..and I was Gordon Brown, then this is how I would start off.
David Davis
I thought that Statists like taxation. I thought they liked to do it.
They not only like [other people] to pay it, but they like to raise [lots and] lots of it.
If they want to do it, then there perhaps ought to be something large and worthwhile to tax economically and profitably. Surely, it’s worth more net revenue to tax about 10,000 guys each collecting lump sums of say £200,000 each, every year year in year out, (40% of 20 billion = 8 billion for 10,000 audits) than to tax 20 million people each yielding, let us say, £4,000 each per year (80 billion for 20 million audits) and with the same volume of paperwork per unit as the big guys?
They will merely have 200 times the paperwork per billion raised, if they drive the Banks offshore, as they now will.
And I haven’t even costed in the marginal taxation-losses due to death of small-businesses who service the bonus-earners.
Afraid I definitely think it is a bit of a smokescreen. If the banks and the government (and the other various pillars of the “control structure” such as MSM, universities, quangos, think tanks of a certain hue). If they interchange people, or rather if the people interchange the institution they operate in, then it’s the same people saying they are going to “sort them out”.
They are pretty much the same people so what are they up to. Laying a smoke screeen, I would think. Pretending not to be themselves so that we thrust all the blame on filthy thieving capitalists whilst the collectivist/corporatists run off happily to the banks. Their own banks, in fact.
Somehwere in London:
Enter Mr Punch wearing an investment bankser’s hat:
“Hah! A house of cards built from derivavtives, geared investments, debts no one can pay. Never mind. Looks good and complicated and the money comes pouring in. Enough to pay me fat millions for learning fancy financial words and sounding professional and authoratative.”
Exits and enters wearing regulator’s hat:
“Listen here you investment bankers chappies, I hear you are making fat millions by building card houses, blowing some away, getting us government chappies to match the suckers’ money they paid you in the beginning, and you still want fat millions. It’s just not on.”
Exits and re-enters wearing investment banker hat: “But if we don’t get fat millions, frankly, we shall stuff off and then who will sort out all your suckers’ money?”
Crowd: “Kill the bankers. Leave the bankers be, they will sort out our money. Kill the bankers. Only the bankers know how to save us. Kill the bankers . . . .” descends into chaos with crowd beating each other as Mr Punch slides out holding his regulator’s hat in one hand and his banker’s hat in the other smiling at some joke only he seems to know.