Thursday, April 08, 2010

What about a society with neither rich nor poor?

On Sunday we received an email from the Fairer Tax Campaign which said:
The Fairer Tax Campaign is a not-for-profit and non-partisan project that is in favour of national income tax reform.
We believe that Britain needs to become collectively fairer. The gap between the rich and the poor has continued to grow for decades, which has only served to create a divided society. This is unacceptable for a developed country with one of the largest economies in the world. More needs to be done to tackle the aforementioned disparity. Fairer income tax is part of the solution.
We propose that that the tax free personal allowance threshold be raised to £10,000 for anyone earning less than £18,000 a year. This will be subsidised by reducing the threshold for the 50% tax rate from £150,000 to £100,000. It will ensure that the rich pay more and the poor pay less.
Question 1: Do you agree in principle with the aforementioned policy?
Question 2: In a generic sense, do you believe that the rich should pay more tax and the poor should pay less tax?
Question 3: If you are elected as an MP, do you pledge to campaign for income tax reform at the next parliament?
We look forward to receiving your response.
We replied:
The Socialist Party is standing on a platform of socialism (common ownership, democratic control, production for use not profit, and distribution according to need not money) and nothing but. We are not advocating reform of capitalism. Your reform (trying to permanently redistribute income from the rich to the poor) has been tried many times and has always failed because it is undermined by the way the capitalist system works and has to work, as is explained in this article. It would be more effective to work for a society in which there will be neither rich nor poor.
As our reply was not published along with others on their website we asked why and received the following reply:
We can confirm that we did receive your email. However, as you can tell by our blog, we only upload answers of those politicians who broadly agree in principle, part or whole with the Fairer Tax Campaign (or progressive tax reform in general). So far, politicians from 11 different party affiliations have done so. It was clear from your response that you neither agreed with FTC in principle, part or whole. If we are mistaken, by all means send us a response to our questions that matches the criteria above and we will upload your answer. We can understand if you are unable to do so for ideological reasons. We hope that has been clarified and wish you all the best.
In the end our reply was published as a comment. By the look of those who have signed up this reformist bankwagon is not going anywhere anyway.

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