Progressive Tax Is Fine When It Applies To Others

A progressive tax system means the rate of an earner's taxation increases as the taxable base amount increases. So someone earning £100,000 per year will not just pay more in tax due to higher earning, they will pay a bigger proportion of their income too. The thing about progressive taxation is that just about everyone prefers it more when it applies to others than if it applied to themselves.

Suppose Jacqui takes up writing fiction in her spare time. She works on her debut novel "50 Shades of Jax", which turns out to be her masterpiece, and earns her a large one-off payment for her efforts. Jacqui spends 2 years on her book, working in her 9-5pm job in the daytime (and paying tax on those earnings too lest we forget) and dedicating her evenings to writing the novel.

If Jacqui's day time labour value is £15 per hour in her 9-5 job, and she spends 800 hours on "50 Shades of Jax" in the evenings, then the cost of her time writing the book is around £12,000 (this is an economic value based on a truism that the cost of an hour spent doing something is roughly proportionate to your earning power in that hour). Thankfully Jacqui gets the rewards for her hard work and skilful writing - she earns a one-off fee of £100,000 from a top publisher (we should actually deduct the £12,000, making it £88,000, as that was the cost of her writing the book - but let's forget that).

So, Jacqui has earned a straight £100,000, and she has big plans for the money. She can pay off some of the mortgage, pay her daughter's fees to send her to university, give some to charity, make a donation to keep open her local community centre, and arguably most importantly she can afford to give up work for a while in order to work on a follow-up book. Her success enables her to fulfil her lifetime ambition of being a paid writer.

The trouble is, she won't get to keep it all, because on current tax rates the government will want to take approximately £36,000 of her £100,000. Generally speaking, there are only two ways that anyone can get your money; either you give it away voluntarily (for example, in the form of a gift, a donation, or spending it on something you want), or it can be taken from you against your will (for example, in the form of an act of theft or extortion).

I've no doubt that Jacqui would rather pay zero tax on that £100,000 if she was let off by the government, so in being forced to pay the tax under the threat of imprisonment the government is engaging in extortion. Under any other circumstance - a big kid in school taking 36% of the little rich kid's pocket money, or being threatened by a couple of muggers for 36% of the money in your wallet - the extraction would be a crime. When a government does the same thing, it is called taxation.

Now it's not quite that straightforward, of course - most people aren't as averse to taxation as they are to being extorted or mugged, because they are able to live in a society in which they and their fellow citizens benefit from some of the taxation obtained. But my guess is that Jacqui will be pretty indignant at actually handing over a whopping £36,000 of her £100,000 after producing something she is very proud of, and working very hard to do so.

And why shouldn't she be indignant? It's true that some of her money will be spent on things of which she'd approve (basic health care in the NHS, education, roads and social services) but equally much of the money will be spent on things of which she probably wouldn't approve (foreign wars, PFIs, agricultural subsidies).

The upshot here is that many people are quite happy to endorse progressive taxation, but in most cases they are bound to be less enamoured with it when it applies to them. Given that we must therefore live in a society in which the majority of people would be indignant if they had to hand over £36,000 of their £100,000 earning (what's more, it's actually more like £60,000 when you account for all the ways they'd be taxed further on what they get to keep), but would be perfectly happy to see others pay that kind of tax, that ought to be a blatant indication that something is fundamentally wrong with the system, and needs changing.

A Rich Challenge For You

Envy of the rich is one of the most dastardly things lefties do. Chief Executives get lambasted for earning too much; millionaire innovators are the scourge of society, and the top few dozen richest people on the planet are thorns in the flesh of the dim-witted social justice warriors holding placards in central London bemoaning the 'injustice' of the wealth gap, and the 'greed' of the rich.

To see why the leftist antipathy is misjudged, you only need to consider the question of what you personally would need to do to be rich. Think for a few moments. If you don't have the skills and experience required to earn a big salary, you are going to need to come up with something that society wants on a large scale. Have a think ....

Did you manage to think of a way of making yourself rich yet? I suspected not. It is not very easy to produce a good or service that masses of people value more than it would cost you to produce, especially as your venture would involve large start up costs and initial risk and foresight.

