Another super piece from Jamie Whyte.
Those politicians who make it their business to extend our
entitlements are not billionaire benefactors. The burden of funding our
entitlements falls back on us. That is why increasing them
simultaneously decreases our ability to consume anything else.
Suppose Gordon Brown were to make a legal reality out of the
rights he proclaims at Labour Party conferences. Suppose he guaranteed
everyone “the highest standard of free healthcare”, “the best start in
life” and all the rest. To ears reddened by Mr Brown’s rhetorical
style, this may sound like Utopia. In fact, it would be serfdom. The
highest standard of medical care would alone cost so much that funding
it would require taxes to be 100 per cent of GDP.
and
The entitlement-based policies of all the main parties muddle up two
quite different goals: one worthy, the other disgraceful. The worthy
goal is redistributing wealth. Since a pound is worth more to a pauper
than to a millionaire, transfers from the rich to the poor increase
aggregate wealth (at least, until the size of the transfer undermines
incentives to work). It also helps to avoid civil unrest, which
benefits everyone, including the rich.
The disgraceful goal is to compel people to live in ways that
they would not choose for themselves, or to buy things they do not
think worth the cost. This is precisely the effect of confiscating a
large portion of someone’s income and then providing him with services
to which he can no longer afford an alternative.
To avoid this oppression, there should be no state services
and no specific entitlements, except to a minimum income. All
redistribution of wealth should be in cash.
Absolutely. Abolish the welfare state, the NHS, set the education system free and simply have a Citizen’s Basic Income. Non-means tested, just a flat rate income. Spend it as you wish.
Left-wing friends always object to my “all cash” suggestion on the
ground that people would spend the money unwisely. They would blow it
all on booze and fags or something similarly frivolous. This displays
an absurdly dim view of the population. My guess is that spending on
health and education would increase under such a system.
One of the more intruiging propositions in Johnny Munkhammar’s book, European Dawn, is that precisely because health and education are tax paid for, we actually get less of it than we would if free to purchase it as we wished. It’s not just about the inefficiency of state provision, it’s about the revealed preferences of those who do in fact have lower tax rates and the option to purchase: The Americans. I wrote about this elsewhere and just in case you think this is an entirely nutty idea there is some favourable mention of the argument (with some corrections) over at John Quiggin’s. No radical rightist he.
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