Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live.
He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable.
Ahh, good. Another illustration from Anglicanism’s poster boy for the Peter Principle. Is there a way he can be promoted out of his current position? I wonder if he could do more damage as Prime Minister than he has already done in the church?
Once again, we’re all being lectured by a man who lives in one of the largest palace residences in the world, tended to by countless servants, assistants, maintenance and security people. Did I mention that he does this tax-free?
You will recall that his presentation at General Convention was directed at “World Poverty.” I would suspect that this is a very strange and foreign subject for a man who has never lived it. As I see it, pontifications regarding “poverty” by someone who is extremely wealthy tends to ring rather shallow.
Please don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t envy the man his job and responsibilities, however, one must admit that the benefits he enjoys are rather posh by anyone’s standard.
Given what the good Archbishop is postulating, wouldn’t it be more than reasonable for him to consider becoming a living example and start redistributing what he and the Church has possession of? Somehow, I just can’t see that happening.
Still, I would think that he should begin his efforts by taking the plank out of his own eye before lecturing everyone else on the subject.
Dr. Williams’ words sound so pious and selfless, but somehow I imagine the serpent’s whispers sounded similarly sweet. If and when his pontifications are manifested in reality, and I pray to God they are not, the whisper will certainly morph into a hiss. This is not to say I believe Dr. Williams’ intentions are impure; I simply think, like generations of Israelites and believers before him, he’s not remembering who God is in relation to his creatures. Clearly the insatiable behemoth of government is made up of creatures and cannot serve as God, yets Dr. Williams seems to think this is the road to Kingdom Come. My estimation is that government is used by God to free his people. Here we have a creature wishing to limit freedom in the name of God. Yikes!
Will it ever be possible for us to plumb the limit of this man’s ignorance and wrong-headedness? It appears that whenever I think he could not be more wonrg that he manages to exceed his previous record. Is the anything at all that he’s good at?
#4
Crossword puzzles? Maybe?
Its ironic. I was told by an eyewitness that after Dr. Williams lectured on Christian Faithfulness in the Global Economic Crisis at General Convention he was taken to Ruth’s Chris Steak House just down the street from the Anaheim convention center.
Ah yes trust more taxes to the politicians…we could bail out a few banks, clean a few moats, create unbelivable layers of red tape for our health and education systems to keep civil servants busy and pay hundreds of thousands to local council chief execs who could move every other year for the golden handshake and goodbye!
Honestly- what is needed is integrity and a better spending of the resources we have. More money is manifestly NOT the answer- better public servants is. Or am I out on a limb here
Hold your horses, Old Soldier: Geoffrey Fisher loved doing crossword puzzles for reasons explained in a refreshing new biography of one of the twentieth century’s most underrated abps of Canterbury. I frequently ponder what it would be like if Fisher were archbishop of Canterbury now; he was pretty much a no-nonsense sort of fellow, and he got a lot of good things done.
One can argue that he was a more effective leader of the Anglican Communion than either of the better-known (and better-loved) abps on either side of him: W. Temple and M. Ramsey. Fisher’s life and career are worth renewed attention today, and in particular what he did to build up the Anglican Communion, whose hard-won unity is now so much in peril, is well worth considering.
That will be the same Fisher who author Roald Dahl remembered from school days, beating boys till they bled and then eerily mopping their cuts……
No. 9: Precisely. And the operative phrase in your statement is “author Roald Dahl remembered.” Get this book–
http://wipfandstock.com/store/Geoffrey_Fisher_Archbishop_of_Canterbury_19451961
–and turn to the section on pp. 9-10: “The Roald Dahl Controversy.” There you will find that Dahl’s biographer, Jeremy Treglown, makes it clear that Dahl fingered the wrong man! The incident took place one year after Fisher left Repton. And, Treglown goes on to point out, Dahl “gives the impression that the beating was purely arbitrary…. In fact, the offender, who was almost eighteen and a house prefect, had been caught in bed with a younger boy.”
Further, he notes that Dahl himself, in his student days, could sometimes be sadistic and bullying.
None of this is to excuse or whitewash Fisher’s harsh and sometimes repressive manner, all of which is gone into thoroughly in this new biography, but it does help to raise questions about the Dahl account–I believe the first Fisher biography, btw, to deal with this matter.
So Rowan Williams thinks we should look only at the potential intended good that could come from taxation, rather than considering the unintended consequences? Maybe our governments could also pass a law mandating that wishes actually [i]are[/i] horses.
Maybe the good reverend doctor should shed his clerical robes and spend a week, month, or a year’s sabbatical in practical living at the grassroots level, making a working class wage, paying those taxes. Then let’s see if he has any insights on any other bright spark ideas.