The reality is, very few people possess the creative nous to become millionaires, let alone billionaires. That is why, when lefties whinge about rich people, I suspect the subtext is that they are really bemoaning their own lack of entrepreneurial talent - it's an underhanded lament at what others can do better than them.

I'm not rich, but I greatly value the contributions of the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and countless others. Lefties value them too; they just forget that they do. Because, you see, that is what is great about the market. Jeff Bezos has got rich from being an Amazon shareholder, but the combined riches of the Amazon customers have become even richer once you aggregate the lower prices and consumer surpluses they've enjoyed.

The more competition there is in the market, the more benefits go to the consumer. Rich people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates don't just make themselves wealthier; they increase the wealth of the average person in society too. Think how fortunate you are (as am I) to live in a society in which you are made so well off despite not having the entrepreneurial prowess to make large sums of money. I'm typing this on a laptop, sharing it on the Internet, surrounded by luxuries that my grandparents would have found astonishing - and for a lot of these luxuries, it is rich, creative, innovative risk-takers I have to thank. On top of that, we should all be thanking each other too - after all, no single person does anything, even make a pencil, without the help of everyone else.

Finally, some lefties think that typical workers are being exploited by the rich executives that run their companies. A basic understanding of economics would tell them that this is untrue: for as long as there is enough freedom in a marketplace to allow competition to operate, every worker is paid their marginal product - which is to say, they are paid what their labour is worth to the firm.

The upshot to all this is that the Corbynites have got their whole political mandate wrong. No country, or group of citizens, has ever risen to its material feet by bringing richer people down. Poorer people, whether that's someone on the dole in Newcastle, or someone at the subsistence level in Nigeria, only rise to increased prosperity by creating something they can trade - an invention, a service or their labour.

No injection of material prosperity or economic growth is created through redistributing wealth from top to bottom. Yes, of course, redistributive measures are fine as a safety net to help society's most vulnerable, and for public goods like defence and the rule of law - but those who see the transfer of capital through confiscation as an envy-driven vehicle for levelling society are both uninformed and misguided.

Good Cop, Bad Cop Economics: Good Cop

In the last Blog post, entitled Good Cop, Bad Cop Economics: Bad Cop, I had a few choice words to say about the left's culpability in the social/political/economic problems that preoccupy so much of their attention. I ended by promising a follow-up in which I offer a solution to how all this can be put right with a pretty radical but effective overhaul of our current framework.

The way to reform the system is simple in explanation but more complex in execution (and very timely perhaps, given the current Brexit debacle over an exit strategy). It is this: enshrine in law any policy that proves to be demonstrably beneficial in net terms to the economic well-being of the country. Now obviously this must come with caution, because it is not always easy to empirically verify whether the economic well-being of the country improved as a direct result of a policy, or whether there were other important factors not related to a particular policy.

But thankfully most economic logic carries enough weight to show why a policy is either a good one or a bad one - and if such positive policies became legally binding they would be safe from party political interference and protected from the dangers of being reversed for political gain. Provided the people making the laws understand the indubitable economic benefits that the nation will enjoy from these acts of legislation, and are able to convey them in a way that laypeople can understand, there are plenty that could be instituted right away.

For example, it could be made law that the UK may not impose any import tariffs on foreigners - a policy that unquestionably harms both the nations involved in the trade exchange. Even if foreigners don't reciprocate and still wish to impose tariffs on us, we would still be better off not imposing tariffs on them.

Another example, it could be made law that no politician is allowed to interfere with the price system generated in a supply and demand market. From now on, the price of everything must be governed by market signals, not woefully inadequate politicians. No longer can politicians make it illegal to sell your labour below a set price, or tell you how much or how little you have to charge for a good or service. Leaving prices to the market signals of supply and demand will make the nation better off by eradicating the numerous deadweight costs associated with price fixing.

A third example, it could be made law that no domestic government can interfere in the competition process by subsidising new businesses or bailing out failing businesses. A fourth example, it could be made law that all income tax is flat, not progressive, and that top rates do not exceed a certain high-end threshold (probably somewhere in the region of 30%, but lower ideally). It can also be enshrined in law that governments won't tax corporations (which only ends up falling on employers and consumers anyway). Both of those would ensure politicians get the incentives the right way round - that they are incentivised to manage their public spending properly, not treat taxation as a money tree.

