Étatiste Crackpottery
Shortly after we posted Jayant Bhandari’s recent article that inter alia discussed the new complex GST (general sales tax) regime introduced in India by the Modi government (see “The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum” for details), we were contacted by Lakshminarayanan Kumaraapuram, a small businessman in Mumbai. He asked us whether we would be prepared to publish a comment he originally mailed to the prime minister’s “grievance portal”, so as to transform it into an open letter.
Let’s keep it simple… but not too simple. The chief surgeon gets ready to wield his scalpels and cleavers.
His comment underscores that small businessmen are indeed deeply unhappy about the new rules, and for good reason. As Jayant already mentioned, the effort one has to expend to comply with the new rules – which not even the bureaucrats who are tasked with enforcing them fully understand – is absolutely staggering (this includes having to file nearly 40 tax returns per year and being forced to ensure one’s suppliers’ compliance as well, with everyone being compelled to take on the role of unpaid tax collector).
We would note to this that the actions undertaken by the Modi government in recent months – beginning with the overnight demonetization of cash, to the introduction of a mandatory ID card, to the GST shenanigans – all remind us fatally of the interventionist measures many governments have eagerly implemented in nominally capitalist Western countries in recent years. The main difference is that India is even less suited to handle such impositions.
Whether or not this is intended, said measures all favor big, entrenched businesses to the detriment of individual entrepreneurs by essentially taxing and/or regulating small businesses out of existence. Financial privacy and economic freedom seem to be under attack from every conceivable angle almost everywhere. These ill-conceived stratagems, which appear to be based on the notion that citizens need to be placed under general suspicion and, to paraphrase Robert Nozick, that consenting adults have to be kept from engaging in voluntary capitalistic acts as much as possible, are supposedly inter alia aimed at boosting the tax revenues of assorted de facto bankrupt welfare states.
These brilliant ideas are cooked up by the same masterminds who believe we can actually get richer by debasing money, who are giving birth to Soviet-style “4 year plans”, are doing their best to roll back civilization in the name of “saving the planet” (demonstrating that their hubris knows no bounds) and – considering various G20 communiques released in recent years – seem to have convinced themselves of the absurd fantasy that “economic growth” is something that is conjured into existence by government decree.
It is an apodictic certainty that whatever this bunch of economic illiterates comes up with (endorsed by their mediocre courtier economists though it may be) will not only fail to bring about the intended effects, but will end up doing the exact opposite. Experience suggest that once that happens, more, and in all likelihood …read more
Source:: Acting Man
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