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Council Tax

Letter to: Mr Albert Venison, Devon

Dear Mr Venison

When I read in the paper today that you are now the opinion leader for the new editor of the Western Morning News, it reminded me how important it could be for everyone, if you used the high ground you have created for yourself, to introduce a new angle on Council Tax.

It is this. When a Government raises money by taxation for an undertaking that is essential for economic progress, the Government prevents that progress from taking place. Increased taxation forces the economy backwards. Economic growth and progress, necessitates an increase in the money supply to service that growth. When the Government tries to service growth by borrowing or by taxation, the government prevents economic growth and initiates an economic decline.

A decline which inevitably gathers momentum and that momentum necessitates a further increase in taxation or borrowing. Trying to stem that flow cannot work. We must reverse the trend. We must reduce taxation and not attempt to live with it, by pushing taxation in another direction.

This is not an easy concept to grasp, but it is based on natural law, laws which are self evident, when you think about them. In the first place, that which is not growing is dying. Therefore economic growth is essential for survival. This natural law is quite obvious when you look at plant life. But it also applies to animal life and to human life. When we reach a certain age, we start to decline towards death. When you stifle economic growth with taxation, you inevitably go into an economic decline.

Once you grasp the truth of that concept as being a scientific fact, you see that there are taxes levied by the Government, which stifle economic growth and should be made illegal. Removing those specific taxes, would have an immediate beneficial effect.

We need for example to help commuters get to work faster and cheaper, so as to waste less of their time travelling, to and from work. Congestion slows travel. We try to reduce congestion by putting up the cost of travel. Parking fees, a congestion tax, tax on petrol, higher rail fares etc etc. We use taxation to prevent growth.

More workers are needed to work harder, to pay for the attempt to improve their ability to work by taxation. You can see how insane Government policy can get and you also feel it, when as a pensioner you try to make ends meet.

The obvious answer, which no one ever thinks of, is to persuade the Government to create more new money, for specific purposes which help workers to work and to earn more money. New money created by the Government to increase the money supply of the nation, in order to increase the money the Nation can earn, cannot cause inflation, when spent wisely and well. Such new money, will create prosperity, instead of poverty. Economists never think this way, they don't think!! They think that the word economy means to economise. How to flourish and prosper, is not part of their training.

All I am saying is simple common sense. If you punish production with heavy taxation and reward idleness with hand outs, you get low production and poverty in retirement.

Doctor Edward C Hamlyn MBChB