The public needs laws like these to protect them from their own economic misunderstandings. Once it started to be more widely known that these laws would make the nation better off - in terms of GDP, levels of outside investment, job creation, lower levels of unemployment, or any other assessment you care to make - the nation will be a lot easier to govern if the electorate better understands the link between market freedom and economic well-being. More or less every nation in the world that does well in terms of sustainably higher GDP also does well in terms of prosperity, freedom and well-being too.

With the introduction of such laws there will be less of a need for party political rivalry in playing fast and loose with the public's knowledge deficiencies and the extent to which they can be seduced by short-sighted policies. Laws like the above would also counteract the short-termism of political parties' interests whereby they rarely get to feel the long term effects of bad policies or get held accountable for their mistakes.

There is one obvious caveat to the above. Well, two if you allow for the fact that occasionally even sensible legislation may need to be temporarily reassessed on a case by case basis if it's in the public interests to do so (but we'll allow for the fact that this is hardly an insurmountable issue). No, the main caveat I have in mind is that such a radical change to the political framework would have to evolve over a (hopefully) short period of time - it would be too drastic to introduce as a fait accompli shake-up of the system right away. The reason being; there would need to be a transition period during which the public spending bill could come down while at the same time the private sector revenue goes up. Like children learning to walk, it would be foolish to demand that they run.

The upshot is, if done proficiently, these are the radical measures that are needed to properly transform our political landscape from the grass-seed of failure and incompetence to the fresh wheat of success and prosperity. Cutting the grass may keep it neat and tidy - but it'll never give you a field of wheat. If we want to get political wheat, we need to put away the shears and go down into the soil, where the economic foolishness of the present day political landscape can be ploughed up and re-sown.

The 'Destroying Our Planet' Fallacy

One of the biggest fallacies out there is the complaint that we are 'destroying our planet'. We keep hearing rallying calls to care for the earth - but, alas, the people who think we are destroying it are confusing their terms.

The earth is not a sentient being that can be destroyed, and nor does utilising its resources constitute destruction of the planet. The resources we use are vital ingredients for making the world a better place, reducing suffering and misery, and increasing knowledge, well-being and the quality of life we have.

Take a forest as a good example. Cutting down trees for the paper and replanting more is not destroying the earth - it is utilising a vital resource that enriches humanity greatly. Yobs setting fire to a forest, on the other hand, is a case of being careless with the planet's resources because they are being supplanted for value-less ruination.

The large swathes of people who are constantly telling us that we are destroying our planet are seeing our use of resources as being like burning down a forest when they should be seeing it as being like making paper from trees. The earth is a giant rock that's over 4 billion years old: it was here long before we were, and it can survive long after we have gone. The notion of destroying it is a fallacious one. The only thing we can destroy is our capacity for utilising its resources, but given that it is the utilisation of its resources that they mistake for its destruction, the accusation is laughable.

For obvious reasons, saving the planet (by which it is meant ‘the earth’) must always be a secondary aim behind saving the planet (by which it is meant ‘life on the planet’). If preserving life and increasing well-being are the primary goals, then part of that goal (the most urgent goal, in fact) is to bring an end to global poverty and help the neediest people out of their plight of impoverishment.

This leaves those who think we are 'destroying the planet' with a big problem, because the only way to bring an end to global poverty and help the neediest people out of their plight is to help those people attain economic freedom, and the ability to trade, be self-sufficient, and productive in the broader market economy. And, of course, the only realistic way to achieve this is to generate the kind of industry and globalised expansion of the market that will come at the cost of using some of the earth's natural resources.

The upshot is, in the short-term future, to eradicate global poverty entirely, we're going to have to carrying on making the best use of the earth's raw materials. Like most things, there's a trade off, and all it takes for an intellectual malady to occur is the slightest reactionary ignorance to assert that 'We are destroying the planet' as though there's no need for consideration of the benefits vs. the costs of doing so.

