Dr Eamonn Butler is director of the Adam Smith Institute and author of The Alternative Manifesto: A 12-Step Programme to Remake Britain, which was published last week.
A strike by two million people against the Greek Government’s ‘austerity’ package – weak as it is – must make David Cameron doubt the wisdom of mentioning any kind of ‘cuts’ agenda. Yet we need to balance the books. The last time we were in debt this deep, at least we had seen off Napoleon and Hitler.
Taxation has grown by half since 1997. All that extra spending has certainly bought us plenty of intrusive new quangos, much more expensive doctors, and superlative pay and pensions for local government officials and Whitehall civil servants. But has it bought us, the taxpayers and citizens this great leviathan is supposed to serve, anything we would really miss?
I hardly think so. Indeed, all this taxation and spending – and off-the-scale borrowing, of course – is actually getting in the way of enterprise, economic growth, and personal liberty. It’s also getting in the way of people getting on with running their own lives, which they mostly do for themselves rather better than civil servants can do it for them.
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