Blog 7 - Let’s have it out - amongst progressives, with the business class, with voters – should we fix public services by taxing the wealthy more?

Standard header - in this blog, a current political event is illuminated by reference to the basic relationships explained in ‘Us, Politics and The System.’ To give readers an idea when to look for a new post, the initial plan is to do a new one at least once a week, on Fridays.

In the last blog, it was promised ‘We need more of say’ will be continued over the next week or so, linked to other current issues, taxing the rich to fund public services being the next.

And in today’s Guardian we have

Starmer and Reeves should consider wealth tax, says former shadow chancellor

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/31/chancellor-should-consider-a-wealth-tax-says-former-minister-anneliese-dodds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Labour in the UK have been relying on growth to provide greater tax income so they can improve services without raising taxes. But they don’t run the economy, the business class does, so that method is out of their control and isn't happening. So they are losing voter support and members because of not improving public services enough, and even cutting them.

But with the ridiculous amounts of money the super-rich and some of the rest of us have, the wealth is there already. We need to have it out in public debate, led by the Labour party, about raising the desperately-needed money by taxing them more fairly.

These are the likely reasons they are reluctant to - we rely upon the wealthy, the business class, to invest in and run the economy. Would taxing them more make them not do that, so we’d better not? If it’s not true, do it. If it is true, let’s condemn them for not being the patriots they claim to be and not be so vicious towards Labour for not improving public services enough. Let’s blame the real culprits.

The other main reason is that if we agree we could tax them more without damaging the economy, the conservative media would still work, probably with some success, at convincing voters, particularly the better-off, otherwise, and Labour would lose enough voters to lose the next election. So the progressive movement, of which the Labour Party is the biggest element, need to have that debate with voters and become a lot more effective at getting across to voters than they are.

This should underpin this debate – most of what the wealthy have is not rightly theirs in the first place. This is spelled out in ‘Us, Politics and The System’ in two places in – ‘It’s your money not theirs’ in The Summary Charts, page 4, at https://www.uspoliticsandthesystem.org/_files/ugd/e8d212_f8e8549319a54c32993ae1c3abe285a2.pdf

and at page 279 of the main work at https://www.uspoliticsandthesystem.org/_files/ugd/e8d212_b4c119a749af49a28286fcc7648f5cbb.pdf .

No room to discuss here the overall theme of ‘We need more of a say.’ Next blog, probably.

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