All gone balls, otherwise known as It’s all bollocks! otherwise known as Bucko the Moose, has a piece on the cashless society.
If you are not self employed, when was the last time you had the opportunity to hold your money in your hand before you gave it to the government as tax? Probably never. Tax is taken from our wages at source in the form of PAYE – Pay As You Earn. We don’t even get to touch it before they take it from us.
That is true, except that I am very much a cash in hand person – everything I can pay in cash, I do. If something cost £5000, I’d pay it in cash, no questions asked. This doesn’t mean I intend to be dishonest, it just means that I don’t want Ole Snoopy Eyes, the govt, following my every move.
And the idea of cash payments being shady is part of the crap the govt is trying to get people to believe. It just means a person would like to control his finances and run his own life the way he chooses without wearing the equivalent of a dog tag.
Both sides of this non-argument are talking bollocks, I’m afraid.
Do you REALLY want to go back to the pre-1944 system, then?
WHere all taxes were payed in arrears, & monoie shifted back-&-forth?
I mean, it’s complicated enough now?
Do please grow up.
This is NOT to say that some guvmint aresholes are not also talking bollocks re perfectly legitimate cash payments.
The argument is not about tax, that’s only a small part, and it’s not about how we pay it, it’s about how the government want total compliance.
The whole topic is about why they want to do away with cash and how they will achieve that.
Tax, tracking your spending, tracking you, control.
And no more boot sales!
Which would be terrible!
1944? No, I want income tax abolished (and VAT,…).
Amazing how a number of states in the US manage without Income tax (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington), or a flat rate (Colorado – 4.63%, Illinois – 5.0%, Indiana – 3.4%, Massachusetts – 5.3%, Michigan – 4.35%, Pennsylvania – 3.07%, Utah – 5.0%). Compare/contrast with our own.
Then there is the issue that tax at source ‘hides’ the amount paid. If you had to hand over most of your hard earned readies each week/month (instead of it disappearing before you ever see it) maybe there would be more ‘concern’ about rates?
As an aside, have you noticed that those states where 0% income tax exists equate rather well to those states with the most balanced budgets (exceptions exist of course, as do other taxes). Could it be that fiscal competence goes hand in hand with the electorates choice as to what taxes are spent on?
Just Sayin’
1. Those figures are state income tax, not federal.
2. Alaska has huge oil revenues to compensate.
3. Texas and several other states on that list are in awful financial conditions.
Able
I find your case interesting & much more plausible than many of the other talkers of rubbish on this subject – i.e. you are NOT talking rubbish.
Especially as many of those US states you list are traditonally “blue” ones – that is conservative rather than insane quasi-anarchist/fascist.
[ for the record - & correct me if I'm wrong ...
New Hampshire, Washington, Iilinois, Indiana (?), Massachussets, Michigan, Pennsylvania ]
OTOH
Electorates are very bad at spending money on essential maintenance & infrastructure – one reason the US is so behind many other countries in thsi respect.
NOT that this invalidates your model – you just need more education on the subject ….
If people don’t want their money spent on “essential maintenance & infrastructure”, then their money shouldn’t be spent on it. Ideally, of course, none of it should be taken from them in the first place.
It’s not a matter of Able “needing more education…” (a truly spine-chilling phrase).
It’s a matter of not forcing people to do what you think is best.
Very, very badly worded on my part – I MEANT … “You” need more education to the general populace on the subject.
Sorry about that ….
However, you are wrong.
If something is thought worth having in the forst place, like distributed mains power, or a highway & railway system or piped clean water, then it is ESSENTIAL to spend money on its’ maintenance.
If only because waiting until it breaks down is a LOT more expensive.
Your apparent argument suggests that essential public services should not exist at all.
You were, or were not suggesting that?
I am not arguing, or even suggesting, that “essential public services” should not exist at all.
Greg, what you define as ‘essential public services’ night not be what someone else does. So without a definition we are getting nowhere.
OKAY
[NOT in any particular order]
Water
Sewerage & waste-disposal
Power
Health (In every developed country on the planet EXCEPT the USA – at present)
A transpotation grid/network
An honest police service (Does anyone actually have one of these?)
An effective national defence force.
Discuss?
My answer is still yes, all of those should exist.
But I’m not sure what you mean by the USA not having a health service. I’ve spent time there, they have doctors, hospitals and all the other health care type stuff.
Unless you mean they should all be funded by force.
Then my answer is no, none of them (or anything else) should be funded at gunpoint.
The US present non-healthcare system cost more than ours, with considerably worse results…..
Who sadi anything about “funded at gunpoint” ?
You did – and it is a red herring.
Sorry, can’t reply to your post so replying to my own.
By mentioning “funding at gunpoint” I was making it clear I don’t support any service being funded through force. As the usual assumption is if you don’t worship the government’s fifth-rate services, you don’t want those services at all.
Greg, there isn’t one thing on your list that the state should be involved in taxing people for especially in a free democratic society.
All of them are things that either the individual, private enterprise or local community should look after – yes, even national DEFENCE.
An example, the toll road system in many european countries, built, run and maintained by private companies, leaves for dead the roads of the national governments.
On the other hand, advocates of big government that runs the lives of the people would see those as just the things it MUST CONTROL and tax.
I never actually stated that”The State” should run or own any of thoise listed – a form of private ownership with state regulation is perfectly acceptable.
When it comes to defence, however, you are plainly in tinfoil-hat territory – do you really want mercenary borons/companies/gangs running a nation’s defence?
i has been tried – & never worked.
Toll roads?
Really?
Don’t actually believe you, when it comes to the actual operation in the majority.
I realise that the Frogs have some toll-roads, but are they actually BETTER than the autobahnen?
Nah.
Gimme me money.
Nothing wrong with a cashless society. Indeed, if present indications follow through to economic collapse, CASH will be worthless anyway.
Let’s get back to bartering. Put the commodities back in the hands of the people, deprive the politicians of tax and start again from scratch. We either do this ourselves or wait and have it imposed on us anyway.
It is not just about cash, it is fundamentally about all forms of payment and money transfer that the government cannot get its hands on and analyse in real-time.
For what justification? Well, terrorist funding, drug money or money laundering are the usual suspects, but it’s all utter bollocks.
The government wants to be able to spy on you at all times and in all things. It’s about control, not about doing anything. It’s about WE MUST!
The only reason they haven’t managed to get rid of cash is it’s complete ubiquity in our society, but don’t worry, the government are already normalising against those carrying around large bundles of cash.
Police have been told to sieze any suspicious cash (and when ISN’T cash suspicious to a plod). We will get to the point where carrying more than £500 in cash will be suspicious, then £100 and possibly one day ‘any cash’.
It will all have to be recorded on your easy wipe/easy swipe UKGovPayCard. Then try to avoid paying your TV License, just because you happen not to own a TV.