This year the Taxpayers’ Union is campaigning to keep Labour out of government while helping supply the news through which voters understand the election.
Good scrutiny, Bryce. I'd add the myth sitting under their whole operation, the one in the name.
"Taxpayers' money" isn't quite the thing they claim. A currency issuer spends first and taxes after. Tax doesn't fund the spending, it manages demand. So the premise that the government is spending "your money," and that cutting it hands you a refund, is the household myth they keep promulgating in all their propaganda.
And that $35bn "waste" cut? Government spending is someone's income. Remove $35bn and you haven't saved taxpayers a cent. You've deleted $35bn of private-sector income, wages and contracts that get spent in the shops.
The trick is the word "taxpayer." Everyone's cast as a taxpayer being robbed, never as the patient or pensioner who relies on the spending. Same person, both sides of the ledger. Name one side, hide the other.
Furthermore, cutting government expenditure takes money out of the private sector rather than 'leaving people with more to choose what they do with'. To maintain a given size of economy, that shortfall in government expenditure=private earnings must be made up by loans from banks. Therein lies the rub of who truly wins from public sector spending cuts. If people decline to borrow, the economy goes into recession. So, for the public, it's a lose-lose situation- unless you happen to be a bank shareholder.
Good scrutiny, Bryce. I'd add the myth sitting under their whole operation, the one in the name.
"Taxpayers' money" isn't quite the thing they claim. A currency issuer spends first and taxes after. Tax doesn't fund the spending, it manages demand. So the premise that the government is spending "your money," and that cutting it hands you a refund, is the household myth they keep promulgating in all their propaganda.
And that $35bn "waste" cut? Government spending is someone's income. Remove $35bn and you haven't saved taxpayers a cent. You've deleted $35bn of private-sector income, wages and contracts that get spent in the shops.
The trick is the word "taxpayer." Everyone's cast as a taxpayer being robbed, never as the patient or pensioner who relies on the spending. Same person, both sides of the ledger. Name one side, hide the other.
Furthermore, cutting government expenditure takes money out of the private sector rather than 'leaving people with more to choose what they do with'. To maintain a given size of economy, that shortfall in government expenditure=private earnings must be made up by loans from banks. Therein lies the rub of who truly wins from public sector spending cuts. If people decline to borrow, the economy goes into recession. So, for the public, it's a lose-lose situation- unless you happen to be a bank shareholder.