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Opinion & Analysis |
Sunday, November 28th, 2010 |
Think Tank: We must all feather the nestThere is a real danger of an absurd situation where those who pay no income tax vote in favour of more taxes from the dwindling cohort that does.
Tony Allwright
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a finance minister under Louis XIV, once likened taxation to plucking a live goose: the art is to extract the maximum amount of feathers for the minimum amount of hissing. In America, we have just seen an excess of (successful) hissing by the Tea Party, which wants fewer or smaller services in exchange for lower taxes. In Ireland, conversely, the people are hissing at the thought of services and benefits being reduced, even though everyone realises that taxes would have to rise to pay for them. It is as if the green goose of Ireland is demanding that even more feathers be extracted. Perhaps it’s on medication and only hisses when feathers are yanked from the untranquillised portion of its torso. Yet, ultimately, a featherless goose, regardless of anaesthesia, is unable to keep warm, fly or perform other goosely functions. For 40% of the green goose is indeed oblivious to the pain of having its feathers extracted — that is the proportion of workers who pay not a cent of income tax, as the OECD reports. The proportion has been creeping up; a decade ago it was 25%. Meanwhile, the pain gets progressively worse for the rest of the workforce as it moves up the income scale. Half of all tax feathers are collected from the top 7% of earners. Many may ask what’s wrong with that arrangement. That the rich pay plenty and the poor pay nothing intimates a compassionate approach. But there are in fact two things wrong: one a moral issue, the other practical. Citizens who do not contribute to the state in which they live are not participating fully in that society. They are to some degree outcasts, which is morally unacceptable. The practical issue is that a 40% grouping of people with a common interest can, with proper organisation, become a formidable constituency to be wooed by political parties, if not actually forming one themselves. Obviously, a way to court this group is to promise prolonged income tax-free status, and the way to increase clout is to add to their number. Were present trends to continue, and be compounded by rising unemployment, non-taxpayers could exceed half the workforce within a few years. There is a real danger of an absurd situation where those who pay no income tax vote in favour of more taxes from the dwindling cohort that does. That would be a realistic consequence of the sacrosanct one-person-one-vote democratic principle, even though such a system will self-evidently run out of money. Just as democratic states build in safeguards to prevent discrimination against minorities, so perhaps they need safeguards to keep sizable minorities of non-income tax payers from having too much influence over how much tax to extract from payers. Now, other than the incumbents, few people are much enthused about the Seanad. It is seen as an expensive talking shop for aspiring and failed politicians, and as having no real influence on parliamentary affairs. There are growing calls for it to be reformed or reduced. Fine Gael wants it abolished. Here is a better idea. Let it become a House reserved for those who pay income tax, with senators elected only by taxpayers (as advised by the Revenue) for a single five-year term. Let its primary function be the review of all legislation with a taxation element, not solely “money bills” as defined in the Irish constitution. It should have powers to amend or reject bills, which could then be sent back to the Dail, perhaps twice. Ultimate power would, of course, remain within the Dail with its universal suffrage, but it should be forced to take into consideration the Seanad’s viewpoints and to justify any disagreement. This is not a perfect solution to the dilemma of non-income tax payers voting for higher income taxes, but does introduce a restraining modicum of equity to the process. The American revolution was founded on the battle cry “No taxation without representation”. The new Seanad’s motto should be the converse hiss, “No representation without taxation”. Tony Allwright is an engineering and industrial safety consultant. This is an edited extract from his blog at tallrite.com/blog.htm © 2009 Sunday Times
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More on this subject in a blog post entitled “Let the Green Goose Hiss” |
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Gift Idea |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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