The efficient herd

In the olden days, when men were men, women were women and children were children one could have been forgiven for believing that the state was on the side of, to nick a lefty term, the people. Now, it probably wasn’t the case (just consider the real reasons for the firearms act of 1920) but at least they were a whole lot more subtle about things.

These days things are a great deal different and the transparency of the real agenda of the state is astonishing. Brazen even:

Parents are to receive tax breaks worth up to £140 a week to hire nannies to look after their children, the government has said.

”What!”, you may well say, ”How can you possibly spin this into something even partially resembling a statist agenda?” Well, you underestimate The England Project. Come now, think man.

You see back when parents were generally accepted as the people who would have to bring up their own children the government had schemes like the married couples allowance which basically recognised the traditional structure of a family unit. You get married, you have children and one of the parents (usually the woman) stayed at home and looked after them. Ah, halcyon days. This allowance effectively no longer exists and I use its degradation as an example of how little is actually done by government to help maintain the existence of these traditional family units.

To have a parent at home is now a luxury that many cannot afford. The government provides no help in terms of tax breaks in recognition of the advantages of parent reared children whereas the unavoidable taxes on the family imposed by the government and various wings of its machinery rise steadily. High rates of income tax on 50 something thousand pounds regardless on how many people live on that single income. Massive council taxes that the government pretends it is not responsible for. Fuel taxes that are so high that it makes one wonder if your are filling up with petrol or vaporised gold.

Of course, traditional family units were not efficient means for extracting taxation from people. They meant there was usually one person not earning at home, one person at work with tax breaks in recognition of the family, and no family employed tax paying help. It was a situation that was ludicrous, inefficient and embarrassing for any governments account books.

Better to have both parents working and paying taxes and to help them provide further taxable income for the government by employing a third party to look after the kiddies. Now that’s efficient taxation! That’s how to maximise revenue from the herd!

And don’t you even think about banging on at me at how much working mothers actually want to work. I can understand the draw of the workplace. I can understand how there may be benefits in self esteem and satisfaction. I can understand how expensive it is not to have everyone in the family at work as soon as is possiple. I can also understand how not a single working mother that I know actually prefers to be at work rather than at home bringing up their own children. They just can’t afford to. The cost of living is too high and there are too many unavoidable state imposed costs. Having a parent stay at home to look after the children, like with those old fashioned families, is now the prerogative of the lucky few.

So, when the government announce a tax break to help us employ another tax payer to look after our children you will forgive me when I don’t immediately welcome the initiative with open arms. It’s just another step that brings advantage to the government accounts and is only welcomed by the public because they will grasp at anything to help ease the burden that is modern family life.

At least some still have the comfort of their own parents who often help out with childcare. After all, if you can’t bring up your own kids then grandparents are often the next best thing. They are family after all:

The Child Tax Credit is being extended to cover carers who look after children in their parents' homes - but not relatives such as grandparents.

Yep, that figures.

Moooooooo.

Updated to fix some errors. Where is my editor?

Posted by John at May 17, 2004 09:04 AM | TrackBack