Daniel Priestley
- 11 logical steps that take you from fair-minded socialism to totalitarianism and economic collapse … 1.The desire to reduce inequality requires redistribution. You can’t equalise outcomes without taking from some and giving to others. This is definitional, not sinister. 2.Redistribution requires measurement and control of production. To redistribute wealth, the state must know who has what, who earns what, and increasingly, who produces what. Surveillance of economic life becomes a prerequisite. 3.People respond to redistribution by changing behaviour. Capital flees, high earners reduce effort or emigrate, assets get hidden. The policy underperforms its projections. 4.Underperformance is blamed on sabotage, not incentives. Politically, admitting the model failed is impossible. So the shortfall must be someone’s fault - speculators, hoarders, the rich - an enemy class is named and blamed. 5.Closing the loopholes requires expanding coercion. Exit taxes, capital controls, mandatory disclosures, criminalising avoidance. Each patch requires more state power than the last, because each patch creates new evasion. 6.Economic control becomes control of livelihoods. Once the state directs capital, sets prices, or dominates employment, your income depends on political compliance. Dissent now has a career cost. 7.Central planning cannot adequately process information without real price data. Prices are compressed knowledge; abolish or distort them and the government planners are blind to reality. 8. Shortages appear. Shortages require rationing. Rationing requires deciding who gets what - pure discretionary power. 9.Discretionary power selects for ruthless administrators. The worst authoritarians get on top: a system requiring people to override individual choices for the collective good attracts and promotes those most comfortable doing so. The scrupulous exit; the zealous ascend. 10.The project can’t survive open opposition, so speech narrows. If the plan is morally mandatory, opposing it is immoral. Criticism becomes sabotage; media, education, and civil society get conscripted to defend the project. The single goal crowds out pluralism, because pluralism is disagreement about goals. 11.Reversal is now impossible through normal politics. The state controls jobs, capital, information, and enforcement. Institutions that could check it depend on it. What began as compassion has become a machine that no one can switch off - and everyone must pretend is working … until it collapses and adherence to reality is restored.
- Ten reasons wealth taxes don’t work: 1.Europe already ran the experiment and quit. Twelve OECD countries had wealth taxes in 1990; only four do now. Those that still have wealth taxes don’t have CGT or IHT. 2.Norway proved how dangerous they are. A tiny rate hike was meant to raise ~$146m; instead $54bn of wealth fled and revenue fell by ~$448m net.  They hit the opposite of the target. https://t.co/Ghgo6h9iLW will hit regular people. Governments typically bring in taxes on the “super rich”, then when it doesn’t work they lower the threshold. 4.Britain already wealth-taxes by stealth. Council tax, stamp duty, dividend tax, frozen thresholds, CGT, 40% IHT, luxury tax, private school tax - we have a diffuse wealth tax wearing a dozen costumes. 5.Wealth is a guess, not a fact. Income hit a bank account; wealth is an opinion about future value. You end up taxing and then litigating based on arguable estimates, every single year. 6.Most people can’t tell wealth from income. The politics sells because the public conflates “owns £10m of illiquid business” with “earns £10m” - they’re nothing alike. https://t.co/DczbvSoKuF punishes illiquidity. Paper-rich, cash-poor founders must strip dividends from their own companies to pay - taxing ownership by gutting the thing that makes jobs. 8.The mobile escape; the rooted pay. Norway’s most-taxed man left for Switzerland in a weekend.  The regional business owner and the homeowner can’t so they get the bill. https://t.co/6Vrty4i5F3 causes capital flight. More super-rich Norwegians left in 2022 than in the previous 13 years combined.  Capital is the most mobile thing there is. https://t.co/5nMADSFvbh eats the seed corn. Wealth is just deferred investment the capital funding the next hire and the next business. It raises little, invites avoidance, and drains the capital base.  BONUS: 90% of what we call wealth now is intangible - intellectual property, data, algorithms, startup venture valuations, brand equity etc. The days of wealth being houses, factories and materials that can be seized are long gone. If you make your country anti-wealth you are basically making it anti-competitive in the modern economy.
