The Politically Incorrect Show - 25/08/1999

Music - Die Fledermaus

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Wednesday August 25, proudly sponsored by Tuariki Tobacco Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

Music up, music down!

Last week, two statist parties, National Socialist & Alliance Retard, told us how they would salvage the ailing economy - National Socialist with its "knowledge economy," aka "losers picking winners," & Alliance Retard with its "Economic Development Fund," aka "losers picking losers." The release of these two execrable policies coincided with growing concern about the increasing number of departures by productive people for foreign shores - a concern which is also uppermost in Canada right now, in the light of which, financial writer Peter Foster's commentary in the August 18 edition of that country's National Post makes interesting reading.

"There is something almost Swiftian in the ongoing debate over whether Canada is suffering a brain drain," says Foster. "... As in many Swiftian situations, there are two camps involved: The Drainers, who seek to establish the negative consequences of high tax policies, and the No Drainers (some would say, No Brainers) who maintain there are no such consequences. ... The Drainers tend to be high-tech corporate executives, business organizations and anybody who has the slightest understanding of the fundamentals of economics. Prominent No Drainers include the Canadian Association of University Teachers ... ."

The debate, Foster says, reminds him of a certain famous literary work:

"The novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's monumental 1950s intellectual soap opera, is set in a United States in the process of disintegration because of lousy policies and worse morals -- in short, 'mixed economics.' ... the nation's inventors and the entrepreneurs, the 'Men of the Mind' who create all the technology and the jobs, decide to say 'screw it' and, literally, head for the hills, leaving behind the slimy politicians, barking union leaders and fellow travelling academics to stew in their own non-productive juices. Take that."

In real life, says Foster, that doesn't happen, but: "The departure of a single non-professional entrepreneur -- heading for what he believes is a more amenable business climate -- might have an enormous but obviously unseen impact on the Canadian economy. Just imagine if Frank Stronach had moved on to the U.S. instead of staying here."

But, he warns, too MUCH "emphasis on the brain drain may serve to de-emphasize the hugely more important domestic disincentive effects of high taxation. Whatever the tax levels in other countries, high domestic marginal taxes tend to make additional productive effort less attractive. High taxes don't just cause brains to leave, they cause them to be used less in productive endeavour here. The main problem isn't the drainage at the border, it's still the policy sinkhole in Ottawa."

Well, substitute Wellington for Ottawa & the Association of University Staff, the AUS witches, for the Canadian Association of University Teachers, & Peter Foster's commentary would be perfectly applicable here. My solution would be much more radical than his: let us become the Republic of New Freeland & let us become a tax haven. Let us become a place to which "Men of the Mind" the world over can repair. Let's tell Winston's Whiners to stew in THEIR non-productive juices & create an entrepreneurial paradise where all productive people in all spheres of life get to keep all the money they earn. Let's tell the statists of the National Socialist & Alliance Retard parties that if they really want to help the economy, they should stop pretending they know anything about it & just get out of it & stay out of it. While we're at it, let's tell the statists of the Association of Compulsion-Touters that we don't need to do a cost-benefit-analysis on this - we already know it's good because it's consistent with the freedom the individual. And THAT, as someone not a million miles away is known to say quite often, is the most sacred thing in the universe!

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