Socialists love to spend other people’s money.
There’s probably a connection between this cast-iron rule of nature and the fact that socialists also hate having to earn any money themselves.
Andy Burnham, who will laughably become Prime Minister in less than a week, is a perfect example of this.
The man has never had a job in the real economy a day in his life; he was a Labour bag carrier, then a very senior Labour bag carrier, then a Labour MP, then a Labour MP who had the taxpayer shell out for bag carriers of his own.
He’s spent the last three-and-a-half decades with other people working to earn the money that puts food on his table.
Maybe that’s why he fails to understand, either intellectually or intuitively, what it means to really work in a productive part of the economy.
And that must be why he is so eager to put up people’s taxes AGAIN.
Rachel Reeves (the only current member of the Cabinet with any experience in the private sector – and even half of that was made up) has already increased the tax burden by £66billion in two years.
But now, Mr Burnham is desperate to raise it again, bringing the total extra pain for the public to over £100billion more than if Labour had never darkened the door of No10.
Has it worked so far? Of course not. It never does.
Economists have proven time and again that there is a maximum amount of money that can be effectively raised without having really damaging effects on jobs, growth, innovation, social mobility, and so on.
After a certain point, tax hikes damage industries, they impoverish households and they force emigration.
People give up working hard when they realise they will not be able to take home the fruits of their labour.
But socialists like Andy Burnham don’t get this.
Because their earnings come from the taxpayer, and are always protected against inflation and against the damage their policies generate, they never feel the pain they cause others.
And, so, we are about to have a man – elected by just a few thousand people – be allowed to inflict tens of billions of pounds of extra pain on hard-working individuals, families, and businesses, all because the left are too arrogant to read an economics textbook written by anyone who actually understands economics.
The most frustrating thing about this total waste of money is that it will make the job of a future right-wing Government that much more difficult.
Even chatting about wealth taxes, extra death duties and all the other damaging tax hikes being floated by “Team Burnham” is scaring away investment and confirming for many the need to leave the country.
It’s also going to have a long-term scarring effect on the economy, keeping unemployment higher and leaving less cash to invest in new technologies for the future.
But Andy Burnham doesn’t care.
After all – it’s not his money he’s wasting, is it? It’s yours.
