Originally uploaded to my previous blog. The Irish election mentioned herein was in February
There’s a 4 letter “F” word that is being thrown around a lot on TV and the internet these days, and I don’t like it. Kids are hearing it and starting to think it’s acceptable to use in everyday parlance. I’m here to put an end to it!
Its “Fair”
“Fair trade, fair share, fair taxation” etc
“But Cathal, how could you possibly have an issue with the word fair…Surely it only has good connotations”
Well, reader, that’s kind of the point. It’s a nice term that is literally undefinable in a political context.
What is a “fair” level of tax? I don’t know..do you?
Politicians love using the term fair, precisely because it’s undefinable. It can mean literally anything they want depending on what their beliefs are. Whatever policy they want to implement is done in the interest of “fairness”, and who can argue with making things fairer?
There are some on the campaign trail in Ireland that want to raise the Irish corporate tax rate to 15% from 12.5%…in the interest of “fairness”. What specifically is fair about 15%…why not 16% or 14%?
It’s because taxation rates have nothing to do with “fairness”, and everything to do with paying for whatever the politician in question thinks is a good idea to spend money on and most importantly, to be SEEN to be fair by the voting public.
Whatever tax rate is needed to pay for said policies is where the tax rate is going to be set (although politicians/governments tend to be terrible at being able to project how much taxation their policies will generate)
Pretty much ANY political policy can be legitimised on the basis of “fairness”.
Fairness is basically defined as “treating people equitably without favouritism or discrimination”
Well, saying you’re going to tax some people one percentage and another group of people a different percentage, would appear to be both discriminatory and using favouritism….doesn’t it?
“Fairness” has been used more prevalently in recent years when discussing the richest 1% of any given population. The argument being that because so much wealth has been accumulated by the richest 1% , policies need to be enacted to redistribute money from this 1% to the remaining 99%. Many argue that the richest 1% has benefitted from low taxes and that taxation has unfairly benefitted them at the expense of the other 99%…but s that true.
According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Centre in America, the richest 1% pay 45.7% of individual income taxes with the bottom 60% paying a meagre 2%….Is that “fair”…would it be “more fair” if they paid 50% of all tax…how about 55%? See? It’s completely arbitrary.
In Ireland, the richest 1% pay over 30% of all income tax despite making only 9% of income. Is that fair? Is it more or less fair than the American model? See? Nobody can answer that, because nobody bothers to define “fair”. Using the previous definition of fair, making people pay a disproportionately high amount of tax is decidedly UNFAIR.
Politicians can say they’re going to make the richest 1% pay more in taxes and do so while being completely at ease.
Why?
Because no one ever lost an election by appealing to 99% of the population and saying that the 1% are screwing it up for everyone.
Not to invoke Godwin’s law, but did you ever wonder HOW Hitler got so many people on his side pre-WWII?…By telling people in the aftermath of a great recession that the Jews were hoarding wealth, and that Jewish bankers were ruining the country. They were an easy target. They made up a small minority and couldn’t vote in enough numbers to change anything. They were the perfect scapegoat.
Politicians don’t care about what’s “fair”…they can’t even define what “fair” is. What they want is to get into power so that they can carry out whatever policy they happen to think is a good idea and force everyone to follow their agenda.
Fun fact: If you make more than $32k, E29k or £23k per annum, you are in the global 1%…in the interest of global inequality, should people making over these figures be forced to pay an extra 10% in taxes, and have it redistributed?…..Sounds fair right?