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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day – what we “deserve” in our working lives edition

“The necessity of finding a sphere of usefulness, an appropriate job, ourselves is the hardest discipline that a free society imposes on us. It is, however, inseparable from freedom, since nobody can assure each man that his gifts will be properly used unless he has the power to coerce others to use them. Only by depriving somebody else of the choice as to who should serve him, whose capacities or which products he is to use, could we guarantee to any man that his gifts will be used in the matter he feels he deserves. It is of the essence of a free society that a man’s value and remuneration depend not on capacity in the abstract but on success in turning it into concrete service which is useful to others who can reciprocate. And the chief aim of freedom is to provide both the opportunity and the inducement to insure the maximum use of the knowledge that an individual can acquire. What makes the individual unique in this respect is not his generic but his concrete knowledge, his knowledge of particular circumstances and conditions.”

– F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, pages 80-81.

With yesterday’s revolting annual Budget statement from the Labour government still ringing in my ears, I thought a bit about how this lot treats ideas of “merit” and what is considered “unearned” wealth. For instance, one aspect of yesterday’s measures from Chancellor Rachel Reeves is to add a deceased spouse’s pension pot to inheritance tax (threshold starts at £325,000); IHT is 40 per cent. Any money paid out from the pension will be hit, subject to certain conditions, at 45 per cent for top-rate taxpayers – an effective rate of 67 per cent. This sort of move stems from the idea that certain people don’t “deserve” to inherit X or Y, and must pay their “fair” share to the Moloch of the State. I urge people to read Hayek’s masterpiece, not least for its dissection, and demolition, of much of the argument put forward about why certain wealth is “unearned”, and why we should be paid according to some social formula of merit. That way totalitarianism lies.

10 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – what we “deserve” in our working lives edition

  • NickM

    My understanding is the inheritance tax thing will really hit farmers badly.

    So… What’s the solution? Natioanlize the bankrupt farms then manage “for the good of all!” Now, obviously, this is a big job for MiniAg so this will have to be split regionally and then sub-divided into… Oh, let’s call them manors. Thank you Labour! You’ve re-invented the feudal system and serfdom!

    NB. The Origin of the surname “Reeves” is:

    The surname Reeves is of English origin and means “officer” or “steward”. It comes from the Old English word ge refa. In medieval England, a reeve was a high-status official who managed a manor, collecting rents, selling produce, and organizing the work of the peasants.

    -source: Google, first result from search, Google AI overview.

  • DiscoveredJoys

    You shall be poor and you shall be happy, and the punishment beatings will continue until that splendid Utopia dawns.

    [sarcasm]

  • Paul Marks

    NickM – the international agenda is to put land (especially farm land) under the control of governments and partner corporations – as usual the international agenda is both evil and insane.

    DiscoveredJoys – correct.

    Johnathan Pearce – we now know who the government considers “rich”.

    Anyone whose income is over five thousand Pounds will have their employer “National Insurance” tax increased.

    All taxes are passed on (just as the crippling Poor Law Tax in Ireland in the late 1840s did NOT “just hit the landowners” – it had, of course, a knock-on effect on everyone – on the entire economy, which it smashed) – so it being “employer” rather than “employee” National Insurance makes no difference – it is still a tax-on-jobs.

    So if you earn more than five thousand Pounds a year you are “rich”.

    The government agenda is obvious – no Hayek style useful jobs – at least not for a very large proportion of the population.

    Instead living on a “guaranteed income” (oh it is coming) of five thousand Pounds a year or less.

    Productive employment will be destroyed by endless taxes, borrowing (for wild government spending) and regulations – plus sky high energy costs (thanks to Ed Miliband and the “Green” agenda).

    For those of us who are too old and poor to leave this country things are going to be very bad – especially as disguised inflation will make that “guaranteed income” almost worthless.

    Meanwhile in the United States Food Banks are seeing ever greater pressure – far more than even under Covid.

    “But the official figures say the American economy is doing well” – so they do, unfortunately the official statistics are SOMETIMES a pack of lies (for example they deliberately underestimate inflation) – in reality things are going very badly indeed, as can be seen not only by the ever increasing pressure on food banks, but also by the rise in suicides and the decline of life expectancy.

  • Jon Eds

    Any country, especially English speaking, that adopts a policy of minimal government, rule of law, and civil liberties, plus free immigration for high quality labour, is going to hoover up the best of our population. Let’s see who manages to connect the dots first.

  • NickM

    Jon Eds,
    What you summed up in one sentence is the truth. It is a sad truth because I think we’ll be waiting a long time for anyone to even get that pencil out of the box…

  • Fraser Orr

    I think all taxes are bad, but surely the inheritance tax/estate tax is the worst of them all. The idea that money that has been earned and already taxed (often several times) should be extracted from a deceased person’s estate, putting a huge burden on a person whose loved one has just died is about as horrible as it gets. Death and taxes they say are the only inevitables. What an evil thing that even death would not allow you to escape the taxing authorities.

    And AFAIK it doesn’t even raise much tax revenue, according to this less than 1% of tax revenue. It is a tax to punish people, to socially engineer, to make a political point, not to raise revenue.

  • So… What’s the solution?

    Fuck you, cut spending.

    Not you, personally, of course, Nick. That is of course directed at the State.

  • Fraser:

    Taxes on time (eg. all the regulation that requires hours for compliance) are the worst of all. In theory, we can make more marginal dollars. But we can’t make more marginal time.

  • X Trapnel

    @Fraser Orr – The belief that private wealth owes its very existence, as well as its potential to accumulate, to the ordered society in which it exists and accumulates, – and that that ordered society is the gift of The State to its people – is one which used to be confined to the fringes of the loony left. In a generation it’s taken root like knotweed in the minds of a critical mass of opinion-formers and leadership-position holders right across the public and private sectors. Many of these opinion-formers and leaders have no historical perspective at all.

    We’d do well to listen to one who does. Professor Vernon Bogdanor in his 2011 lecture ‘Britain in the 20th Century: Responses to Decline 1895-1914’ explains a lot of key stages in how we got here:

    At 23:45 in the lecture Prof. Bogdanor says:

    Several principles were introduced by the Liberals in their Government from 1906. The first new principle was the acceptance of the use of taxation as an instrument of redistribution, and the use of a budget for social reform. This was cemented by the famous budget of Lloyd George in 1909, the so-called People’s Budget, which was rejected by the House of Lords and led to restrictions on the powers of the Lords.

    He later references the communist historian AJP Taylor’s famous ‘1914’ quote at 31:25

    In a history book written in 1965, well worth reading if anyone is interested, the last volume in the Oxford History of England, the great historian, a very familiar face on television many years ago, A.J.P. Taylor, began the book in this way. He wrote: “Until August 1914, a sensible law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.” I think a better date would be actually 1911 rather than 1914 because I think the National Insurance Act changed things or perhaps even 1908, when old age pensions were introduced.

    This is a question worth arguing over. Were 6 years in the whale’s belly of old age pensions, and barely 3 years of the 1911 National Insurance Act, anywhere near enough time to justify the horrific intrusion into private life which the 1914 war constituted, with its ruinous cost to human life and economic resilience, and from which we’ve never – barring the attempt in the early 1980s which the lecture acknowledges – sought to retreat?

    The full transcript of Prof. Bogdanor’s lecture is here, and rewards a patient listen/read.

  • Paul Marks

    X Trapnel.

    Even as a percentage of the economy, government started to grow in the United Kingdom in the early 1870s – both in its spending and its regulations.

    As for he First World War – even the German Ambassador accepted that it was forced on this country by Berlin.

    The idea that Prime Minister Asquith and so on were war mongers is nonsense – they did not want war, the Imperial German government forced it upon them.

    However….

    The war and how it was fought are two different things.

    In 1914, after the failure of their Western offensive, British and French forces could have cut off the Germany army right then and there – but they moved too slowly.

    And in 1915 the campaign to take Constantinople (far from being “impossible” or “Churchill’s folly” – as the establishment textbooks claim) was perfectly practical – if (IF) the Royal Navy and the British Army had been professionally competent.

    The bitter truth is that the Admirals and Generals were NOT competent – and it suited them to say the objective was impossible rather than admit the truth that it was not achieved because they, themselves, were useless.

    Had Constantinople been taken in 1915 (and competent military commanders could have done this) Britain and France would have linked up with Russia effectively encircling the Central Powers – the position of Imperial Germany and its allies would have been made hopeless.

    As Colonel Barker (the historian of British campaigns against the Ottoman Empire) put it – it was the biggest missed opportunity in British military history, with such such incidents as Sulva Bay (where ten thousand British soldiers landed to find that there were hardly any Turks in front of them, but then, insanely, the British Generals just SAT THERE for almost two days whilst the Turks rushed in reinforcements) standing out.

    Brigadier Mallinson, in his recent work “Too Important For The Generals” agrees with the judgment of the late Colonel Barker.

    So – to repeat.

    The growth in the size and scope of the British state started in the early 1870s.

    The First World War was forced upon us – it was not a war of choice, it was not optional.

    And it did NOT have to be the horrible four year long blood soaked mess that it was.

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