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"The kind of austerity that involves taking away allowances and tax credits for the poor and middle classes is idiotic" No, the kind of profiligacy that allows
by planetguy 14y ago
"The kind of austerity that involves taking away allowances and tax credits for the poor and middle classes is idiotic"
No, the kind of profiligacy that allows the existence of allowances and tax credits for the poor and middle classes is idiotic.
The poor are a different argument, but there's no way the middle classes should be dependent upon government welfare. Let the middle classes earn their own money and pay a modest share in taxes, not become welfare recipients themselves.
Every European country has a lot of government spending and employees and programs that they need to eliminate, first, before they think about raising taxes.
- bornhuetter 14y agoWhether the existence of the welfare state in the first place is good or not is an entirely different argument; one that I'm not going to get into. My point is that when governments say that the best short-mid term solution to the debt crisis is to cut benefits and raise taxes on pensioners they are either lying or crazy.
- planetguy 14y agoWell the easy solution to a debt crisis is always just to stop paying your debts and fall back on the fact that you have a lot of guns. But quite apart from the ethical concerns of unilaterally cancelling all your own debts, the long-term ramifications for the nation can be profound
- aptwebapps 14y agoI don't see how tax credits are always idiotic. Presumably in a given system there is an idea tax rate for a particular income level. If the actual system has the rate 10% to high but the tax credit puts that back where it 'should' be, is that idiotic? In short, don't the final numbers matter more than whether we reach them with or without a tax credit?