VINCE CABLE IS convinced that a mansion tax on properties valued at £2 million and over, will happen. It is expected that such a tax on an estimated 50,000 homes would bring in an extra £1.7 billion a year into treasury coffers.
Perhaps George Osborn has told him something that we all should have been told. For if it happens, then envy will have been its harbinger. If we were being led by a Labour government, circa Michael Foot , then envy would be a perfectly valid reason for introducing such a tax; which is why, among many other reason, Michael Foot was not elected.
It was always the Conservative Party that favoured the use of this particular verb, when attacking Old Labour across the green benches. So why, if our Vince is right, are a Conservative party indulging the same covetousness toward the wealthy by making them pay extra, merely because they are wealthy and can afford to do so? Is not wealth a good thing any longer within the modern Tory Party? Has it become such an abomination to be rich, that those who are, must be penalised for their affluence by making a larger contribution than the rest of us? They already pay more in taxation than the ordinary taxpayer.
Many rich businessmen and women have accumulated their wealth by building up a business, and working hard to see it grow; and as it grew more people were employed, and more families came to rely on its success; and its success relied upon the business acumen of the by now rich businessmen and women.
Wealth is the main incentive of the free market; wealth is not the milch cow for politicians who have brought the country to an almost bankrupt status, and who are now about to pour sugar into the petrol tank that drives the engine of capitalism, i.e. accumulated wealth.
The only reason we occupy ourselves in running businesses or working in them, is to better ourselves through ambition in order to gain a measure of prosperity for ourselves and our families.
Even that old fraud, Karl Marx, had to admit that capitalism was the most dynamic and progressive force known to human society - be it that it also engineered a cruel supremacy in the 19th century; when the proselytiser of ‘scientific’ socialism was proclaiming to the world a new religion, that would sadly lead to a system of government that, in its cruelties, surpassed even those of Victorian England.
WEALTH CREATION should not be abused in the way Vince Cable hopes to do. Penalising the rich presses all the right buttons emotionally among the British public. There is no doubt, millions of people have become the victims of the vagaries of the market place.
Capitalism is not, and never was; and can never be, a stable and consistent economic system. Human nature drives it forward, and human nature is as old as homo sapiens.
Artists, writers and scientists have all advanced themselves through the free market. Science and technology, as well as the arts generally, have all prospered by this economic system best adapted to our natures.
So why penalise the rich? After all do not millions each week buy a lottery or Euro lottery ticket to hopefully be counted among the rich? Yet it is among these very people that Mr Cable draws much sympathy for his proposal to increase the financial burden on the rich.
Penalising wealth only delays our recovery. It is part of my somewhat meagre contribution to this debate to hope that George Osborn foregoes Vince Cable’s advances, and leave this mansion tax well alone.
It is enough that the wealthy have to pay more in income tax; which, if you have to have a graduated tax regime, is much fairer than imposing an extra taxation on the ownership of property. This smells to me of envy; this also means, that in the future whenever politicians mismanage the economy, they can, maybe, lower the mansion tax to £1 million; or even further down the road of political mismanagement to £500,000.
IT IS THE POLITICIANS who are supposed to manage our economy. It is not the individual entrepreneur or financial speculator that brings an economy to its knees; but the lax financial regulation by politicians. When the recent property boom was in full flow; when 100% mortgages in many cases were allowed. The politicians sat complacently on the sidelines hoping to garner a further term in office on the back of the popularity of such insane behaviour.
It was yet another example of politicians being led by the wishes of the people; rather than leading the people, and warning them of what may be at stake by such irresponsible behaviour by the banks.
The politicians have built their continuance in power on such a process. Yes, many bankers have been made, rightly responsible, by the politicians for the current financial collapse. But they themselves have to take a major part of the blame. They bought power on the basis of ignoring market behaviour that should have been regulated.
Instead they allowed a bubble to inflate that would eventually burst; and when it did, the politicians shrugged their shoulders and sought to blame those whose irresponsible behaviour they were quite happy to go along with for so long.
For those who today still call themselves Marxists, should take a moment to consider whether their prophet would call himself a Marxist, if he were brought back through time to see what strides the free market had made, and what ignominy his system suffered with the collapse of communism.
Penalising the ownership of property, in order to reduce a debt that the politicians were as culpable as the bankers in creating, may win brownie points with those who have tragically suffered during this latest low point in the life cycle of capitalism; but if this tax goes ahead, there may be unintended consequences that leaves our nation’s wealth creation somewhat deficient, if the owners of those 50,000 homes decide to live elsewhere . This is always the difficulty in overtaxing the wealthy – the wealthy are accustomed to living wherever in the world they find it cheaper to do so…that is human nature.
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