Wealth taxes on Agenda in the US

"Young, mega-rich - and demanding to pay more "
This is an interesting article on the BBC. It comes as no surprise that some of the woke community who have inherited a huge amount of money or made themselves fabulously rich have come out to try and push the idea of wealth tax on the US elections.

Of course, this is always the thin end of the wedge. The wealthiest can easily pay such taxes levelled at 1% and indeed their investments return much better than this on average so it has no impact.

But in terms of virtue signaling it pays them really well - they get huge points across the world for showing their moral conscience. What amazing people!

Of course this is the worst way to promote a tax, maybe the second worst. But it does strike me as being at least on the side of truth. As there is no good case in Western democracies to have a wealth tax. Wealth taxes are levied on assets that have already paid their dues, it is double taxation, akin to inheritance tax. Like the equally terrible Land Value Tax, it places the State as the ultimate owner of all goods and all citizens as rentiers. We literally spent hundreds of years getting us to the position we are in now, which also managed to create capitalism and lift more people out of poverty than ever before in human history. The side effect of this is a bunch of rich people, could be worse. 

Practically of course, when recently tried in France they have ended up with a scandal to dwarf our own expenses scandal, with 60 politicians now being prosecuted for tax evasion. After all, a wealth tax is reliant on valuation of assets and these can be gifted, pledged, drawn against - all sorts of things to hide the true position.

The reason I say they make the case well is a wealth tax only works as a moral crusade, a peaen against the unfairness of society and a call to make rich people feel guilty and change their ways. Except of course, they could always give more money to the Government themselves, no one is stopping them.

PS I fixed my browser spellchecker at long last...

PPS Still needed spellchecking, this is slowly creeping up my to do list....

The CBI View- women don't to eat or enjoy sports

This story, typical of the BBC, really is identity politics run wild.

The new head of the CBI, Carolyn Fairburn, a lady who has known few boundaries in her own life, has decided the world is not enough to her liking.

"Business Dinners" are apparently now not suitable events to organise for woman. I can see her point, clearly women don't eat and so would not want a free dinner and a chance to network with like-minded people....oh wait.

Of course, the baby issue is raised, poor Caroyln had 3 children and a busy husband so it was very hard for her to manage being at the BBC or McKinsey's and have a perfect time with the kids too. So of course, what needs to change is everyone else. There need to be events that are appropriate for women and at family friendly times too so as it works for her.

Then she extends the whinge to sports events too, clearly these cannot be appropriate for women either, as women don't like sport etc etc. The fabulos irony of labelling women like this when taking such a position is clearly lost of dead Caroyln.

Jesus wept, where do they find these people? I can only imagine how total her euro-enthusiasm must be to add rules and regulations to everything as it is needed to make her life easier.

Heavens forbid that people hold networking events early in the morning or into the evening because, you know, there is work to do all day and this is extra's - stuff which you don't actually have to do either.

Personal identity politics is one of the most annoying scourges of our age. Everything has to be about me and what I want, if it isn't then it must be discriminatory because I am a woman/man/mum/single/gay..blah blah blah.

If you are wondering why I have taken such offence to it, another little gem from last week. At the two minutes silence for Paris last Monday across the city there were plenty of people refusing to join in and making a scene because other people had died, in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq etc, who had not had a minutes silence for them. It is really sad that people so readily use and abuse such atrocities as excuses to virtue signal.