http://c4ss.org/?p=5865
The New York Times editorial staff
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17mon1.html> congratulated
the State of Illinois last week for "waking up" where it had previously
"pretended that it had not fallen off a budgetary cliff." The Times
opined in response to Illinois's income tax increase, a measure enacted
as a reaction to the state's $15 billion budget deficit in the hope of
staving off a systemic breakdown.
When the Times submits that the tax hike "by itself is unlikely to send
businesses packing" — that a "stable environment" is Big Business'
ranking concern — it's broaching an important but latent side of this
story. Though it is without question true, as the editors of the Times
seem to acknowledge, that ingrained businesses will easily absorb their
heavier tax burden, that fact doesn't necessarily affirm the wisdom of
the tax hike as passed.
Rather than a "necessary medicine" or a step in the right direction that
will ultimately benefit Illinois's working class, the tax won't serve
workers, who are already leaden with Corporate America's operating
costs. As anarchists of the free market left, we oppose /all/ taxation
as the elite's polite term for self-serving theft, but when the state
gets "serious about fixing the budget" it never calls for Big Business
to pay its own way.
The effects of taxes like Illinois's fall inordinately on labor and on
small businesses — on /productive /members of society — engirdling
markets for the towering actors that prevail in state-capitalism. So
while Illinois raises its income tax and Jerry Brown lays it on thick
about "painful" budgets, we can be quite sure that the country's Boss
Men won't feel the pain.
Incredibly, just as working taxpayers are covering corporate expenses —
and getting ripped off as a "thank you" — we get to hear from the state
and its surrogates that the common man doesn't pay enough. As Tom
Ashbrook, host of NPR's
<http://www.onpointradio.org/2011/01/tax-hikes-state-deficits>/On Point
<http://www.onpointradio.org/2011/01/tax-hikes-state-deficits>/, phrased
the question
<http://www.onpointradio.org/2011/01/tax-hikes-state-deficits>, "Is this
the end of the free ride?" But who, we have to wonder, is actually
getting this free ride? The apocryphal account circulated by Ashbrook
and the supposed "responsible centrists" extends from the state elite's
myth that the masses live off of the brilliance of a productive few.
The truth of state capitalism, though, is that it harnesses and exploits
the labor and aptitude of the many to fatten a parasitic few. Working
people lay the foundational infrastructure of state-capitalism, allowing
its top-heavy imbalances to carry on in the face of countervailing
economic realities. "The State," explained Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo
Lottieri, "is declining … because of its internal contradictions." And
we're witnessing the verification of Bassani and Lottieri's thesis in
Illinois and in state budgets around the country.
Contrary to the casuistic claim of Ashbrook's guest, the Pew Center on
the States' Susan K. Urahn, the public is /not /"getting more government
than it's paying for"; indeed, it's getting a whole lot less, with the
state's real services going to the plutocratic magnates who feast from
its economic system. The state's other, more noticeable services, things
like police services and public education, are hardly worth what people
pay for them, offloaded onto us at monopoly prices.
But the real cost to the public lies in the taxes we never see outright,
the high and unnecessary costs we pay as a result of misspent resources
and the lack of real competition. This is exactly the outcome that
business wants and the state is happy to indulge it, delivering a
service of immeasurable worth.
True austerity would mean requiring the giants of American capitalism to
carry their costs, to /pay /for the services they receive. For
politicians and mainstream commentators, however, such a "radical"
prescription isn't now and won't ever be on the table. Anarchists want
to "decommission" the state, to allow free people in voluntary
associations to take its place and dispense with its "Society of Status"
economy.
--
Sean Gabb
Director, The Libertarian Alliance (Carbon Positive since 1979)
sean@libertarian.co.uk <mailto:sean@libertarian.co.uk> Tel: 07956 472 199
Skype Username: seangabb
http://www.libertarian.co.uk
http://www.seangabb.co.uk
http://www.richardblake.org.uk/
http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com
http://www.facebook.com/sean.gabb
http://vimeo.com/seangabb
Wikipedia Entry: http://tinyurl.com/23jvoz
What would England and the world have been like in 1959 if there had
been no Second World War? For one possible answer, read Sean Gabb's new
novel "The Churchill Memorandum". If you like Bulldog Drummond and
Biggles and the early James Bond, this will be right up your street:
*http://tinyurl.com/39lpade.* Don't be frightened of the TinyURL - the
original is just too long for a sig file.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Unsubscribe: libertarian-alliance-forum-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
NB - The Libertarian Alliance does not necessarily approve of the above message.
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment