Left wingers commonly scorn the old adage “tax is theft”, but today, its a view that is looking more accurate than inaccurate.

Across the globe, and here in NZ, (Gareth Morgan for example) we have calls to “tax the rich”.

I find it difficult to see such language as anything but code for “let’s steal from the rich”.

The need to steal more from the rich has arisen because as socialism has become the prevailing form of government across the west, so has the need for the productive to feed government with money grown. And grown. And grown. Now, finally, the goose has been killed.

While some could claim that the left’s failure to see this situation arising was typical of their deluded political view, others might say they have always known what they were doing. Marx wanted to crush the middle class between the millstones of taxation and inflation. That’s more or less what is happening.

Getting back to the main issue, can the failure of socialist governments across the western world to curb their overspending and particularly their vote buying, give moral credence to the push to steal money from those who have it?

I do not think so. The immorality of socialism has finally produced the outcome it was always going to, and we’re better to address that problem directly rather than compounding it by means of greater theft to create greater immorality and in the end, an even worse economic situation.

The problem to me has always been that those who have voted for ever expanding government have always done so in the delusion that someone else will pay for it. Taxes on the lower income earners are too low, thereby giving them no real understanding of how much governments really cost. They think its all “free”, and to an extent they’re right.

People with no or very little skin in the game will always vote for more government and more spending, because they believe it can’t really hurt them. Wrong. It can, as the current economic situation shows, and there are plenty of signs that it is going to get worse.

If the people who voted for socialism had been the ones paying for it, we would never have got to this stage.

The answer then is not to steal from the rich to top up empty government coffers, but to make those who voted for huge and expensive government pay for it. I’ve always said a poll tax should be the only tax. Just one single payment per annum from everyone on the voting role. All other taxes cease to exist.

If every single person had been paying the same amount for government, the economic destruction we’re about to suffer as a result of socialism and expensive and spendthrift big government, funded by money that really didn’t exist, would not be happening.

The illusion promoted by the left, that there is a big bag of money somewhere that socialist governments can always access, (“Obama’s got a stash”) is behind today’s economic situation. This lie has to stop, and more importantly, voters have to stop falling for it.

We need to be more realistic about our economies. A poll tax is the best way to bring financial reality home to each and every voter, and make him/ her understand the true cost of government, and more importantly, to remove the delusional idea (implanted by the left) that the bigger government gets, the greater the wealth and prosperity.