This bit at the end sums up the societal / political problem well

All this is, in part, a failure of the modern Left. The traditional social-democratic argument was never that we can fund a decent society by finding a few unpopular groups and taxing them ever harder. It was that good public services require broad-based taxation, and that people should be willing to pay for the civilisation they want to live in. Most of the contemporary Left has abandoned that argument. It still wants a European-sized state, but sells it with the fantasy that someone else can pick up the bill.

This has been mirrored by a failure of the Right. It is still just as eloquent at denouncing the tax burden, but has become unwilling to identify spending cuts large enough to make a serious difference. It will argue for welfare cuts, but rarely identifies specific reforms that save more than a tiny fraction of overall spending. And it is generally unwilling to touch the biggest and most popular areas of spending: pensions, the NHS, social care and defence. So the Right ends up with its own version of the same evasion.

And so we end up with political failure. The Left says we can have European spending without European taxes because “the rich” will pay – and so, when it finds itself in power, presides over deteriorating public services. The Right says we can have lower taxes without confronting the spending programmes voters most want to protect – and so, when in power, has raised tax.

Posted By: SimonOTBC, Jun 24, 11:23:26