This is proof that it’s not just socialism, but expansive government that does that running out of other peoples’ money:
There is a scene in The Simpsons in which Ned Flanders enthuses about the joys of tax. Asked by his son what taxes pay for, he exclaims: “Everything!” – from policemen and trees to sunshine. I have always been a Ned in this regard and have argued that tax is one of the great social goods. But, as I filed my self-assessment return last week, I found myself grumbling. It isn’t so much that the bill was relatively high, but that I could no longer work out what exactly it was paying for. NHS waiting times are soaring. The social security system is leaving families destitute. It is a feeling surely familiar to many in Britain now: the tax burden has never felt heavier, yet the public services they are meant to fund have rarely been worse.
One possible answer is that government is simply trying to do too much. Another is that much of what government does is being done inefficiently. For the observation itself it entirely true. Taxes are, as a percentage of everything, the highest they have been in many a decade. And we don’t seem to be gaining all that much wondrous and joyful from our payment of them.
So we’ve this consumer resistance going on - why should we pay so much tax for not so much?
One answer is proposed here:
We are told on repeat that public services are unaffordable. Really, there are plenty of ways to fund them – it is just that a populist press and most politicians do not deem it legitimate. This is already being challenged outside Westminster: look to Scotland, which last month announced a tax on high earners to protect public services.
Introducing a one-off 1% wealth tax on households with more than £1m would garner fevered Daily Mail headlines but it would also generate an estimated £260bn, more than enough to cover a year’s funding of the NHS and social care spending.
Well, no, the suggestion is that a 5% tax on wealth, raised at 1% a year for 5 years, will produce £260 billion. Which would be about a, roughly, 4% increase in tax revenue over that period. Hands up everyone who thinks a 4% rise in revenue is going to sort out the British public sector?
Quite.
Which brings us back to the base observation. We’re already paying about as much tax as anyone reasonably expects us to be willing to hand over. And those public services still need their maw crammed with extra cash. We’re going to have to have a smaller state, aren’t we? Given that absolutely no one at all is interested in having a more efficient one.