11 logical steps that take you from fair-minded socialism to totalitarianism and economic collapse … 1.The desire to reduce inequality requires redistribution. You can’t equalise outcomes without taking from some and giving to others. This is definitional, not sinister. 2.Redistribution requires measurement and control of production. To redistribute wealth, the state must know who has what, who earns what, and increasingly, who produces what. Surveillance of economic life becomes a prerequisite. 3.People respond to redistribution by changing behaviour. Capital flees, high earners reduce effort or emigrate, assets get hidden. The policy underperforms its projections. 4.Underperformance is blamed on sabotage, not incentives. Politically, admitting the model failed is impossible. So the shortfall must be someone’s fault - speculators, hoarders, the rich - an enemy class is named and blamed. 5.Closing the loopholes requires expanding coercion. Exit taxes, capital controls, mandatory disclosures, criminalising avoidance. Each patch requires more state power than the last, because each patch creates new evasion. 6.Economic control becomes control of livelihoods. Once the state directs capital, sets prices, or dominates employment, your income depends on political compliance. Dissent now has a career cost. 7.Central planning cannot adequately process information without real price data. Prices are compressed knowledge; abolish or distort them and the government planners are blind to reality. 8. Shortages appear. Shortages require rationing. Rationing requires deciding who gets what - pure discretionary power. 9.Discretionary power selects for ruthless administrators. The worst authoritarians get on top: a system requiring people to override individual choices for the collective good attracts and promotes those most comfortable doing so. The scrupulous exit; the zealous ascend. 10.The project can’t survive open opposition, so speech narrows. If the plan is morally mandatory, opposing it is immoral. Criticism becomes sabotage; media, education, and civil society get conscripted to defend the project. The single goal crowds out pluralism, because pluralism is disagreement about goals. 11.Reversal is now impossible through normal politics. The state controls jobs, capital, information, and enforcement. Institutions that could check it depend on it. What began as compassion has become a machine that no one can switch off - and everyone must pretend is working … until it collapses and adherence to reality is restored.
Ten reasons wealth taxes don’t work: 1.Europe already ran the experiment and quit. Twelve OECD countries had wealth taxes in 1990; only four do now. Those that still have wealth taxes don’t have CGT or IHT. 2.Norway proved how dangerous they are. A tiny rate hike was meant to raise ~$146m; instead $54bn of wealth fled and revenue fell by ~$448m net.  They hit the opposite of the target. https://t.co/Ghgo6h9iLW will hit regular people. Governments typically bring in taxes on the “super rich”, then when it doesn’t work they lower the threshold. 4.Britain already wealth-taxes by stealth. Council tax, stamp duty, dividend tax, frozen thresholds, CGT, 40% IHT, luxury tax, private school tax - we have a diffuse wealth tax wearing a dozen costumes. 5.Wealth is a guess, not a fact. Income hit a bank account; wealth is an opinion about future value. You end up taxing and then litigating based on arguable estimates, every single year. 6.Most people can’t tell wealth from income. The politics sells because the public conflates “owns £10m of illiquid business” with “earns £10m” - they’re nothing alike. https://t.co/DczbvSoKuF punishes illiquidity. Paper-rich, cash-poor founders must strip dividends from their own companies to pay - taxing ownership by gutting the thing that makes jobs. 8.The mobile escape; the rooted pay. Norway’s most-taxed man left for Switzerland in a weekend.  The regional business owner and the homeowner can’t so they get the bill. https://t.co/6Vrty4i5F3 causes capital flight. More super-rich Norwegians left in 2022 than in the previous 13 years combined.  Capital is the most mobile thing there is. https://t.co/5nMADSFvbh eats the seed corn. Wealth is just deferred investment the capital funding the next hire and the next business. It raises little, invites avoidance, and drains the capital base.  BONUS: 90% of what we call wealth now is intangible - intellectual property, data, algorithms, startup venture valuations, brand equity etc. The days of wealth being houses, factories and materials that can be seized are long gone. If you make your country anti-wealth you are basically making it anti-competitive in the modern economy.