It is thanks to the use of the earth's resources, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, that we've moved the human condition from a state of widespread poverty to a state of greatly reduced poverty and much more prosperity. Of course there's still a way to go, but as the developing world countries increase their infrastructure and market potential, they are going to be using the most ecologically efficient technology - so there is every reason to continue to develop and pioneer more environmentally efficient methods of industry.

 

Realistically, the things that are the biggest ingredients in achieving this - free trade, healthy imports/exports, high employment, sensible and equitable government spending, a good legal system, cultural plurality, immigration, global travel, welfare systems, human rights, property rights, family rights, and being freer citizens* – are going to have an environmental cost that is more than compensated for by the good it will do for the neediest people in the world.

* Sadly, it's usually the lack of these things that is behind the killing of endangered species and the causing of extinctions, as well as people in developing countries not having a proper stake in their own country's resources - all of which are certainly things to be spoken out against.

Further reading: The Myth That We're Running Out Of Resources

Misunderstanding Inequality: Heroes & Villains

The world has seen unprecedented economic growth in recent times, alongside which the world has seen unprecedented increases in capital inequality. Many people feel joy about the first fact and despair about the second fact. So much so, in fact, that many of the nation's problems seem to get blamed on inequality - even the fact that some families are struggling to make ends meet.

 

A moment's thought should make it obvious that the problem with someone's economic hardship is their absolute state of well-being, not their relative well-being in relation to rich people. Alas, despite being obvious, it is doubted by many - primarily, one imagines, because of a) envy, and b) being tripped up by the fixed pie fallacy. The reality is, economic growth naturally engenders marked differences in people's incomes. In fact, much of the time one person's large wealth increase affords many others an opportunity to work, as anyone who has ever been in McDonald's Sainsbury's or Domino's would know.

 

It's also the case that economic growth actually dispenses disproportionately greater benefits to the poorest in society - because not only does it create jobs, which creates money to spend, which creates more jobs, and so on - it also improves their consumption. Once upon a time only the richest people televisions, cars and mobile phones. Now most people have these things, not to mention access to the entire world's knowledge at the touch of a button, and the uncountable other riches that our forebears would have thought impossible.

 

The upshot is, wealth inequality is a so-called problem that's hugely overblown. As long as everybody's absolute well-being and standard of living continues to increase, the income gap isn't much of a problem - quite the contrary, it's a natural non-linear feedback effect of a free market of voluntary exchanges.

 

In fact, monetary inequality with concentrations of capital in the top quintile is actually evidence that a lot of people are becoming better off by purchasing those goods and services through voluntary transactions. As the gap between richest and poorest is narrowing in pretty much every area apart from capital, it's easy to see how much more equal we are becoming, not more unequal.

 

Inequality through the lens of discrimination

Moreover, as I explained in this Blog post, most inequality is due to rational decisions made by people - called statistical discrimination - that play out in terms of society's revealed preferences. In terms of incentives, statistical discrimination is one of the most easy to understand in society, despite some people's distaste for it.

 

Consider when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the long-established practice of setting insurance prices according to sex is illegal discrimination. Or consider that even though women statistically live longer than men, insurance companies are no longer allowed to offer different annuity values to men and women.

 

So men come off better on car insurance, effectively being subsidised by safer driving women, which is the same as saying that women come off worse by paying a penalty for less safe male drivers. Both those situations are reversed in the annuity situation.

 

When everyone in a particular group is homogenised, the statistical variances are cancelled out as individuals are assessed based on the characteristics of the group as a whole, not on their own merits and demerits. In many cases this is obviously foolish and wrong. It's much better if men and women are not treated the same in terms of insurance premiums, because women ought to be rewarded for being statistically safer drivers.

 

The inevitable consequences are that some very unsafe women drivers benefit on the back of the average safety of women drivers, and some very safe male drivers lose out because of the average safety of male drivers. Safe male drivers are discriminated against not proximally because of their sex, but more distally because they are pooled with characteristics that we commonly associate with less safe driving.

