NHS spending could probably be cut somewhat, too, with a greater focus on preventative medicine without actually losing quality of care (as well as with using treatments that actually *work*, but that’s a whole other argument).

I *do* think we have a duty to help others, and that the tax system is a reasonable way of doing it. That doesn’t mean I think we have to be stupid about it, though…

Only £120 billion of the Government’s £610 billion budget for 2008 goes on ‘social protection’ – general redistribution, pensions and welfare. What about the rest? £30 billion for the police. £85 billion for the NHS.. £35 billion for the military.. these being the ‘core’ absolutely can’t live without spending and we’re still only half way through the budget.

A scarier thought still is that the total gross wage income for UK workers is approximately 700 billion – and the total tax take is 610 billion. That really worries me. I think we’re “killing the goose that laid the golden egg” ;)

Don’t worry about lack of politeness, I’ve been very rude to people myself more often than not!

What you’re saying here makes a lot of sense – except that you’re wanting a ‘million different ways’ of trying to solve problems, but excluding a whole chunk of those ways – those that involve state action.

As for the tax thing, I’m not sure how you’re calculating that, because I earn slightly more than you, but am paying considerably less even if you take into account council tax and so on. But maybe that’s to do with me being married – I don’t know.

I certainly wouldn’t argue that you (or indeed I) should be paying that much. I can afford the amount of tax I pay partly because my wife also works (though earns less than me) and partly because I have a fairly spartan lifestyle. My own view is that there should be a much higher threshold before you start paying tax at all, and that at the moment the poor and lower-middle-class are being taxed disproportionately compared to those on higher incomes. I think the rich need to be paying a far higher share of the total tax take than they are right now, and those on lower incomes far less.

As I said in the main post, taxation *is* coercive, and we do need to try any way we can of minimising its impact. I just don’t think it’s *as* damaging to freedom as not being able to eat or pay the rent…

I’m sorry I didn’t catch this blog post when it was live, so to speak.

I’d love – sincerely – to agree with you, that I have somehow abandoned pragma for dogma. That would make my life a lot easier, I can assure you.

But for us glibertarians, it’s not about having a model in our heads, it’s about believing it’s impossible to have a working model – that the only real workable solution is to just let things be, to leave them alone, and what works will work and what doesn’t won’t, but that’s the absolute best way of finding the best solution to problems – let a million people try doing it a million different ways and see what works best, and see what doesn’t.

We also tend to believe that you make you own luck – I’ve no doubt that even without your relatives you’d have found a way, because that’s who you are, what your character is like.

When it comes to tax, as someone on 20k a year paying, in total, about 10k a year in tax I just can’t agree with you that it’s neither here nor there, and the overall effects on an entire economy of a level of taxation that high, with such a huge public sector and such lavish public services is a hugely gimped private sector – and that means unemployment and higher prices. The things you’re against, the things you want to stop? Well the things you’re doing to try to compensate for those problems are making it worse, causing an endless cycle of ever increasing need, every increasing public spending and ever reducing (wealth creating) private sector. That, in a nutshell, is the glibertarian position.

:D

Kind of bending the stick, but true nonetheless.