On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:51:59 +0100, SteveH was popularly supposed to have said:
What a lovely theory, sir! I salute it, I do! I positively take my hat off to it and worship it!
Right before I blow it out of the water, that is.
The simple thing is, human nature doesn't work like this. If you know that if you ascend all the way to the 100K salary only to have some greedy bugger go and nick most of it, you won't actually bother. I mean, why work harder for no more reward? Why not let some other bugger do the hard graft earning all that tax for the government whilst you do not a great deal and live moderately comfortably doing not a great deal of work?
Welcome to the Old Labour Ethos.
The problem here is that *everybody* does these sort of mental sums, except for the bosses who pay accountants to work out how to smuggle the money out of the country, so the bosses (and their accountants) can retire to the sun in comfort.
The net result is an economy not so much flat as supine, a dying manufacturing industry, mbutt unemployment and mbutt unrest.
Lovely, lovely theory, is Communism. Yes, you're suggesting a Communistic sort of theory of how to run an economy.
Problem with Communism is that with no prospect of rewards, no bugger actually does very much, which is why the Communist regimes had to introduce incentive schemes to make people actually get off their arses and do things.
Lib Dem's plans to tax motorists 650Try "majority of the working population who don't work in a major city & live close to a railway line". It's not vastly different round my neck of the woods. With the "promised" tax...
This lack of motivation is also why no regime of any note still uses a Communistic economic model.
-- By caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, By the beans of Java do thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning, By caffeine alone do I set my mind in motion
