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You point about what the social contributions are used for is also what I was focusing on: just like the debate on the "cost" of the presidential programmes in France, this is only disucssed in terms of amounts spent, not in terms of value for money. The real question is - what do you get in return for such taxes and contributions.

This is why thsee tables (and the accompanying discourse) are so noxious:

  • first, they perpetuate the idea of taxes as money wasted (instead of money used);

  • second, by focusing on people that are in the categories that benefit less, today, from the transfers promoted by these taxes (education, healthcare, pensions, unemployment benefits), and that can thus see themselves as "losers" in the game, it is even easier to promote all that spending as waste, instead of legitimate for society, for the future, and for the majority of the members of society.

Only what happens to the rich matters, to put it in a few words.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Mar 30th, 2007 at 09:01:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Your point about the single person without kids is important - ever since Thatcher's Golden Boys we have been invaded by this theme of the young, mobile, easy-learning, ambitious untied-down hard-worker who doesn't ask questions or have complicated issues - who is seen as the reference and the icon for the whole system.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Mar 30th, 2007 at 12:17:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There is nothing we can do about polling, and the redirection of policy according to demographics. It is in the nature of an increasingly refined game.

What we CAN object to, is the extrapolation of decisions based on such statistics. As we all understand, where human beings are concerned, the question you ask defines the answer.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Mar 30th, 2007 at 03:58:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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