 

Another example of where discrimination occurs when people are pooled with a group that have an easily identifiable weighted average is that if women are more likely to leave work in their thirties to have children, then some employers are more likely to choose men, even if it means missing out on better talent. Some cry foul of unfair discrimination, but sometimes it is a rational thing to do, as employers look to increase the probability of stable utility and efficiency.

 

But that's not the end of it. Suppose 32 year old Jack and 32 year old Jill are going for a job as project manager in Bob's company. Everything else is equal, so Bob hires Jack purely on the following probabilistic grounds: that there is a chance that Jill may wish to have time off for motherhood and possibly revert to part time hours thereafter. But now suppose the above scenario again, apart from one difference - Jill is slightly better than Jack, but doesn't get hired because Jack is less of a risk in terms of future motherhood. Jill goes on to get a job as project manager in Margaret's company, has a child five years later and returns to work after six months.

 

Bob's preference for Jack over Jill when they were equal was probably a rational choice, but when Jill was better, Margaret gained by recruiting a better project manager, whereas Bob gained a decent project manager too. In other words, rational discrimination usually produces a levelling effect, and employers know that irrational discrimination is an imprudent recruitment policy that hits them in the pocket.

 

The underlying reality about statistical discrimination is twofold: a) it's almost impossible to detect in the first place because people's real motives are not in full view of the public; and b) in a society that values liberty and freedom of choice, people should be perfectly free to statistically discriminate any way they wish. Generally I favour the egalitarian, classical liberalism (of the Hume, Smith, Ricardo kind), meritocratic ethos, and the view that individual pursuits and a bit of luck play important parts in our journey, as does the 'reap what you sow' maxim.

 

Consequently, then, while I'd hope for equality of opportunity wherever it doesn't unfairly disadvantage others, I don't expect equality of outcomes, and I think many people trying to interfere in society to correct things that don't need correcting are, quite naturally, misjudged and making the situation worse. There are several, often connected and complementary (what should be more obvious) reasons why unequal outcomes occur, and why that is no bad thing:

 

1) The effort people put in to things is unequal, which should rightly yield unequal outcomes. Those who work hard and study hard have a better chance of being rewarded for their efforts - and that should be encouraged. A surgeon should be higher on the income ladder than a taxi driver or a tyre fitter, and I don't want society to be less unequal in this regard.

 

2) The risks and inconveniences people take are unequal, which should rightly yield unequal outcomes. People who do jobs with highly scalable outputs, risky jobs, dangerous jobs and jobs with unsocial shift patterns should be paid commensurate to these factors, and once again I don't want society to be less unequal in this regard either.

 

3) The "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" inequality. This one is often overlooked or not given enough attention, but there are quite natural inequalities by the fact that nature is not very democratic at all. When it comes to health, looks, size, shape, talents, intelligence, sensory apparatus, opportunity and background, nature is far from democratic - there is a notable difference in all of these human qualities in each of us, as their attainment depends on undemocratic things like fortune and pursuit. A significant proportion of outcomes in society are down to luck, serendipity of circumstance and being in the right place at the right time, bringing about expected inequality of outcomes.

 

4) Rewards for innovation in a 'winner-takes-all' market. Most of the world's biggest gaps in income equality are because of innovators, entrepreneurs and job creators (usually one and the same) who have become wealthy by being good at providing things many people want. Market are democratic in that consumers vote with their purchasing habits, and therefore inequalities of this kind are not a problem that needs addressing - they are the result of freely made human choices in a competitive marketplace.

 

What so many get wrong in this area of discourse is in the misattribution of causes for outcomes. It's a base fallacy narrative that, unless corrected, will continue to misinform them about the so-called unfairness and injustices in society. Inequalities that have legitimate causes based on the above four explanations are often misrepresented as societal injustices and misattributed to the plight of human infirmities - something I've blogged about numerous times before.

 

 

 

 

  

The Circuit Board Of Mental Excellence

Minds are perhaps best thought of like circuit boards - and a coherent, consistent, accurate worldview is represented by a set of small lights that all stay illuminated in conjunction with truth and facts. Information, in the form of propositions, is like enlarging the circuit board, and increasing the assembly of data circuits and the copper that delivers electricity to illuminate the lights.

