I have not seen this done correctly anywhere. I have only experienced taxes getting higher and higher with nothing much to show for it. Meanwhile the really rich folk are also getting richer.
The NHS is great. I've lived my life with access to it and in a society provided for by it, and wouldn't trade it for anything. Taxes have paid for it, and should continue to do so.
What alternative are you offering? Not taxing anyone much leaves us with a society that simply doesn't function, we see that right now. FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant when we are already in a situation where most people are facing poverty and ruin. If this is all we can expect, then might as well roll the dice on doing it right.
Of course, the idea there is no way to actually tax the rich is absurd, we can do it, we have just had decades of government with no will to do so.
> FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant
This is not FUD. They always tax the wrong people.
We as a society can do many, many things but we simply cant coordinate to do them. And indeed we should consider this lack of coordination (for a lack of a better term) as something we should take into account when making decisions.
The solution: demand taxation that works, and if that fails, general strikes until they get it right, and if that fails, historically the answer is guillotines in the streets—I would never condone violence, but the reality is inevitable if a population suffers enough, violence begets violence, we need to impress upon those that seek to profit at all cost that there is a limit to all things, and they must not start a war.
"We voted in the Tories again and they continued to lower taxes for their mates and screw over the poor" is hardly trying everything. Throwing your hands in the air, accepting suffering and society collapsing while they profit off it isn't an answer.
You are saying you don't think it's impossible, just that no one is willing to do it: we have to create pressure to do the right thing, and demand it, not make excuses and accept it as inevitable.
- Tax capital gains and dividends that are classically the rates actually paid by the megarich rather than income tax.
- Tax wealth directly rather than just income.
- Tax much more heavily generally and commit to a significant basic income to ensure everyone has a solid baseline.
This is just off the top of my head, we have an entire government of people and a huge field of existing research and ideas, not to mention other countries and historic data on taxing more than the UK right now to look at.
I don't want to go extreme at all; centralising economies has the worst track record of starvation and killing in all of history. I'm just wondering what the plan was :)
Taxing wealth is not relatively minor. It is the way to transfer ownership of companies to the government.
Take most rich people; their wealth is generally in assets like land, or in investments. If you gradually move their company ownership and land ownership to the government, what do you get?
What alternative are you offering? Not taxing anyone much leaves us with a society that simply doesn't function, we see that right now. FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant when we are already in a situation where most people are facing poverty and ruin. If this is all we can expect, then might as well roll the dice on doing it right.
Of course, the idea there is no way to actually tax the rich is absurd, we can do it, we have just had decades of government with no will to do so.