ARE THEY INSANE? Yes, I Am Proud Of Having Started A Tradition.
First, they’re aware the government takes all the money plus some and eats it or something, right? Second, what is this: You can’t rob me. I’ll give you money!
Seriously?
The link is to this.
with the biggest single payment to help pay off Britain’s £2.65 trillion debt pile coming from a £500,000 bequest
Whoopdie fucking doo. At this rate we’ll have paid off that national debt in Never.
How much do you have to hate your friends and family to deliberately leave money to the taxman tho?
It was a good piece and conclusive on the subject of the lying attention-seekers who shout :”tax me harder”.
BiP,
Two of our circle of friends who used to meet in the pub on Fridays pre Covid* were virtue signalling that they would happily pay more tax if it went to the NHS. The following week I took them the Treasury address to send their cheques and told them they could hypothecate the donations.
Unsurprisingly they both said they meant if everyone else was paying more tax.
I just muttered about virtue not being conditional and left the notes.
*Sadly lockdown broke everyone’s habit and what was a great night died.
PS I got that idea from Tim’s original piece and had been desperate to try it out.
Tim, you can cite this case as an example of how it’s impossible to write anything which can’t be misunderstood, even by people who would agree with you on many issues.
The position of those who advocate higher taxes on themselves is a bit more sensible than you make out.
Imagine a club which is orgaising a picnic. The members contribute and attend. Someone advocates a bigger contribution so that the club can hire a big tent. It is perfectly reasonable for the tent fee advocates to want to pay only if everyone else is also paying. Otherwise they get to pay for the tent, but those who paid nothing get the benefit. It’s not sensible to say that the majority of members who do not make a unilateral payment are hypocrites whose revealed preference is that they do not really want to pay.
Of course in the specific case of taxes, the justification should be very clear as history shows that taxes raised for one alleged popular purpose are not very likely to actually be used for that purpose and governments are very opposed to hypothecated taxes.
It’s not really analogous Charles. You have to be pretty far up the tax bracket before you’re a net contributor. (Tax paid minus benefits received) And once you’re there, the amount of benefits received/tax paid is virtually zero. So in your analogy, you pay for the tent but there is no tent.
I suppose one could put a value on being a smug socialist cvnt. But that’s only of value to smug socialist cvnts. Revealed preferences being there’s not much of a market.
Charles
I think you are referring to the collective action problem.
Lots of xyz_ologists love this and make a good living pointing it out.
But in real life, if rain is forecast for your fete / open day etc the question is Anyone got a Tent?
A couple of hands come up and tents are delivered, installed with the help of people without tents.
Then a haemarrhoid from the council or the central government turns up demanding a six figure salary to assess the colour of the tent, define its orientation, etc.
People have five senses and the sixth (common) is rarest.
@philip – “I think you are referring to the collective action problem.”
It’s more the free rider problem.
– “But in real life, …”
This is where the behaviour depends on scale. If it’s a clucb where members know one another, you don’t need much to keep things working. Everyone knows who is a free rider and who is contributing. But as the number of people expands to the point where individuals cannot keep track of who is contributing and who is not, then the whole thing breaks down. This is why a country of millions needs capitalism, but a shared household only needs a little nagging from time to time.