The size of the light display depends on the dimensions of the worldview, which itself primarily depends on the time, effort and intellectual rigour put in to the process of building a larger and larger circuit board that can facilitate an ever-increasing light display. A genius polymath may have a light display about the size of a football field; a highly intelligent polymath may have one about the size of a tennis court; and an average person may have one about the size of a small back garden.

Now here's the key thing. You can increase the dimensions of the light display by learning more, and by increasing the connectivity of your mental artillery - and to some extent, most people do this on their life journey. But what they don't do enough is stand back and check the light display to see how many of the bulbs have gone out. Nor do they step back and observe clusters of light patterns that have gaps because the additional bulbs required to illuminate the pattern more comprehensively are missing.

A large, light display with all the bulbs illuminated is extremely rare - but it ought to be the primary objective for anyone who strives for truth, facts, proficiency of reasoning and excellence of mind. The beauty of the light display is that its consistency of illumination is exhibition to the fact that one's ideas, thoughts, views and propositions fit nicely into the rest of the circuit board of experience. If you keep getting things right, the new beliefs operate consistently with the structural workings of the circuit board, not disrupting the electricity to other items on the board. But if you get things wrong, and introduce faulty viewpoints into the equation, you disrupt the electricity flow, both to local illumination clusters, but also to isolated bulbs elsewhere in the display.

Naturally, given the complexity of the mind, and the complexity of everything there is to know, and the near infinite ways to perceive reality, this is a really epistemologically intractable model of analysis. But it isn't that difficult to identify practical examples of how the malfunctioning of the circuit board may occur, as most people host mutually contradictory or incongruent ideas, especially due to identity-based dispositions, cognitive biases, emotional self-preservation and propensities for over-simplicity.

For example, suppose you're a Christian with a fairly comprehensive understanding of scripture, but because of your upbringing you've been infected with the cultural virus of young earth creationism, with a limited recourse for correctives. The cluster of lights pertaining to Biblical exegesis and hermeneutics is going to be affected as the connection between the conductors supplying the electrical power will be shorted. The high current flow of falsity will put out some of the theological lights, and prevent other bulbs from being added to the cluster. This will mean others see you as a Christian with inadequacies in several areas of discourse - especially when it comes to Biblical interpretation of text and other related areas of science and how the edifice operates and functions - which will have a corollary effect on the consistency of your worldview, and on the impression and influence you have on the world as a Christian.

Here's another example. Suppose you're quite economically and politically astute, but you become duped into believing that there is a systematically unfair gender pay gap in the UK, or that price controls on housing might alleviate the shortage. As with the first example, your circuit board will be negatively impacted, lights will go out in various areas across the display, and there will be patches in the clusters that never get the bulbs required for a full illumination of the pattern. You might start believing that price controls in other areas of the economy will start to do some further good; or you might start over-exaggerating the extent to which climate change alarmism is fruitful; or you might take your eye of the principles behind the law of least effort; or you might develop too much a victim-mentality, and so forth.

I could offer loads more examples, but I think the gist of this is crystal clear: there is always a price to pay for bad ideas, false beliefs and inadequate reasoning - and these things infect; first at the individual level, then at the familial level, then at the community level, and then more widely across societies and even nations as falsehoods spread memetically.

By equal measure, though, there are always rewards for building a prodigious circuit board that provides the power to a fully illuminated light display that consistently, coherently, factually and truthfully supports the ideas, views and beliefs associated with all the major and minor subjects, and the interconnectedness between them all. In fact, I'll take it further: there is no better way to live, and no more rewarding and no more necessary and no more morally and intellectually compelled pursuits for any human being.

Good Cop, Bad Cop Economics: Bad Cop

For some of you this will sting a bit, but it has needed saying for a while now. It is you, the left, that stand accused as being the principal cause of most of the economic problems in your home country. You are largely to blame for the state of the NHS, for the problems with social care, for the high unemployment levels in the under 25s, for the fact that too many people are doing university degrees, for the housing shortage, for much of the decline of UK industry, even for the rise in inequality in this country. Moreover, you are also largely to blame for Donald Trump, for Brexit, and for the rise of far right groups in the UK and across Europe.

