During the next few years Australians are going to be exposed to the biggest government-imposed expropriation of wealth they have ever seen. The reasons are the following:
1. The decline in Common Law and ascension of 'arbitrary' statutory law as a means of achieving political ends. We have seen Western governments attempt to retain government through one form of stimulus to another. They have run out of stimulus tools...all countries are fully indebted, so they need to look to new taxing powers. They will target the rich as well as corporates. Many corporations around the world have (unlike households) a high level of savings.
2. Interest rate squeeze: The rise in interest rates are going to place a lot of households under pressure, and this is going to prompt political parties to compete in terms of its measures to 'protect' those households encouraged by governments to buy houses when no one ought to have been buying houses. Western countries have huge household debts.
You might have thought that trade liberalisation was about less fascism....wrong. Fascism is the result of declining intellectual standards. Look at the quality of education and the media, what people are reading, and it is apparent that people are:
1. Poorer thinkers today because compartmentalised, specialised, repressed, less critical, less conceptual, sceptical of conceptual assertions, less able to anticipate problems. i.e. Shorter range thinking, concrete-bound.
2. Less self confident because they have been raised in a culture where critical thinkers have been alienated, fewer negative consequences for immoral acts, more collectivist/social identity, less respect for facts or objectivity, more beholden to collective values, i.e. More likely to accept coercion and expropriation as a measure to achieve these values. More likely to respond to fear-based campaigns. More likely to seek government action to problems, even if they caused the problems.
3. Less responsible: They are more likely to look to governments to solve problems, and blame others for their problems.
The implication of this is that over the next few years, as government receipts dry up, and we start eating dried biscuits and tin food, the government will be looking for new sources of revenue to support the poor and those subject to the mishaps that it caused. The government to this end will target the rich. The wealthy in the first instance will be those who are not able to move their investments offshore, e.g. Miners. Eventually other cashed up corporations will be taxed.
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Author
Andrew Sheldon
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