Sunday 3 June 2007

Left and right: all the same?

So, most Labour members want to increase the top rate of tax to 50%.

In addition:

Almost 60% want Brown to “slow down and fundamentally rethink the strategy for ‘Blairite’ reforms of health, education and the other public services”, and to renationalise the railways even if this means putting up taxes.
No surprises with any of this really.

But what about this statement in the Sunday Times article:

Party members are not left wing on all issues. Most would back a law to allow terrorist suspects to be held for 90 days, rather than today’s 28-day limit.
So, let's get this straight. It's "left wing" to use the power of the state to expropriate much of your income and waste it on all kinds of useless boondoggles, but somehow not "left wing" to use that same state's powers to expropriate your freedom for 90 days.

The issue isn't "left" versus "right", but freedom versus statism.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

TDK
somehow not "left wing" to use that same state's powers to expropriate your freedom for 90 days 
 
It depends on your base line.  
 
I would say it was pretty left wing to have (not necessarily to endorse) the power to arbitrarily arrest you and hold you in a gulag or re-education camp for 20 years. On that basis it is pretty right wing to argue for only a 90 day limit.

16 June 2007, 15:40:52 GMT+01:00
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Tony Coggans
Fifty percent? Has Arthur Laffer lived in vain? 
 
Even nitwit Marxists, with whom Scotland is more than adequately provided, must know that there are two rates of income tax at which their cosmic 'social justice' provider, the Government, derives no revenue, viz.,0% and 100%. 
 
Thanks to Prof Laffer we now know that the optimum revenue-raising tax rate is much lower than that formerly set by governments of both the Labour and Tory parties.

8 June 2007, 11:19:01 GMT+01:00