Taxing times

ONE of the interesting things about Irish political journalists and commentators is how little they know, or understand, about politics. Collectively, they sometimes appear to be a group of priests giving marriage advice. They don’t really understand it, they’ve no particular experience of it, but they’re very sure they’re right.
Now don’t get me wrong, many of them are great on the horse race aspect of Irish politics: which party is up and which is on the way down, who’s in line for a junior ministry, the strokes and the tricks of modern Irish politics. But anything deeper than that (like the priest discussing a couple’s sex life) seems weird and uncomfortable to them.
The fault, in fairness, lies not with them. Politics in the 26 Counties is dominated by two parties broadly free of ideology or political thinking. There is utterly none of it in Fianna Fáil; the occasional isolated stirrings of extreme right-wing political thinking in Fine Gael; and in Labour a vague wish that poor people would be less poor, while preferably not turning up at one’s dinner party.
So when journalists have to write about parties or politicians motivated by something other than this being the party their daddy was in, they often miss the point. Take our new Household Charge, opposed by every single left-wing party in the state. A number of analysts like Michael Clifford in The Sunday Times, Ann Marie Hourihane in The Irish Times (and others) seem confused by this. Why are socialists opposing a Household Charge?
Surely, some have argued, socialists want to increase taxes. Isn’t that what socialism is about? Why would left-wing parties oppose a new tax? Sure isn’t that mad, Ted?
Well, Dougal, the thing here is that socialists oppose and support new taxes based on whether they make sense from our political point of view. Yes, we want more taxes but targeted at a very specific group of people – those who are not paying their fair share.
At the end of last June, the World Wealth Report showed that the number of ‘High Net Worth Individuals’ (a technical term meaning rich people) in Ireland had increased (yes, increased), 5% from 2009 to 2010 – in the middle of a recession. Yet taxes on these people remain low by European standards, to say nothing of the countless tax breaks that the Government never bothered to collect statistics for so we don’t even know how much they’re costing us.
I want to tax them all until they feel the same pain as  the rest of us. I want to bottle and sell their tears as a refreshing alternative to bottled water. In short, I want them to pay their fair share and to take that money and use it to invest in public services, helping the most vulnerable, and in tax cuts.
Yes, tax cuts. Because ordinary people like you and I pay too much in tax. Oh, they don’t call it that: they call it the Universal Social Charge, or the Bin Tax, or a 2% VAT rise, or the new Household Charge. All the taxes and charges that hit us harder than them, that take a greater proportion out of our pockets and purses than from them.
We’ve just covered two basic socialist principles here: redistribution of wealth (taking money off rich people and using it to help those who aren’t) and class struggle (us and them). They’re not particularly complicated, I don’t think, some would even describe them as simplistic and old-fashioned, but not the rich.
Warren Buffet is one of America’s most successful businessmen. He’s estimated to be the third wealthiest person in the world. “Yes, there is class warfare,” he once observed. “But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” True for you, Warren.
The Household Charge is ‘only’ a hundred euro, it’s said, but that’s how it starts. When they introduced the bin charges they were a lot less and there were waivers. Since then, driven largely by Labour councils, the waivers have gone and the charges have gone up so people are dumping their rubbish by the side of the road as they can’t afford to pay.
Opposing this new tax isn’t hard to understand, it’s simple socialism or, as Pa Carney would put it, it’s just common sense.