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Workers' Liberty
the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class Workers Liberty Australia |
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The trade union movement should be mobilised to insist that the next Labor government will repeal the GST legislated by the Federal Parliament.
Kim Beazley says that repealing the GST would be as unworkable as "unscrambling the egg". He has shifted from this stance only so far as to promise to review the application of the GST to books. In fact abolishing the GST would be no more unworkable - and much more popular - than the near-abolition of taxes on profit and big business by the 1983-96 Labor government, or the near-abolition of high rates of income tax for the rich.
Big business and the Coalition want the GST because it shifts the tax burden even further way from the wealthy and well-off and onto the poor. Even with exemption for food and books, a GST, consumption tax, or Value-Added Tax, takes a bigger percentage from the poor and middle-income people than from the well-off.
That is the reason for the GST. It has nothing to do with it being more "modern" (taxes and excises on consumption are among the oldest forms of tax, being outstripped by more progressive direct taxes only thanks to the rise of the labour movement), simpler (it requires masses of detailed record-keeping by every small business), less open to avoidance (it isn't), or necessary to restore the tax base. The simple alternative is a progressive system of income tax and taxes on profits and wealth.
Capital on strike?
Howard - and Beazley - will say that in this era of globalisation, if Australia taxes the high-earners and the profit-coiners harder than other countries, then we'll face a "strike" of capital and investment.
The same argument is used to blackmail labour movements all around the world, not only on tax, but on wages, conditions and social spending. In the first place it's only quarter-true. Industrial capital is not as footloose as it pretends. There is still a lot of capital in relatively high-tax countries like Germany and Scandinavia! Second: if it comes to it, and we do have a "strike" by the capitalists, then the answer is... to lock them out.
A socialist economy where production and distribution are controlled by a democracy of producers and consumers would be far more efficient, far more concerned to meet the needs of all human beings, than the present capitalist system.