It Didn’t Work For The Soviets, It Won’t Work For Us

The way to get ourselves out of our present economic difficulties is not to emulate the Soviet Union. That bloated, inefficient command economy rightly collapsed and died more than two decades ago and is only missed by the likes of Vladimir Putin and hard-line Stalinists. Oh, and Keynesians apparently. They want us to adopt the very same policies of state intervention.

The problem with Keynsians and communists alike is they don’t trust the people. We can’t be trusted to spend our own money on things we regard as a priority. No, they have to take our money from us in higher taxation and spend it on what they think are higher priorities. That way the economy will generate more revenue and they’ll be able to tax that too and spend still more money on things they think are important. On our behalf. In our name. Without our consent.

We were pretty much a command economy not so long ago. The government owned companies that made cars, trucks and ships, that ran the telephone service, ran the trains, ran the buses, ran the economy into the ground. Talking of ground, the government even dug for coal. The government built the roads, built the railway lines, built airports. The government owned the houses that ordinary working people lived in. The government ran the hospitals when they were ill, ran the schools their children went to. The government even ran radio and television stations. The list goes on.

Thank God for Thatcher.

Some things should be run by the government for and on behalf of all the people. But generating the country’s wealth is best left to us. The government simply has to get out of the way and Margaret Thatcher did us an enormous service by privatizing whatever was not the government’s business.

“Austerity” is a misnomer. It should be called “Liberation”. It is the process of the government getting out of our way and liberating us from state control. However it is under threat at the moment from those who believe it is not working and cannot work. They want to increase taxes, to take more out of our pockets and reduce the amount of money we have to spend, which means, of course, we will spend less. Only they’re not so daft as to announce they want to increase taxes, no, they simply say they want to increase government spending. As if we don’t know where the money is coming from. Increasing taxes and taking money away from us will increase austerity, not reduce it.

How can we possibly be better off with less money coming in?

If you want us to be better off, reduce the taxes we have to pay. Cut VAT or increase the tax threshold. Leave more money in our pockets.

It won’t feel so austere then.

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