If Only There Was a Tax on Envy

Wayne Swan is the former federal treasurer who promised a budget surplus over and over and over again, but never delivered a single one. He retweeted this tweet in response to the Government’s new tax rates.

This is either idiocy or willful ignorance. It’s simplistic propaganda to sell socialism, using sneaky and manipulative language to cover a culture of greed and envy for other people’s money.

The wiggle word to watch out for here is rate. But rate is not a measure of burden or real cost. The opportunity to be generous to people hard up is the level at which the tax-free threshold is set, ie., the amount which the government won’t tax. Earn less than that amount and you pay nothing. Zero exploitation there.

Rate is the only real measure of equality of opportunity. All socialists have ever done though is cut down tall poppies in pursuit of equality of outcome. That doesn’tdon’t make anyone permanently richer. As Churchill said, “Socialism is … the gospel of…