riled up about taxes!

it is the unflattering truth that australia is, and will be remembered in future, as a proud vassal state of the american empire.

it's been this way more or less since the start of 1942, when curtain announced that for expediencies sake australia was replacing the uk with the usa as its foremost ally.

the most apparent difference since has been that we've changed from periodically taking part in britain's imperial adventures (boer wars, boxer rebellion etc) , to periodically taking part in america's (korea, vietnam etc)

it would probably take a sociologist, a linguist, an economic historian and a television enthusiast to even begin to properly explain the plethora of effects that this strategic shift has had over the years. sadly as a simpleton i am only afforded occasional glimpses in to the ways the american-australian power dynamic has affected the nation, the rest i must read in books.

all the same, by way of an introduction (to what im all riled up about this particular post) let me try to meat out some of the obvious first:

on a cultural level, i feel reasonably confident asserting that most australians, and certainly the younger and whiter ones, identify with america more than any other country. after all, we were raised on sesame street and it is the americans who speak english in all the classic war movies.

not much needs to be said about the political effects. australia has been a proud participant in almost all the various us wars, and recently we even agreed to station marines (which are a sort of elite soldier corps-- (there's a little info learned through war movies for you)) in darwin.

apparently we will have foreign troops stationed here to protect us from any future imperialism on the part of the notoriously-imperialist chinese. which makes sense right!

now i do not mean to suggest that the cultural exchange between australia and america is necessarily negative. needless to say there are many awesome things that come from the usa which i probably could not do without.

but there is one insidious americanism which lately has been making it's way in to the australian political scene and public spheres: the idea that taxes are bad.

everyone is aware of this argument. it goes along the lines that taxes are essentially the government (which is bad) stealing money from its rightful owners, who would otherwise reinvest this money in society (rather than be wasted by government)

there is a huge scene of well-paid proponents behind this position, both at home and abroad. it also has many corollary arguments, which usually centre around competition: more taxes will reduce competition on an international level by making australia less attractive to the quasi-mythological "investors", on a national level by discouraging people from seeking work, and on an individual level because without gigantic, literally absurd, cash incentives banking institutions and multinationals won't be able to attract the best and brightest

the argument is rubbish, obviously. it has been tried in the past (and present), and is a demonstrable failure. it crucially relies on assumptions such as a level playing field between participants, a correlation between greed and self-interest and a belief that private institutions are necessarily run more efficiently than publicly owned ones.

now i dont have the energy or credentials to thoroughly debunk the position any further than this, but rest assured it has been done before and these critiques can be easily found and digested.

what has gotten me all riled up atm is the debate surrounding taxation and the deficit. because it seems as though many are arguing from a default position where the "taxes are evil" mantra is the assumption.

the specific issue (because the deficit is more complex and i dont really want to touch it) is the debate on superannuation. part of me also wants to talk about the mining tax, but i shan't.

long story short, labor proposed fixing an intentional loophole that allows the very wealthy to effectively avoid paying tax on their saving beyond a certain amount.

(educate yourself HERE: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4633144.html )

the idea that the wealthy should pay more in tax to support the less fortunate and generally improve society is an old one, perhaps more a part of australian identity than any other western society.

it is not an exaggeration to say that this understanding that more taxes = better society is largely responsible for the fact that australia is in very many ways a nice place to live today.

so when a sensible suggestion to close a loophole which benefits only the very wealthy (during a time of supposed economic crisis) is literally met with cries of "class war" on BOTH sides of politics, something is fucked. fucked up and american; a special kind of american fucked that riles me up twice as much.

last year the best paid banker in america got over a million dollars an hour for the year, which is to say he made more in an hour than an average family over there makes in 20 years. yet in america you can always find ever more politicans from both sides squealing that any attempt to tax the wealthy more is a covert class war on their hard-won success and an attack on america's future.

and that's why things dont improve in the us, but seem only to become even more unequal over time regardless of how transparently immoral and exploitative the system becomes. because democracy in both our countries is really little more than a popular choice between two exceedingly similar teams. when they both accept that taxes are bad, and not-taxes good, we're all fucked. it's really that simple.

(and THANKYOU anonymous reader(s) but i am, in fact, aware that the two systems are very different in a large number of ways both technical and practical. i refer in my posts to the de facto choice facing the electorates: in both nations there are only two parties that realistically stand a chance of being elected anytime soon)

i am reluctant to accept that i have absolutely no power to shift the debate back to reality anytime soon because my influence in politics does not extend beyond this blog. so what i can and will do is yell at my friends when they display their terribly adult opinion that (contrary to evidence and common-sense) taxes are stopping growth and dooming us all.

because fuck you idiot! im a rabidly nationalistic patriot and your anti-government and anti-tax views are offending my historical sense of australian identity!

tax the rich i say, tax them real good. it's crazy to me that in a country supposedly obsessed with team sports so many ppl would reject out of hand the idea that the well-off and/or giant mining companies should contribute more.