I'm fairly consistent when it involves removing unnecessary government bureaucracy from a problem which could be solved with a simple changing of the rules. Also I've spent years building software for users who make stupid/lazy/selfish mistakes all the time - I've learned that you should try to build a system around the way people actually behave, rather than shouting at the people and telling them to use the software the way you think it should be used. The same goes for government - if lots of people are abusing a system then you need to change the system, rather than change the people (or companies in this scenario). And that's the problem with a lot of Leftist theory - it's constantly trying to change people into something they are not, it tries to surreptitiously conscript us all into a collective when quite a lot of us are not naturally collectivist, quite a lot of us are individualist and have no wish to engage in the Two Minute Hate against whatever person, company or expense abusing politician is the enemy of the people on this particular morning. Up the Ra.
It wasn't your recommending the abolition of corporation tax that surprised me - it was the fact you neatly bookended that by saying the minimum wage should be increased. A recognition that dog eat cat economics benefits no one because of course, we are not just atomised individuals; like it or not, we're all part of a broader community, and dependent to some extent on each other. We are collectivist by nature, in other words.
Lowering taxes and upping minimum wage is a pragmatic solution for me - it puts the money directly into the hands of those who most need it from those who make it, it's a market based solution to redistributing wealth to the very bottom percentage of workers without the need for government (low skilled jobs are often necessary but will always float around minimum wage since everyone can do them, the market mostly rewards highly skilled people fairly). It goes against Laissez-faire dogma yes, but everyone sensible knows that we were always going to have to give a bit of freedom up for the sake of egalitarian justice, and this seems like one of the cleaner ways to do it without involving a mass bureaucracy. BTW Friedrich Hayek (one of the darlings of the Classical Liberal school) who was Thatcher's favourite economist (although she ignored the 75% of his theories which didn't fit Tory agenda) was all for a minimum wage, state education, state health care, a state pension and state social security - he just advised that the state stay out of almost everything else and that it is paid for using taxes on consumption (rather than income, so that the individual is free to either pay taxes now for immediate consumer gratification, or use the would-be-taxes to build permanent capital [and jobs] by opening a business, etc). I think that's probably as close as you'll get to my ideology... that you can pick off a shelf anyway.
Mick - I hate lefties that want stuff for nothing. Real life Mick - I torrent ****loads of stuff, set up dodgy cable for my pikey neighbours and support them ripping off the state.
Read what I write for once - if people are abusing a system en masse you change the system, instead of endlessly preaching that they are doing it wrong (like Rebelbhoy defending the devastatingly ineffective "don't have unmarried sex" Catholic solution to AIDs...)