The ABC must be a Cainsian.
Kendall, the Tobin Tax is not a bad idea. The author was an internationally respected economist who sought to prevent destabilizing countries. After all, banks and corporations are built to be self-interested agents, unimpressed with notions of the common good or caring for the poor. Neither should they be. As an investor, the only thing I want a corporation to do is make me rich.
But nations should have the right to protect themselves from sudden investment and divestment at the whims of people like (ironically) George Soros. Perhaps with such a tax, Bankers might have thought twice before putting the word’s economy at risk.
There are good reasons for such a tax, reasons given by respected economists. Granted, it upsets many free-market ideologues, But if [url=http://www.tnr.com/article/how-i-became-keynesian]Posner can find Keynes[/url], perhaps it’s time for others to give Keynes’ students a more thoughtful hearing.
My point Kendall – is that it is not “dumb.” It is a reasoned view, a good one, even if it may not be perfect. It may not be what the world needs. But this does not illustrate the Archbishop’s lack of thought on this matter.
I find it ironic that the Archbishop of Canterbury is saying higher taxes would be good for a society recently rocked by a scandal involving Parliament Members using tax money for ridiculous things like salaries of personal gardeners and other extravagance.
Yes, tax revenue can be used for the common good, but it can also be used for the common bad. Given the British government’s current spat of corruption, I think there needs to be a general election called before massive tax revenue further tempts Members of Parliament to misuse it and further abuse the public trust.
#14, Mr. Wilkins – I don’t believe you understand exactly who will be paying this tax. Investors such as worker’s contributing to a 401K or small business owners investing in mutual funds for their retirement are primary “beneficiaries” of this tax, as it cuts into their savings each time one of their funds buys or sells any holdings and the tax gets assessed on the “value” of said buy/sell transaction. The big, bad banks and financial firms are not going to be the ones paying this tax. They will pass it on to the individual investors and as always it will be the poor schlubs who try to play by the rules and invest what earnings they can save so they can have a decent retirement. If you look at the cumulative effects of a tax like this across a number of years, the wonders of compounding will have a significant negative effect on earnings within an investment or retirement account.
There are two different issues: one is how a society expects to share resources and collect dues for the infrastructure that promotes the general welfare. Some people do not like sharing, nor do they like paying dues in organizations. Taxes are kinds of dues.
Taxes can both promote and inhibit growth, depending on how they are used.
But the other issue is to spend wisely and responsibly. One can seek to promote the common good, but also seek fiscal responsibility. it used to be liberal Republicans who believed in this, but they are now pretty much gone.
“Some people do not like sharing, nor do they like paying dues in organizations.”
Sounds like a job for Supernanny. Who’s for the Naughty Step, then?
“Taxes are kinds of dues.”
Which is why 50% don’t pay federal income tax but still get to vote in ‘The Club’.
Thanks for these stunning explanations of political economy, Mr Rogers!
Today’s paper had this headline from the Associated Press. “Feds waste $98 billion on improper payments.” When I see horrific headlines like this, there is no way the ABC can convince me that higher taxes are a good thing.
Rowan on taxes and Rowan on the Anglican Communion, equal capability demonstrated, multiple times.
#18 – Dcn Dale, definitely there should be more fiscal responsibility. AFter all, look at how much we waste in the military. I just wish we “wasted” that much helping people.
But it’s naive to think that corporations don’t waste. That’s why “Dilbert” and “The office” ring true to so many. Waste is a part of lots of institutions, not just the government.
#17 Azusa, I’m sure you are one of the few people who is always rational and knows how to save and spend money correctly. I admire people like you.
Most people do need to be taught to share and play nice. Most people need to learn that the infrastructure of our country costs money and isn’t free. Because it’s human nature to want something for nothing. And it’s not liberals who think so – its conservatives like Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Burke. I find the idea that the state – who we elect – as always evil and corporations – which are deliberately self-interested – as always good, fairly amusing. It’s a beautiful dream.
My own view is… it depends. Some things a market is good at organizing, other things it’s not. These can be learned from observation, not by ideology.
Why doesn’t the good Archbishop worry about religious matters and getting his church back to Scripture and let the secular people worry about taxes.
# 20: Thanks, John, I’m always glad to help – and share!
Rather than some trite moralistic comments about “sharing”, why not reflect more deeply about: ballooning budgets; the belief that you can shift responsibility to ‘The Other’; making populations into wards of the state; the growing client-patron character of the US political economy.
Plenty of material in Burke, Sowell – and Augustine.
