tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post9001419771546262465..comments2024-03-26T09:38:39.888+00:00Comments on Borthlas: Do we need to become less efficient?John Dixonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-9025365458591878002010-08-13T09:50:28.298+01:002010-08-13T09:50:28.298+01:00James,
I agree that we should focus on encouragin...James,<br /><br />I agree that we should focus on encouraging genuine enterprise within Wales, of course. But that doesn't get us off the hook that 'growth' is ultimately limited where it depends on finite resources.John Dixonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07447224248021209852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-78640060480441694712010-08-12T18:12:22.645+01:002010-08-12T18:12:22.645+01:00It's certainly not an original idea that peopl...It's certainly not an original idea that people should work fewer hours – it's what Bertrand Russell was getting at in <a href="http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html" rel="nofollow">In Praise of Idleness</a>.<br /><br />But we should also focus on encouraging genuine enterprise. It is a bad attitude to expect the big company to come in from outside Wales and create a few hundred jobs. Welsh people can succeed, but are being held back by the English-imposed tax system penalizing the profit margins of small businesses, knocking some activities from being marginally profitable to marginally unprofitable. We need to move away from the idea that it is anything other than economic suicide to tax success: this means that we in Wales should seek the powers to abolish VAT, National Insurance, Corporation Tax, Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, and Inheritance Tax. The only commodities that should be taxable are (1) those that have an environmental or health impact (e.g. aeroplanes, drugs, and gambling); and (2) land.<br /><br />It is only with a tax system primarily based on land (as we so very nearly got in 1909, thanks to David Lloyd George, the last politician to command support in all parts of Wales) that the word "efficient" begins to make sense: a small business run out of someone's back room is efficient (and also, as Jane Jacobs reminded us in the Economy of Cities, where innovation takes place); the sort of waste of urban land that consists of large foreign-owned single-storey buildings in an ocean of surface car parking is not. It is just madness that we currently over-tax the efficient, whilst the inefficient are able to hide in tax havens. Worse still that we enforce this with an out-of-control planning system that seeks to stifle small enterprise with use categories, whilst having quangos to bend to the whims of those large inefficient parts of the economy and to ignore democracy.<br /><br />So, yes, people should share in the benefits of modern technology and work less, but we should absolutely not resign ourselves to the ongoing destruction of the Welsh economy. It is good to choose idleness; it is obscene to have it forced upon one by an illiberal state intent on sucking the life out of Wales.James Dowdenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11058389162481491681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411161795798360588.post-19273268253270094012010-08-11T14:15:02.374+01:002010-08-11T14:15:02.374+01:00"But if continued compound economic growth is..."But if continued compound economic growth is ultimately unsustainable, as I believe it to be, then depending on growth to solve the problem of unemployment is a strategy which is doomed to failure."<br /><br />Exactly. I share that view, particularly when you factor in externalities like environmental damage.<br /><br />Take food production. Might we benefit from returning to less intensive, less efficient ways of food production? Of course we would. The 'loss' of increased growth would surely be offset but the growth in food security and loss of environmental and health damage?<br /><br />To me it is vital that we put forward and alternative, local and native Welsh economy that produces a happy, healthy and green society; where productive work is available, but we don't see GDP as some panacea.<br /><br />The reduction of our societal health to merely an economic numbers game is to our detriment.Plaid Panteghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01245469394371943152noreply@blogger.com