There is a superb comment piece by Jamie Whyte in yesterday’s Times which draws attention to a problem with the entire philosophy underlying Gordon Brown’s approach towards the role of the state in the provision of services.
‘Suppose Gordon Brown were to make a legal reality out of the rights he proclaims at Labour Party conferences. Suppose he guaranteed everyone “the highest standard of free healthcare”, “the best start in life” and all the rest…', Whyte invites us to imagine before remarking: 'This may sound like Utopia [but] ‘in fact it would be serfdom.’
To pay for such levels of provision would require tax rates that would deprive all citizens of any purchasing power and hence any freedom of choice. To fund current levels of state provision, which take up 40% of GDP, involves tax rates that leave all but the very rich entirely at the mercy of whatever the state supplies by way of services, such as health and education, and without means to choose alternative forms of provision.
Whyte’s proposed remedy is for the state to stop simultaneously attempting to achieve two objectives by means of state-funded services of which, he contends, only one is at all laudable, but can be far better achieved otherwise. The other objective is as un-needed as it is undesirable, and, he claims, we would all be better off were the state to desist from attempting to achieve it through state provision of services like health and education.
The desirable objective is to ensure everyone has enough to meet their basic needs and that of their dependants, an objective that Whyte claims is achievable without need of the state supplying any services itself merely by its guaranteeing all a minimum income through tax-funded cash-transfers.
The undesirable objective state-funded services are designed to achieve, that Whyte contends we would be better off were the state to stop attempting to achieve, is to ensure all put to good use whatever income is at their disposal, rather than blow it on luxuries or in ways that will do them harm.
Of such cash transfers as would occur under his proposed scheme, Whyte denies recipients would ‘would blow it all on booze and fags or something similarly frivolous’.
Instead, he conjectures spending on health and education would increase, presumably as responsible middle-income households currently taxed too heavily to be able to afford private health and education became able to supplement whatever amount the state takes from them in tax to pay for these services, something at present they cannot do.
Whyte is to be applauded for having re-opened this issue, when both main parties seem intent on occupying the centre-ground that would commit them both to levels of state provision that are bound to make ever more people increasingly reliant on the state and increasingly less able to be independent and autonomous.
Readers of the Civitas blog are invited to identify what possible objections champions of state provision are liable to level at Whyte’s proposed scheme, and how, if at all, the objections can be met. Sadly, current swingeing tax rates preclude cash prizes for the best suggestions.