Here is why you are to blame: your combination of wilful naiveté and yet strong opinions about the things mentioned above helps encourage the people that govern us to adopt all manner of foolishness on the basis that they think you will throw them out of office if they don't acquiesce. For decades you have been complicit in creating a political climate based on nonsensical arguments, shoddy counterfactuals and lazy myopia - fervently endorsing ideas and policies that are either based on factual misinformation, poor reasoning or idly choosing to ignore or overlook large swathes of the population that feel the costs of your decisions.

Take the most obvious case in point - the NHS. You have for years treated it like a sacred religion, and forced politicians to live with the lie that it can be sustained in the same way it was for the first four decades of its existence. Your belligerent demands for it to be safeguarded from proper market-based resource allocation has pressured politicians to ignore the supply and demand crisis, the costing crisis, and the fact that our living longer, our increased aging population, the increasing number of diagnoses and the increasing technological scope for medical advancement means it is no longer operating under the same framework under which it operated a few decades ago.

You have created this problem, by making politicians so terrified to respond to these realities that instead all they can do is resort to pathetic party political tit-for-tat squabbling about who puts more money in to the NHS and under whose leadership it would be less worse off. You have left them feeling like they have no option but to behave this way.

There are plenty of other cases where you have done something similar. For decades you have applied social duress on our politicians and made them believe that the only chance they have of carving out a political career is if they publically endorse a whole menu of economic foolishness that satisfies your beliefs. Where there is inequality, and people struggling to make ends meet, people struggling to find work, people in developing countries struggling to enter the competitive global marketplace, and people struggling to pay their rent or being able to afford to live in big cities - you must take a lot of responsibility for these things, because the truth is, the government you have been complicit in fattening up is responsible for pretty much all of these problems (and that is no exaggeration).

You have demanded that the political institutions that put up barriers to free trade become ever-bigger and more powerful; you have pressurised politicians to perpetuate facile price floors like the minimum wage; you have made more and more voracious demands on the earnings of the nation's most prodigious innovators and job creators; you have intransigently peddled the long-standing fairytale that the answer to most of the nation's problems are to be solved with higher taxation and more public sector involvement in our industries; and you have repeatedly promoted the economically toxic policy of domestic subsidies and the bailing out of financially deteriorating businesses and industries.

In short, you have pressurised the politicians of all parties into normalising bad policies - policies that increase unemployment and make it harder for the unemployed to obtain work; policies that stunt job creation; policies that make the cost of living higher for ordinary working people; policies that stifle growth and dissuade outside investors; policies that keeps regions in industrial atrophy; and policies that makes vital public services like health far more vulnerable to financial crises than they need to be.

For decades you have insisted on injudicious political ideas, and then demanded that the only people fit for governance are people who will enforce these ideas. And an equally bad (arguably worse) knock-on effect of this is that most of you let politicians get away with not having to proficiently justify their policies at a level beyond the superficially inane. You will almost never see a politician under even the slightest bit of pressure to admit the costs of a policy as well as the benefits, nor even acknowledge that most policies profit a small proportion of the population at the expense of a larger (unconsidered) group.

How preposterous it is that enshrined in our cultural climate is the habitual dismissal of majority groups affected by a policy, and the normalisation of anaemic economic arguments. And how sad that the politicians that govern us have to survive on spin, on popularity-mongering and by forever being afraid to admit their mistakes, or of having a public change of mind, or of introducing a prudent policy if it's unpopular.

You have played a big part in creating this monster and the concomitant lefty social commentators and politicians that feed on its body lice. And this needs to be at the forefront of your mind every time you open a paper or turn on the TV and see what you think is an injustice, or a group of people struggling to find work or live as comfortably as they could be. Most of the things you complain about and strive to fight against are creations of your own making. You are like Geppetto smashing up Pinocchio with a hammer, or like Victor Frankenstein taking an axe to the monster you've spent decades creating.

Fear not, though - the next Blog post that will be following this Bad Cop offering will be the Good Cop approach to remedying all that's wrong as per the above criticisms. I will offer a solution to how all this can be put right with a pretty radical but effective overhaul of our current framework.