Who will rid us?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who has been having a certain amount of trouble keeping the Church he is supposed to be in charge of together, has been pontificating again. This time, he addressed the TUC Economics Conference (there's glory for you) and explained that he thought higher taxes were a GOOD THING. Whether his audience agreed with him we do not know as the article was written ahead of the event.

Why are higher taxes a good thing? Well, because unlimited growth is neither possible nor desirable, it being one of those things that erode our habitat and our society so clearly we need to control it through taxation.

Dr Williams claimed that the “fantasies of unlimited growth” had led to a “vicious cycle” in which consumers are encouraged to buy more goods, which also uses up limited energy and raw materials.

Instead, he said the economy should be geared towards creating a secure and sustainable environment for families.

As part of this, the archbishop said: “We have to ask about ‘green taxes’ (including ‘green’ tax breaks) that will check environmental irresponsibility and build up resources to address the ecological crises that menace us.

“It is of course connected with other proposals about currency exchange taxation – the ‘Tobin tax’ idea: the point is that we should be thinking about taxation neither as an unreasonable burden on enterprise nor as a simple mechanism of redistribution but as a potentially sophisticated tool for long-term ‘economy’ – housekeeping.

“Taxation builds a habitat – already, quite properly, through state welfare provision, but potentially in other less familiar ways.”

The man seems to be economically, historically and politically ignorant. Resources are not limited in that new ones can be found or invented as they have been for centuries. One of the things that restrains development of that kind is government control and high taxation.

Furthermore, has His Bloviation actually examined what high taxation and the ever growing welfare state as well as the ever growing bureaucracy, which snaffles up a very large part of the tax, have done to this country, its society and its habitat? Truly, he exhibits the infantilism of the Left.