On inequality

A rather short blog today, as there isn't really much you can say about inequality. Well there is, but a lot of it is just listing figures and that kind of thing won't really help with what I'm going to be saying today. Plus I have a bit of a headache so there may be But anyway to the matter at hand.

Inequality as bad thing in itself is often seen as dogma in socialist circles, but I find this to be rather a simplistic approach. While before I have made points about how reducing income inequality is a good thing for the economy, this doesn't necessarily translate into an absolute. I feel inequality should exist in some form or another, it acts as a reward and incentive for hard work and intelligence. It is right that if a man works hard and uses his brain, he should profit from this, and I say we let him live the luxury that his work enables him to do.

But at the same time I feel that it is wrong that a man can have so much money that he can't wear all the clothes, can't live in all the houses, can't ride all the yachts and can't drive all the cars. When someone is earning that kind of money its more than fair that they contribute a lot of their excess income to Her Majesty's treasury. This isn't because its morally wrong to be rich, it's because Her Majesty's government has things it needs to spend money on, things we all like regardless of how rich or poor we are, things like hospitals, street cleaners, firefighters, traffic lights (except red ones), libraries, parks, pensions and police, and when it comes time to ask someone to pay for all these wonderful things, its preferable that we ask Mr Usmanov, Mr Mittal, His Grace The Duke of Westminster, Mr Blavatnik etc to pay a bit more, because they won't miss it, consumer spending won't miss it and if we didn't tell them they wouldn't notice it was gone.

In summary, inequality isn't bad, those who work hard, study hard and hence earn more should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour and enterprise, but when it comes time to fund the business of government, they should be more than willing to help foot the bill for government to make it so they can keep living in such a lovely country, as God knows if they didn't think it was lovely they'd leave on their private jets.

How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what's intended for 9/10th of the people to eat? The only way to be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain't got no business with! - Huey Long