In the Middle Ages a serf only had to work four months of the year

[chris morton]

I think this line of approach is totally misguided!!!


We only think of taxation as wicked because we have little (or no) control over how money assigned for community use is spent. Especially that so much of it is spent on the self-aggrandisement of the rulers who are mean to be acting on our behalf, and instead minimise spending our common behalf in any way.


In the days of soft socialism between about 1945 and 1970, a reasonable proportion was spent on state and local authority based welfare, things that it made far more sense for us to buy communally rather than individually and more so when state purchasing power had some leverage.


It was precisely the eternal right wing argument against taxation, characatured as the rich having to subsidise an undesrving poor, that was one of the chief arguments deployed to make any form of socialism a vote loser. That was the 'push' and there was also the 'pull' of the rich (remember the entry of the "Gnomes of Zurich") who had money to lend refusing to lend any longer on state terms.


I don't think the Adam Smith Institute has ever figured as an advocate for sharing or equality. 


We need to direct our critique more accurately at how we have lost all influence on public policy.