Today, Tax Freedom day


Click for Tax Freedom Day at the Adam Smith Institute

The Telegraph reports Today is ‘tax freedom’ day:

Employees start to see their earnings go into their own pockets rather than to the Government from Thursday, low-tax campaigners said.

The Adam Smith Institute declared May 30 “Tax Freedom Day” – a day later than last year and the latest it has fallen in the calendar since 2006.

Tory MP Steve Baker said it showed the “shocking truth about taxes and overspending”.

“This doomsday machine of deficit spending, debt and currency debasement will eventually blow up and there is no kindness in pretending otherwise,” he said.

“Politicians who are serious about the prosperity of our country and the well-being of the poorest within it should take note.”

In the past, I have seen people on the Left argue that of course we receive services in exchange for our taxes but anyone familiar with the plight of Wycombe hospital will know we don’t receive nearly enough for our money. And my recent PQ revealed just how much senior local NHS staff are paid in the course of not meeting local taxpayers’ expectations.

The welfare state is in crisis and yet taxes are much too high. For City AM, Allister Heath points out:

The budget deficit is primarily a form of deferred taxation – and if the government were running a balanced budget, tax freedom day would actually fall on 13 July. As the economist Gabriel Stein argues, the government will spend the equivalent of all of the income generated by the economy for the first 196 days of the year. So much for the supposedly savage cuts to public spending from the coalition – and tragically, even though expenditure remains so high, parts of the public sector, including the NHS, are nearing crisis again. The system is bust, and needs radical structural change.

Whether we like it or not, what cannot go on will stop. Anyone with a heart for the poor, a care for the elderly or the slightest concern for the future of families and young people will sooner or later have to face up to the need for balanced budgets, sound money and lower taxes.

That will mean lower state spending.

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Comments & Responses

2 Responses so far.

  1. 5566hh says:

    I think you should look at this interesting talk: http://keentalks.com/crises-capitalism/

    • Steve Baker says:

      The “unchecked neoliberalism” proposition is ridiculous. The credit markets are centrally-planned by the state, IE the central banks. At bottom, that is why there is chaos.

      One of the tragedies is that people on left and right can’t see it. As I have said in the Commons, if this is capitalism, I am not a capitalist.

      http://www.stevebaker.info/2011/12/capitalism/