Consumer, taxpayer, same difference. If you live in the UK (especially London), you’re constantly getting (mind the language, please) f#cked. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while – ever since this recession story made headlines – ever since Lehamn Brothers and Woolworths went out of business, but I’ve got my own battles to fight.
Long since my reading about Fair Tax in the United States, I have been a fan of the Fair Tax Proposal. Fair Tax essentially states that you only pay tax when you buy something. This is great for the consumer; it means you spend carefully. Suppliers are motivated to provide better products and services or you could go international and the government has reason to support businesses – the former only makes money if the latter are doing well.
Although I’m not saying that the theory of fair taxation is a flawless one – it has yet to be put to test – the democratic economic system (or whatever the hell you want to call it – it’s certainly not capitalist), followed by primarily most of Europe or the UK, is nothing short of hedonism.
Most of the so called developed world, and Europe today is the leading continent with that title along with our American friends (as eastern nations witness the dark ages), financially and emotionally violate their citizens. Now I haven’t lived in other parts of Europe, so I will stop alleging that they are categorical cheats. However, it saddens me to say that the British Government, the parliament, the bureaucracy – they all function with this one motive – screw the middle man – many of these middle men are so silly they don’t realize they’re getting screwed over in the process. I am sure you all are already familiar with this and if you aren’t, well, maybe this will explain why neither the liberals nor the conservatives of Britain stuck to their principles come election time. They are all out to get you. That is their greater purpose.
OK, so I will build the entire argument on a £3,000 per month pre-tax earning. Let’s say you earned that amount this month. Now, we’ll assume that you’re not one of those compromising residents of London who’s decided to live in shared accommodation. If that’s what you aspire for, you’re most likely happy being ravaged. Some of us have a little more ambition than that.
Out of this £3000 you will end up paying over 30% in PAYE and National Insurance. Many will actually pay more than this. The small business gets penalized grossly for hiring British employees – the government’s first step to ruin the economy and promote outsourcing to the Indias and Pakistans of the world. So, back to our simple mathematics, you are now left with £2100 (if you missed it, that’s £900 for the government). Don’t know about others, but my council tax is about 5% of what I earn pre taxation. That’s another £150 gone. Now, let’s talk about VAT. Almost everything has VAT, with an exception to some of the basics. Say you spend £600 on taxable groceries. Out of this, you’ve paid 17.5% VAT. This means you’ve paid another £105 to the government. This means that so far you’ve been robbed of £1155 (that’s £900 in payroll taxes, £150 in council tax and £105 in VAT on basic household items). Now, if you have a car, you are spending another £15 a month on road tax. If you live in London, you most likely also need a monthly ticket for the tube. Now there’s no tax on the train tickets, but you don’t exactly have a choice but to buy this. It is the price you pay for living in London – pay for a seat on the tube you will hardly ever get. It’s generally called overselling and is punishable under the law (in a fair and just system) but on the London Underground it’s called ‘moving right down into the carriage’. What a load of crap – pay £150 a month to COMPROMISE on the tube. If you live in your own flat or house on that salary, you’re probably living in zone 4+. So that’s another £135 for the train pass. It goes to TFL which is a puppet of the government, so the money essentially goes in the political basket – God knows they don’t fix the trains or the tracks. Wait, we all know that.
Let’s do a recap. How much money has the government taken from you so far, between travel, groceries, national insurance and payroll tax? £1,305 out of £3,000. That’s 43.5%. Can you believe that? Pure tax or overhead for living in the UK. You get absolutely nothing out of this money. For every £100 you earn, you literally have to give £43.50 away. Now I know we’ll have those fascists out their who will claim that the UK is the ‘leading’ European country because Germany’s taxes are in the 50% range or Scandinavia is 55%. Well, let me tell you something: who gives a shit. We’re talking about the UK and London, so let’s stick to the topic at hand.
If you can manage to do much other than paying rent and buying a movie ticket or fuel for your car from the remaining 56.5% of f the money you have left, you’re probably living in shared accommodation. But read on, you’re still getting screwed.
So the fact that you don’t have much money left to spend is just the beginning of how you, the British consumer, faces the shaft. You have credit cards, a car payment, or mortgage, don’t you?
The government takes your money and invests with banks, pays ridiculous salaries to MPs, bureaucrats and council employees – many of which are hired to make sure you get threatened and penalized if you don’t pay these taxes. That’s what happens with your council tax pounds and that’s what has happened with the billions in rescue funding for banks.
So, what do the banks do with this money? They gamble and loan. The money the government takes from you and gives to the banks is EITHER loaned back to you for your mortgage, car, or in the form of a credit card or is loaned back to businesses (who may be your employer) for a hefty interest charge.
In the event that you are loaned the money, basically, the government has taken your money, put it through this ‘system’ of taxation and loaned it back to you with interest you will pay to the bank, who will then fund the election campaign with part of that money or loan the interest back to your employer who will then again deduct tax from your salary and pay it back to the government again, creating wealth from your poverty inducing 43.5%. Exciting, isn’t it. So you are not only paying 43.5%, but when you get that 43.5% back as a loan, you again pay your credit card or loan interest, in many cases up to 20% plus, back to the bank. So, in essence, you paid 43.5% + 20% of this 43.5%. So your 43.5% is actually costing you over 52%. It’s either this or some twisted denomination thereof.
Let me make this simple and clear. The government takes literally over HALF of the money that you earn. They then piss this money way on gambling, election campaigins and sham programs that have to do with community improvement or whatever rubbish they can come up with (I wish they actually implemented any of these!). In many instances, the government will give your tax money to the bank, who will then give this cash to another international bank, which will then loan the money out, at, say 20% and give your bank 10%. Your bank is making 10%, but they don’t actually have any of this cash. Hell, they’ve even take the money you’ve put in your savings account and gambled that away -all with the consent of the government. It may very well be that your bank has taken all of your money and loaned it to your friends in the form of credit cards. Because your friends are law abiding citizens, they default on the card payments - so not only is your bank unable to pay you the .8% interest it promised you in exchange for the 28% it was charging your friends, it doesn’t even have the original amount. So when you go back to claim the 50% of your salary that you had claim too, the bank collapses. Enter recession and turmoil. It’s also called horse shit.
Guess what happens next? 43.5% of your next pay cheque will go towards stablizing the bank. I don’t know about you, but from where I’m standing, you’re kind of, sort of screwed!
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