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Samizdata quote of the day “Ministers are regularly put under pressure for not spending enough. It is very rare to hear Ministers under pressure for spending too much, for presiding over government waste, for failing to find cheaper and better ways of doing things. There is nearly always an automatic assumption that spending a lot in any specific part of the public sector is good, and spending more is even better. There is little probing behind the slogans to find out what the real numbers are, and to ask why in some cases so much is spent to so little good effect.”
– Former minister, and Conservative MP, John Redwood. He is talking about the different biases of the BBC. His point about how BBC journalists and programmes routinely take a pro-public spending line in questions to government ministers, lobbyists and the like is very true. Watch any regular news show, either national or regional, and note those times when a minister is given a hard time for spending too much, or spending on X or Y at all. They don’t happen very often.
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This is been true all my life.
And if the obvious failure of the “Public Services” does not get the media (or the education system – including many private schools) to reconsider the ever-higher-government-spending case.
The media (and academia – the universities and the schools) simply LIE (yes LIE – say things they know-not-to-be-true) claiming that all failings of the “Public Services” on mythical “spending cuts”.
I remember as far back as 1979 the BBC (and so on) telling these lies.
Government spending was going up – and every news and current affairs broadcast talked about (mythical) “cuts”.
They are still doing it – about the NHS and everything else.
It is not an accident or a mistake (one does not make the same mistake endlessly for 38 years) – it is disinformation, agitprop.
Are things hopeless?
Not quite hopeless.
For example in South Dakota in the late 1930 government spending was cut – against the whole New Deal collectivist ideology. Setting up the State to eventually become the lowest government spending State that it now is.
How to help this along?
Insist that all government spending be paid for by TAXATION – no borrowing to put off paying the bills later on (if this was enforced in Britain the reality of wild government spending would become obvious right now – Britain has a wild budget deficit, and a wild trade deficit).
And make the taxation obvious on EVERYONE.
A Sales Tax – charged AFTER the goods have been bought (so everyone can see the size of the Sales Tax).
Not an income tax (which people can pretend “only hits the rich”) or a “business tax”.
In the end all taxes hit everyone – but it should be made obvious that taxation-hits-the-poor.
That is why a Sales Tax (an obvious Sales Tax) is less bad than an income tax or a business tax.
Because it makes it obvious that taxation hits the poor – it does not hide it.
That is why (for example) a Sales Tax is better (less bad) than a business tax.
In a State where the government relies on a business tax (such as New Hampshire) the government can pretend that government spending is “compassionate” and is paid for by “business”.
Where the poor are made to pay directly (as with South Dakota – where the main tax is the Sales Tax) this illusion (that government spending is “for the good of the poor”) is less easy to maintain.
As the poor are obviously (and directly) “paying through the nose” for government spending.
No borrowing and all taxation to hit EVERYONE (including the very poorest) via a Sales Tax. Remember all taxes really do hit everyone – a Sales Tax just makes it obvious.
Then the illusion of “compassionate government” will be undermined.
Sir Robert Walpole (the very first “Prime Minister”) wanted to abolish the land tax and the taxes on imports – and replace it all with a general excise, which would make it obvious that everyone (not just “the rich landowners” or “those who import luxuries) pays for government.
I suspect Walpole was correct. As a property tax (contrary to Henry George) is politically a terrible tax – as it produces the illusion that only big property owners pay for “compassionate government”.
Everyone should pay – via an open sales tax after the buying of goods.
And that is why everyone should have the vote.
Not true in the time of Sir Robert Walpole of course – which was a major attack on his scheme.
He wanted large numbers of non voters to be taxed – and that is unfair.
“No taxation without representation”.
The BBC is a branch of the state. It does not have to earn its money, it gets paid by licence fee payers on pain of imprisonment. The licence fee is a tax by any reasonable standard, it is not a contract freely entered into.
The upshot of this is that BBC employees are in effect civil servants, and view public policy from the point of view of a civil servant. Thus, regulation is good, public spending is good, and the state is a force for good. The very idea that any of these are not, in fact, good is impossible for them to comprehend.
The only solution for the statist bias of a state broadcaster, is not to have a state broadcaster. We wait in vain for any Conservative in Name Only government to see the logic of this obvious fact.
Looking at the poor government we currently have, I fear you will have to wait a long, long time to get any change. I am even worried that whatever our PM says the chances of getting out of the EU grow slimmer by the day.
This. The default assumption in the metacontext is that spending is a good in and of itself. What needs to be asked is, what’s the ROI for that spending and is it worth it?
On this side of the pond, we’re hoping that the new POTUS and his cabinet will ask those questions.
A Scottish Labour activist – who is at least a staunch anti-natz guy – recently happened to “ask Gordon Brown what his greatest achievement in government was. Although he did not take personal responsibility, he did list a doubling of NHS spending and … [other non-NHS-related stuff]] …” (my bolding).
Labour did not make the NHS’s output any better. On the contrary, it was after 5 years of this “doubling of NHS spending” that headlines like, “If the NHS were a patient, she would be on the critical list.” began to appear. This rapid doubling of the cost of the NHS, simultaneous with some actual reduction of its output, is the origin of the ‘ongoing crisis’ / ‘it can’t go on like this’ perceptions of today. It would be very hard bureaucratically to return the NHS to its half-the-cost state of the late 90s.
(Natalie mentions one of the many reasons in this post. A fairly adequate one-word summary is: over-regulation.)
Here’s California “investing” in public transportation:
Anyone who has had say Sky for a few years (like me) is well aware the old lie lie that only the BBC can rise above prolefeed is a lie. That was their one “ace in the hole” and it clearly ain’t no more.
If the denizens of the UK have to be told that government – every government – runs on the principle of “If some is good, more is better”, then I know an island that’s populated entirely by virgins. 😆
Sometimes I think that ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ was simply a fly-on-the-wall documentary! Didn’t Sir Humphrey Appleby once admit that all governments tried to grab as much money as they could, and bothered about allocation later?
I don’t know why the oil companies – forever the target of grumbling about petrol prices – don’t break down the cost of filling up your car on the receipt. Something like:
Fuel: £21
Duty: £29
VAT: £10
Total £60 (figures very slightly rounded for a fill of 50 litres at £1.20/litre)
This is a very quick, easy and efficient way of enlightening the public as to the true cost of taxation.
Remember the commercial television and radio stations in Britain are no better than the BBC.
All radio and television is leftist here – by law. Officially the words are “objective” and “balanced” – what is meant is leftist (collectivist).
No conservative radio or television stations are allowed here.
Snag, I have thought that too, but I wonder whether the government would let them. (In the UK — as in many other countries, of course — corporations and businesses, big or small, have to ingratiate themselves to the government, and to local councils.)
@Cal Ford
How could the government stop them? Make it illegal to tell the truth?
The government can easily make it illegal to tell the truth, as Paul Marks has noted in regards in TV and radio.
Also, the various branches of Governments in the UK can, and do, put pressure on companies and businesses in all sorts of ways, because they have regulatory power over them.
Of course, a company that was resolute enough, with some strong personalities at the helm, could fight back against that, and I wish there were some bosses like that, but they would then have to spend a lot of their life fighting the government. And the sort of people who run big corps these days in the UK are Blairite types, keen to go along with government, not pugnacious individualists. We haven’t seen any of the latter since the 70s and 80s. (Michael O’Leary was a notable recent exception, except that he was not British, and eventually even he started to buckle under.)