Placating the tribe comes with a big price tag...
"But to compel such individuals to bestow a large part of their earnings upon other individuals, who prosper by way of pensions, unemployment grants, or education allowances, is manifestly barbarous and indefensible. Yet this is the law. The original and only official basis of taxation was that individual citizens, in return for their money, received collectively some services from the State, the defense of their property and persons, the care of their health or the education of their children. All that has now gone. Citizen A, who has earned money, is commanded simply to give it to Citizens B, C, and D, who have not, and by force of habit this has come to be regarded as a normal and proper proceeding, whatever the comparative industry or merits of Citizens A, B, C, and D. To be alive has become a virtue, and the mere capacity to inflate the lungs entitles Citizen B to a substantial share in the laborious earnings of Citizen A."
Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, CH(usually writing as A. P. Herbert or A. P. H.) (24 September 1890 – 11 November 1971) |