Rowan is a self-confessed Socialist (the real thing, not what gets called socialism in the US), so it should not surprise us that he speaks in this way. But then, if his comments from the ‘hairy left’ don’t stand up under scrutiny, the same could be said of many of the views that come from the ‘hairy right!’
RE: “Some people do not like sharing, nor do they like paying dues in organizations.”
Some people enjoy stealing money from others to make themselves feel more charitable, too.
John, the Tobin tax is a very bad idea. It is also a dumb idea. None of this is to say anything about Mr. Tobin, since capable people can come up with very bad ideas–remember Long-Term Capital Management? This is another one of your many non-sequiturs.
The transaction tax is a dumb idea since it will do the opposite of what it claims. It claims to raise tax revenue, but overall it will actually LOSE tax revenue. In addition it will have huge collateral damage leading to all sorts of problems, not least of which will be job losses.
A baseball coach who has a plan to win the game which will cost his team the game has a dumb plan. That doesn’t mean the coach is not a quite capable or fine person.
#25: “None of this is to say anything about Mr. Tobin, since capable people can come up with very bad ideas”…”The transaction tax…will do the opposite of what it claims. It claims to raise tax revenue….”
No. Tobin’s idea was that it would discourage short-term speculative transactions between currencies.
#26 ,sorry, but no. This article is about the “transaction tax” which is what is being touted now by some folks as a revenue raiser. It actually isn’t helpful in my view to call this the “tobin tax” since Mr. Tobin as you note was concerned about something else (you may note I do not use the term tobin tax if I can). This is a debate on the current terms in the current climate, the one Dr. Williams chimed in on.
And today’s advocates claim it is a revenue raiser for the government–which it isn’t when it is properly understood in terms of its impact.
re: #27 Sigh. Perhaps I misunderstood #25, and if so I regret that. Perhaps in particular I may have misunderstood what was being attributed to whom in #25. But it does lead off with, “the Tobin tax is a very bad idea. It is also a dumb idea”, so I think one can see how #25 would be taken as being about Tobin’s intent among other things. Tobin’s intent was as stated in #26, (and the Tobin tax, by the way, strikes me as anything but a bad/dumb idea as a way to achieve Tobin’s intent, even if requiring multinational implementation in order to work).
It now appears we agree that Rowan Williams has a different intent — upon which I was not, and am not, commenting. My point was precisely as stated in #26: Tobin’s intent differed from that of Rowan Williams. That’s what I was trying to point out.
“The transaction tax is a dumb idea since it will do the opposite of what it claims. It claims to raise tax revenue, but overall it will actually LOSE tax revenue. In addition it will have huge collateral damage leading to all sorts of problems, not least of which will be job losses.”
I’m not sure if this is empirically correct. It seems that without the tax, plenty of job losses have happened anyway. What may happen is that in some places, jobs aren’t created, or lost, as quickly. Most likely, the tax will reduce income for the uber rich, but they aren’t now creating the jobs we expect them to be to be creating anyway.
But it seems that there is a supply side argument that argues that less taxes increases revenue. This is, unfortunately, not universally true, and after a while makes no sense. It may raise revenue in the short term. But in the long term, it doesn’t.
Nobody likes paying taxes. Of course not. I personally don’t consider the government to be “stealing” my money. I live in the US and want to do what I can to ensure that i’m protected and that there is social order and that there’s a sewage system. some don’e want to pay for it. They are free-riders. They will call the government stealing money from them to set up hospitals and schools and such stealing, even though they benefit from it in the long term.
It would be nice to live on an island without anyone else.
Just so that we are all clear on the motivation for the transaction tax by its (few) current advocates:
http://www.easybourse.com/bourse/actualite/2nd-updatepelosius-couldn-t-implement-763810
John in #29, it has to do with behavioral economics. This kind of a tax changes the playing field as a result of which all sorts of people and participants will change their behavior. ALL of these behavioral changes have to be taken into consideration in order to show the overall tax revenue implications of such a proposal.
If you understand the way markets work, and especially what has happened with the technological and information revolutions since the 1980’s, and that an entire culture and its related multiple additional subcultures have arisen all around the markets as individuals have participated in many ways as never before, then you can see that the collateral damage will be MASSIVE. This MASSIVE change will have significant tax implications which almost all advocates do not even think of, much less mention. The question is the OVERALL tax revenue implications of the proposal given all of the subsequent changes it will cause.
The result will be much less corporate revenue, less individual revenue, job loss, small business loss, website and pay site implications, computer, phone and internet implications, and the list gets very long very quickly. All of those additional changes will result in more revenue loss for the government.
This has nothing to do with supply side economics, John, nor with taxes in general or people paying their fair share. What it does have to do with is the obliteration of the democratization of the markets which has come in new ways in the last few decades.