christian. the equality mentality has to be perverted to a mass idea so that the parts are interchangeable, and then erasing some and making some becomes just a supply demand object thing. you can work them to death the way you work any property, any MEANS OF PRODUCTION, only the few sociopathic leaders who own it all against all comers get to be special
Krugman has a power to bring me back to good-ol-USSR,
where nobody knew what part of their earnings are taken by the government(s) (plural, due to multiple steps – municipality/city/region/Republic/State).
We were all equal all right: an Engineering Designer of Category III, being employed at bureau under umbrella of, say, by Ministry of Heavy Machinery – either on a factory in rural Siberia or in Moscow-vicinity Yaroslavl was making exactly same 130 rubles a month. No check, just a clerk at the window at the “payment booth” would give you the bills after you sign in the book. Unifying to extreme…
Oh boy, I feel nauseated. I’ll go get my dark-roasted coffee by TJ now, to slap me back to glorious relity. At least for the time being – while krugmans’s dream is still a delusional drema.
Ñкоро Ñкоро вÑе будет знаком
Krugman and these people they are what they are Хоть кол на голове теши.
Russian Lawmakers Consider Branding Hands Of Corrupt Officials
Artfldgr,
I understand the 3/5 compromise. The fact that it even happened was, in fact, a recognition of the existence of slavery. No one tried to pretend that there wasn’t such an institution. It’s also true–and you didn’t mention this–that the reason for it was that the north wanted the slaves not counted, while the south wanted them counted, not as votes, but as bodies for representation purposes. Their votes weren’t at issue. Their countable bodies, for enumeration (census) and representation apportionment purposes, was the issue. It had nothing to do with how they would vote, because they wouldn’t. They were just to be counted, and figured into the numbers of how many Representatives would hold office in the House of Representatives.
thanks Betsy, i should have said would count, not would vote… 100% correct you are!!! thanks 🙂
my apologies, i was writing fast…
on another note
As he put it, “We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.” The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that “theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.”
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem_3.html
tangential historical reading:
1947: End of Rationing
http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1947ration&Year=1947
and for those bored enough to diversions, you can expand to this catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam034/89025153.pdf
by the way, do compare this, with what the goals of the progressives, democrats, liberals, etc are…
The ultimate goal of the socialist society was to create a new person, the New Soviet Person, whose entire consciousness was shaped by the socialist environment. This new person would be enlightened, unburdened by psychological complexes, unblinded by distinctions of nationality and gender. They would live simply but cleanly, and their work lives and home lives would be stitched together seamlessly. Although the socialist person would be created by new forms of culture, they would be recognizable by their healthy bodies as well.
The state was often presumptuous in declaring that socialist consciousness had been created. The 1930 closing of the Zhenotdel (Women’s Section) was explained by the fact that its welfare activities were no longer needed. Social intervention could also be overbearing. In a collective society, privacy was obsolete, and no vice was beyond the judgment of the collective. This despite the fact that millions of Russians and other Soviet citizens still lived in squalor and poverty. For all the positive figures produced in reality and fiction, perhaps the most popular hero of 1929 was Ostap Bender, from Ilf and Petrov’s comic novel Twelve Chairs, an unreformed con man whose ability to “speak Soviet” helped his criminal career flourish.
Artfl,
You’re welcome, my friend.
Well I’ve learned such a lot from you, and no kidding–so it’s only fair and just that I be able to teach you a bit in return, that’s what I say! 🙂 😉
Great! keep going…
it does me no good to walk around with errors. i may be stubborn on points, but the second your right, or prove the issue, i flip like a flap jack, and am happy to do so. the more correct my internal model of the world is, the more effective i am in the world…
thanks…