Businesses of the World Go On Strike!

Posted by on Nov 30, 2011 in business ethics, entrepreneurship, featured | 2 comments

While listening to a radio debate on Wednesday between Kevin Green and Richard Murphy about lowering the top rate of tax in order to boost the UK economy, I became violently angry.  All Green could do was threaten in a fairly limp and vague way that wealth-creators might leave the country unless tax burdens were lifted.  As the title of this blog suggests, I have a better idea…

Well, its not my idea really.  It belongs to Ayn Rand.  In her most famous book, Atlas Shrugged, she imagined a scenario when the wealth-creators of the world would go on strike in order to free themselves from exploitation by the less talented.  This strike was lead by the mysterious John Galt, who considered it a matter of justice that he should enjoy the full fruit of his own labour.

Those in favour of taxing the wealthy today use words like ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ in order to describe their belief that the rich should pay for the poor.  I call it stealing.  It is theft to force someone to part with their own property against their will.  But this is exactly what tax is.  If you don’t pay it, you get punished.  Did you agree to pay tax at that rate?  No.  Do you have a say as to how it is spent?  No.  How is it just that people are expected to pay different rates of tax for the same service, simply because their earning powers differ?  Any why do they differ?  Hard work and creativity, that’s all.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give to the poor.  But first off, who is really poor in this country?  Second, giving should be voluntary, to charities of your choice, so you can see how it will be spent.  Giving should not be enforced by the courts and police.  Third, the richer the rich get, the more money flows down to the less rich and society as a whole.  This is called ‘invisible hand’ economics.  Fourth, the social responsiblity of business is to increase its profits, not to right societies so-called ‘inequalities’.  There are and always will be inequalities of  talent, effort, skill, and luck between human beings, and it is immoral to try and level these.

No, Green was wrong to threaten to go abroad with his money.  Instead, the whole private sector should go on strike!  But I don’t suppose this will happen.  Capitalism is an unknown ideal in this country.  We’d rather compain and decline and let everything remain the same.

Image credit: shoops.

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  • http://photosworldwide.wordpress.com Paul Beattie

    “There are and always will be inequalities of talent, effort, skill, and luck between human beings, and it is immoral to try and level these.”

    I have to disagree – though in the friendliest terms! I’m (currently and mainly) public sector. So I don’t have to generate a profit from around 50 hours of my week. But I do have to spend your money sensibly. I am the first to say that this doesn’t always happen.

    But let’s take one example. Central government takes some of your tax. It gives it back to Stormont. Stormont gives some to us. I don’t work in education, but I do manage a programme which allows us to take some of that money, and try and improve the lot of some people who have slipped through the net – in one case, the net of education.

    Is it morally right to take some of the tax you have generated, by your hard work, and redistribute it, in this case towards some kids who haven’t/can’t/won’t “fit” into mainstream education, and find other ways of engaging them, so they don’t end up costing £77,000 a year in prison? I think so.

    We could argue about the merits or otherwise of our education system, and that kids shouldn’t be falling through the net, and how a one-size-fits-all approach for 30% of the population doesn’t work, but that’s not going to get us anywhere, and we’ll both start out and end up agreeing on that.

    With my other hat, I also generate tax from my own side business. Not as much as most, granted, but still and all, it must be paid. I would prefer it not to go on a nuclear weapons system, a chauffeur driven car for a Minister, or a subsidy for a civil servant’s eye test.

    I find it abhorrent that hospitals rely on the goodwill of former patients and their families, to raise money for kidney dialysis machines. I have problems with public sector strikes against pension reforms, but I have equal problems with commentators who shout about public sector pensions, while not providing adequate pension provision for their own workers.

    But there it is. An imperfect system. My main point is this: We collect tax to provide services – albeit less efficiently than it should be. “Big Business” in the UK “avoided” paying £12bn in tax last year. (To put that in perspective, the block grant for Northern Ireland is around £16bn, from memory.) Their effective tax rate (that is, the rate they really pay), will fall to around 17% over the next four years. That’s much less than both my and your small business will pay.

    Who’s really robbing whom…?

    PS. I’m not leftwing enough to be a socialist, and I agree with the rest of your blog. ;-)

    PPS. Merry Christmas!
    Paul Beattie recently posted..Kabosh!

  • Paul Beattie

    Yeah as usual I hurtled away from the keyboard before I was finished. To absolutely counter what I’ve just written, it’s probably worth meeting Million-Dollar Murray. :-)

    http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html