DEMOCRACY, TAXATION AND PUBLIC SERVICES
(Comments: tony.papard@btinternet.com)
Democracy has its good and bad points. The trouble is, the majority of the general electorate are not always right. In fact more often than not they are wrong. Never forget Hitler and the Nazi Party were elected to power in a democratic general election.
Nobody has ever come up with a better way of managing government than democracy, but within that term there are all sorts of permutations. In UK and USA, for instance, they use the 'first-past-the-post' system. This insures strong governments, often with massive majorities of seats, but it does not reflect the true wishes of the electorate. Many governments, probably most in fact, under the first-past-the-post system are elected with big majorities by a minority of the electorate.
Proportional representation, alternative transferable vote systems, or elections with several rounds where the candidates/parties with the lowest votes are gradually eliminated, are all much more democratic, but often lead to coalition governments, or alliances between various parties.
Once a system of election has been decided upon, how democratic it actually is depends, to a large extent, on how well informed the electorate are. If the Press is not democratic, then the election will fall far short of democracy. Whilst the TV news services in UK are required to be more-or-less neutral, the Press are not. So the New Labour party program in 1997 was decided, not so much by the Labour Annual Conference of members, which has lost most of its decision-making powers, but by one man who is not even a member of the Party - Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Sun and other newspapers. Since so many people read his papers, they have great influence. In fact, if The Sun comes out and backs a certain party and its policies, that political party is almost certain to win the next general election.
Moreover, if The Sun and other mass-circulation tabloids decide on a certain policy, such as lower taxes, then that will probably decide who wins the election.
This is why, to have true democracy, I believe restrictions should be placed on the Press in the months leading up to an election. One newspaper tycoon should not be able to influence the way millions of people vote thru the Press.
It is also true that most people, if offered lower taxes, will vote for that political party. This means no party dare raise taxes too much for fear of losing the next election. This is also very bad for democracy, and for funding essential public services. Bad for democracy because people are voting for purely personal, selfish motives and not thinking of the common good, or the needs of a truly democratic society where the less well-off also have rights.
That is why I feel that taxes to fund essential public services should be taken out of the realm of party politics altogether. Once the Chancellor of the Exchequer had the power to set the Bank Rate, but this was removed and given to the Bank of England. Similarly the power to set taxes for essential public services should be removed from the political parties and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In a Presidential system, such a power could lie with the Head of State or a Presidential Secretariat. It could, I suppose, be taken on by the Bank of England. Better still, a special Public Services Department of the Civil Service should draw up the budgets for these essential services, and set a basic tax rate. The funding of essential public services should not be left to the selfish whims of the tabloid Press and the general public. Nor to political parties out to win the popular vote.
By essential public services I mean the National Health Service, Education (at least up until the age of 16), public transport, council housing, essential infrastructure such as roads, water mains, power supplies and also the system for welfare benefits and pensions. What needs to be done, every year, is for a non-partisan body to decide how much is needed to provide good, but not wasteful, public services. This should mean everybody has access to a free health service, free education up until the age of 16, cheap and reliable public transport, a safety net (means tested) for those in need, affordable low-rent council housing for all who need it, and a pension everybody can live on when they reach retiring age. The money necessary to fund all this should be raised by taxes on personal incomes, inheritances, other unearned income and on company profits. No political party should have final say in the matter, nor should the electorate. These essential services have to be paid for, and that is an end to the matter. It is not a suitable area for party politics, the Press or the electorate to argue about. However, an independent audit commission should oversee the Public Department setting the budgets for essential public services, and also oversee the public services themselves. The political parties could all have representatives on this commission along with trade unions, representatives of the public services and members of the public. This audit commission's mission statement should be to insure the essential public services are run efficiently, and that public money is not wasted.
Once the essential services' budget has been set by the Public Service Department and the independent Audit Commission, the political parties, and ultimately the Chancellor of the Exchequer, can decide exactly how to fund this budget, what kind of taxes to impose and also what extra taxes they may wish to raise for other things, and put these options to the general public.
Take pensions, for example. The country is absolutely awash with money. We could easily afford to pay everyone a decent pension when they retire, funded out of National Insurance or taxation. The reason we are in such a mess over pensions is because political parties try to keep taxes and National Insurance artificially low, and then find they don't have the money to pay for decent pensions, etc..
It is the civic duty of every working man and woman to pay for the pensions of those who have worked all their lives and have now retired, and also to pay for essential public services like health, education, public housing, public transport and social welfare. There can be no argument about it - these things HAVE to be paid for.
However, a Socialist government which wanted to reduce taxation could do so very easily. By taking into public ownership and control the financial institutions - banks, insurance companies, pension companies, building societies, etc.. These could all be nationalized with little or no compensation - haven't the shareholders made enough profits from their original investments already? Compensation should only be minimal for cases of real hardship, and for cooperative investors like pension funds. Once owned by the State, the vast sums invested in the financial institutions could be used to keep taxes low.
This would give the general public a real choice - if you want good public services and relatively low taxation, vote for a truly Socialist government which will prevent the fat cats of capitalism making enormous profits out of savings/investments by the general public. Private banks and other financial institutions should not be allowed to make money by charging interest on lending money which doesn't belong to them in the first place. These investments belong to the people, and we should get the benefit. Our invested money and savings should be used for the common good, and to keep taxation down to reasonable levels.
It is time to end the nonsensical argument that you can have low taxes, big private profits/dividends for shareholders, AND still have good public services. There is only so much money in the country, and if most of it is going into the pockets of private shareholders, then taxes will have to be sky-high or else public services will have to suffer.