Some people have a little wealth, they pay taxes, levies etc Understandable, unavoidable, and fair to a point.
Some people are just plain wealthy, and they pay little if any tax. Not fair, but completely understandable.
Well, explainable anyway.
Let me preface what I am about to say with this; I believe that those who have the most to contribute, should contribute most.
What happens now is that those who's wealth is readily accessible at source, are contributing most.
See middle earners, most of us in reasonable jobs, are always going to take it in the ass, unless we close all the airports, ports, the border with Northern Ireland and private airfields all over the country.
Rich people, and their wealth, have mobility. Both they and their capital can relocate to a foreign haven in the blink of an eye, and their is nothing we can do about it. Say what you like about Michael O'Leary (and given the opportunity I would use words like "Insufferable prick") but the fact he pays a huge amount of tax here, makes him the exception, rather than the rule.
Safer travel, better communications, the internet have made living in your place of business a choice. In fact having your business in the place you were born is also a choice. There are few local business men, dealing exclusively in their own back-yard, and there are few multi-millionaires willing to stay here if their "burden" becomes too onerous.
It's not fair, but it is what it is, and no amount of "Tax the rich until they bleed" rhetoric will change it. I mean what do we threaten them with "Oh you can't live here then" Hardly a huge problem, when they probably spend as much time eating baguettes in Nice as they do supping pints in The Baggot Inn.
So fuck them, they'll go where they go, if they create employment here, then happy days. What we need to do is have a huge sit down with each other and ask ourselves a few questions;
- What do we want?
- How much do we want to pay for it?
- Who is going to make it happen?
- Have we left anyone out?
I think we want, in essence, a quiet life. We want to be able to walk the streets unmolested by others (or heavily molested if you swing that way) and if by chance, we should fall down while out on our walk, we would like to be patched up by a friendly nurse within a reasonable time.
We want our children to receive an education that equips them for the future of competing with other economies for high-value jobs, and we would also like them to come away with an appreciation of learning and a hunger for more.
So, for the above two scenarios to come to pass, we need Police, Medical Staff and Teachers, right?
Not quite.
See the missing link in this equation is you, me, us.
Before we drone on safety on the streets, have we raised our own children to be polite and respectful. Do we know where they are, do we care? When I was growing up, and it isn't that long ago, I had a group of surrogate parents called my neighbours, who would look out for me, and look in on me, to make sure I was behaving. I'm not suggesting we abdicate our children's upbringing to the church or state or community, but how many parents are there nowadays who will not have their children chided in any fashion by a neighbour, and in fact get quite stupidly indignant that someone has seen fault with Little Timmy Or Tammy. When a child knows it has to answer to its community, it tends to be more respectful of that community.
How many people go to the hospital with a headache or a fever, instead of the doctor? We all think we are an emergency, and it is easier to avoid paying the invoice from A&E than paying your GP a few quid for the prescription. Again, we have to look at our behaviour as well.
How many parents entrust their entire child's education to the schools system, most of them I reckon. That's to say nothing of those who see teachers as unpaid babysitters and psychologists. Children should not have to be disciplined in schools if they are properly raised at home. Every child acts the arse occasionally, it's their job, but some of the children I see coming out of schools are just badly raised, by lazy incompetent bastards. That is not a matter of teachers' pay or holidays. Some teachers would need three months off after a few terms with these little darlings.
If we want all the wonderful services, we either have to pay for them, or we have to design them to be smaller, and we have to tailor our own behaviour around this new model. It's no good blaming the government (although it therapeutic to call them a shower of useless cunts, which incidentally, they are) because ultimately, we are the government. And remember, a government has no money, it can only spend what it can access from us. So while we are completely within our rights to demand that any money wasted by them is repaid, we should also realise that asking them for more is merely asking them to take more.
As a footnote, I once asked a guy I knew who was on welfare and was doing the occasional bit of work for cash what made him so special. He didn't understand the question, so I put it to him that if everyone did what he did, the country would be fucked, and he had to agree. If you ever want to judge the moral of any practice, all you need to do is to ask yourself "If everyone did this, what would happen?"
If the answer is "we'd all be fucked", then stop doing it.
