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I think I possibly need to clarify my terms a bit better, following the last post.
As I said in a comment there, I believe that a government's first and foremost role is to make sure everybody has the things they *need*. This goes double for children, as it's generally not in any way their fault that they are in whatever economic situation they are in, and ought to be given exactly the same level of oppertunity as each other. But nobody should starve or die of easily treatable medical conditions or sleeping rough, unless they have made it absolutely impossible for the government to help them (i.e. they're violent and abusive to social workers and actively refuse help etc).
This includes some treading on people's freedoms in the category of 'making a safe environment for people to live in' - the balance is quite hard here, because the principle 'your right to swing your fist ends when my nose starts - unless you have explicit permission' is really hard to apply over all of the things people do to each other. But in general I don't think the government should enforce 'values' or 'social norms'.
Obviously governments do need to have some kind of thought about economic matters - making sure the country is either self-sufficient or has the money to import things which are needed. Generally this gets quite mired up in corruption, even of the mostly innocent variety everyone indulges in (this policy is better for me / my family / my friends / the companies I'm investing in / the compaines I need to purchase things from to maintain public services), and I'm not sure how to get around this. I do know, from study at A-level ecomonics type level, that the assumption that concentrating on economic growth is necessary to increase standard of living is not backed up by the facts, and reasonably well-off countries with high taxation and good public services tend to score highest on all forms of standard-of-living indexes. (So even if there is a requirement at some stage of development to concentrate on economic growth, the UK is beyond that point.)
The main issue with politics today, however, is that most people have got the message 'look at all this money they're taking from me in my pay check - income tax is bad and I don't want it to happen, so I'll vote for whoever will cut taxes or at least not increase them'. And they do not connect this with their other pet peeve, 'public schools are no good and hospitals are appalling, and as for public transport and the road network it's a joke'. So no party who has the willpower to raise taxes and sort out public services has a hope of getting elected, and we get 'stealth taxes' that are much less fair and equitable than income tax but are less noticable to people (for instance for VAT the shop gets blamed not the government for the price increase, also VAT impacts poor people much more than rich people because it's a higher percentage of what they have that gets taken from them, unlike income tax which is progressive (richer people pay a larger percentage 'cos they don't need it as much)).
Anyhow. I must pack for Oxonmoot now, so I'll be back for more fun political debates on Sunday.
As I said in a comment there, I believe that a government's first and foremost role is to make sure everybody has the things they *need*. This goes double for children, as it's generally not in any way their fault that they are in whatever economic situation they are in, and ought to be given exactly the same level of oppertunity as each other. But nobody should starve or die of easily treatable medical conditions or sleeping rough, unless they have made it absolutely impossible for the government to help them (i.e. they're violent and abusive to social workers and actively refuse help etc).
This includes some treading on people's freedoms in the category of 'making a safe environment for people to live in' - the balance is quite hard here, because the principle 'your right to swing your fist ends when my nose starts - unless you have explicit permission' is really hard to apply over all of the things people do to each other. But in general I don't think the government should enforce 'values' or 'social norms'.
Obviously governments do need to have some kind of thought about economic matters - making sure the country is either self-sufficient or has the money to import things which are needed. Generally this gets quite mired up in corruption, even of the mostly innocent variety everyone indulges in (this policy is better for me / my family / my friends / the companies I'm investing in / the compaines I need to purchase things from to maintain public services), and I'm not sure how to get around this. I do know, from study at A-level ecomonics type level, that the assumption that concentrating on economic growth is necessary to increase standard of living is not backed up by the facts, and reasonably well-off countries with high taxation and good public services tend to score highest on all forms of standard-of-living indexes. (So even if there is a requirement at some stage of development to concentrate on economic growth, the UK is beyond that point.)
The main issue with politics today, however, is that most people have got the message 'look at all this money they're taking from me in my pay check - income tax is bad and I don't want it to happen, so I'll vote for whoever will cut taxes or at least not increase them'. And they do not connect this with their other pet peeve, 'public schools are no good and hospitals are appalling, and as for public transport and the road network it's a joke'. So no party who has the willpower to raise taxes and sort out public services has a hope of getting elected, and we get 'stealth taxes' that are much less fair and equitable than income tax but are less noticable to people (for instance for VAT the shop gets blamed not the government for the price increase, also VAT impacts poor people much more than rich people because it's a higher percentage of what they have that gets taken from them, unlike income tax which is progressive (richer people pay a larger percentage 'cos they don't need it as much)).
Anyhow. I must pack for Oxonmoot now, so I'll be back for more fun political debates on Sunday.
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Re: VAT
Date: 2004-09-19 10:36 pm (UTC)From:I would observe that describing general taxation as discouraging economic activity in general seems to fail to take account of the way that the government spends the vast majority of tax money - recall that the government is the biggest employer in Britian by some margin.
An interesting thought occurs to me, is putting money in the hands of the poor actually really good for the economy? After all if the economy booms when lots of money is being moved around, that is, people are spending a lot, then moving it from a group less likely to spend it to a group more likely to spend it, and moving it from rich to poor knowing that of it's own accord it'll find it's way back, surely keeps a lot of money in circulation?
Am I missing some subtle piece of economics, or have I just destroyed a significant part of Right wing economic rhetoric?
That's a mighty thick mattress...
Date: 2004-09-20 01:26 am (UTC)From:Saved money goes almost straight into investment - if it didn't, then the bank would be a massively loss-making type of institution, seeing as inflation gives an effective negative interest rate on the currency. In other words, money generates more economic activity sitting in a bank than it does anywhere else - once for the bank, once for the investment, once for the interest paid to the saver. It's called 'trickledown'.
A thought just occured. The institution of the bank could be looked at another way. Rich people have far too much money to know what to do with. So, for a small fee, they lend the money to people who do know what to do with it. But to do this more efficiently, an organisation is set up (it can be state-run, if you'd like) to centralise this process. Naturally, the institution has to cover its own costs and make a profit - hence the use of interest. Voila - the bank. The main difference between this and part of the ideal communist government is that this one charges a fee for the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, and requires skill on the part of the poor.
(And yes, I've just referred to entrepreneurs and capitalist fat cats as 'poor'. If they had enough money, they wouldn't be borrowing any, now would they. ^_^ )
Re: VAT
Date: 2004-09-20 01:37 am (UTC)From: