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Politicians are not the problem There is currently a good deal of fuss about MP’s perks in Britain. People think they are not getting value for money. But conventional wisdom, as usual, is wrong. What we need to do is to reward MPs more the less they do.
It is the rest of the state, created by hyperactive legislation, that is truly out of control. The newly formed UK Libertarian Party suggests that income tax could be abolisheed in its entirety without touching what most people think of as “public services”, if only the country’s autonomous regulatory bodies and agencies – the quangos – were to be abolished.
Should anyone doubt this, a epitomic fabulous fact courtesy of the BBC’s File on Four programme. The part-time chairman of the South East England Development Agency – a body with no reason at all to exist – spent more public money on taxi fares in one year than all 659 MPs put together.
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Interesting factoid, but … No! Politicians are the problem. Who is it created & sustains the Quangos?
The underlying issue, I have begun to consider, is the nature of elected democracies. The people who are prepared to stand (run) for election are, by definition, very unusual, unrepresentative people.
Maybe we need a third chamber — composed of say 100 randomly selected citizens, similar to a jury, which would judge the acceptability of any law passed by Parliament/Congress.
The Citizens would listen to a reading of the entire proposed law, would hear the case for and the case against, debate it amongst themselves, and then would give an up or down vote on the law exactly as written. If they vote the proposed law down, a law on a similar topic could not be introduced for, say, 2 years. After voting, the Citizens would be dismissed, and a new group empanelled to deal with the next law.
It is democracy! It is representative. And it surely would slow down the proliferation of laws. The costs could be hidden as taxi fares for some Quango chair.
Who is it created & sustains the Quangos
It’s normally been civil servants or the quangos themselves, as an offshoot of their own sinecure, although in the past decade they have been a favoured tool of Labour.
The newly formed UK Libertarian Party suggests that income tax could be abolisheed in its entirety without touching what most people think of as “public services”
I always think it is good to bring up the example of Hong Kong in times like this. Income tax: 16% (taxed on a narrower base) in Britain. VAT or Sales Tax: nil. Property tax: 12.8 percent of the rent receivable on the property. That is pretty much it.
Hong Kong has schools, hospitals, roads, garbage collection, transport, parks, and all the other things one expects to find in a developed world city. “Services” are provided at a level that seems quite high.
So the question is, In a high tax place like Britain or Europe, where does the money go?. I know the answer to this, which is that it pays for vast numbers of public sector organisations full of employees who either do nothing useful or who actively hinder people’s business. However, this is not properly appreciated, and it really is the one point that needs to be hammered home time and time again.
“Those who complain about the high cost of government should be glad we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for!” — Will Rogers
“I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it’s only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.” — Milton Friedman
Here’s a modest proposal: We should put our politicians on straight commission. They would divide among themselves (in whatever fashion they like) whatever revenues are left over each year after all governmental expenditures have been paid. This would provide them with a direct financial incentive to (a) devise a tax system that maximizes revenues (which would require them to come up with taxing policies which create the strongest possible economy), and (b) minimize expenditures (which would force them to think very carefully about each single item in every spending bill). Everybody wins!
Laird,
Are you daft? They’d just insist on exorbitant taxes that would cripple the private sector.
Crippling the private sector would greatly reduce the tax take, and hence their loot. If they’re rational actors (and when it comes to lining their pockets, is there any doubt about that?), they’ll very quickly figure out that the shortest route to personal weath is doing everything in their power to foster the growth of the private sector.
As to whether I’m daft, I’m sure that some will say so.
Laird,
That is already the system in effect, but the politicians are not in charge of it, nor the main beneficiaries. Your scheme neglects that short-term gain is going to outweigh long term stewardship, and that it sets up a competition for power calculated to reward the aggressive greedy, a classic Tragedy of the Commons. You are asking us to install the system that works so well in Africa, when we are currently merely converging on Brazil.
The legislatures in Westminster and in Brussels (earlier) long since became servants of bureaucratic corporatism. The indicator of the turn is when officialdom stops trying to starve legislators of resources and persuade them that they are unimportant, and starts to pour largesse on them to flatter and distract them: in Britain Portcullis House was the bellwether.
The constiututional levers are still in place for politicians to take charge, but some of them have forgotten how they work, and others (such as the New Labour administration) fully share technocratic values and contempt for government subordinated to rule and debate.
Alice,
I am quite keen on sortition. In the present circumstances one would need to be very careful not to have it turn into something worse even than the current system: “citizens juries” or “deliberative polls” – a device that Blair/Brown have started to use to manufacture consent and suppress representative mechanisms. Your randomly selected body has to be equipped with both the power and the wit to control its own deliberations and obtain information and policy proposals from anywhere.
A primary reason Westminster and Strasbourg are under the control of Whitehall and Brussels is that the latter have the power of initiative. They control the agenda.
I can think of countries (I am not saying which, but it is pretty obvious when you think about it) where the politicians and bureaucrats have figured out that the best thing is to maximise the size of the economy on the basis that this is best for them in the long run, but these are the exception. Countries in which venal politicians bureaucrats have simply sucked the country dry are much more common. The first state of affairs is clearly better – the politicians get rich, but so do the citizens. However, this is still not exactly ideal. And it depends very much on the individuals involved. I am not sure it is a situation that can be easily engineered.
Point out how much tax money is wasted on “vast numbers of public sector organisations full of employees who either do nothing useful or who actively hinder people’s business” and dramatically reduce the tax bill without doing anything about (or even mentioning what you really think about) the schoolznospitals. Could this be a winning strategy for libertarians? Is this newly formed UK Libertarian Party being very clever indeed?
Rob Fisher,
We like to think so. Although, of course, the biggest QUANGOs are, in fact, the Primary Healthcare Trusts. But people do not associate QUANGOs with their beloved NHS.
Fact to remember though: in 1997, spending on QUANGOs was £24 billion. Today, it is £175 billion…
DK
Rob and DK,
They will of course cut the most needed and popular services first in order to ‘prove’ what a bad idea the cuts are. Best to have a plan ready for that tactical certainty.
Good post Guy.
The cuts will be determined by the order in which the QANGOs have their funding withdrawn. As DK says, many are NHS related, but far from all.
Of course, Polly Toynbee et al are at liberty to fund their favourite QANGOs out of their own pockets…
Citizen jury is a good idea but I would limit it to those who are not on the public tit and who pay taxes.Also they should have the power to impound funds and return them to the treasury. “your quango serves no purpose.We are ordering funding cut off ;let your employees find real employment.”