Arguments for small Government

The Remittance Man has an interesting piece, AND TALKING OF INCOMPETENCE, in which he argues that Government is so big there just isn't enough talent to fill all the key roles such as Chancellor, Home Secretary and heads of Civil Service etc. Therefore we should reduce the size of Government. This is a well made case in a good cause, but it doesn't go far enough as it only considers one half of the equation.

I cannot argue with the need for talented people in those key jobs and that the numbers should be reduced to an absolute minimum but my argument is that this is because while they are consuming wealth they are not creating it. Surely we want our most talented people in industry creating wealth for the country?

This wealth creation argument is also the drive behind Lawson's dictum that taxes should be simple and universal. We don't want our best talent trying to minimise a Company's ever more difficult tax liability; we want them generating higher profits for their companies. On a personal level I resent having to pay an accountant to fill in my annual tax return even tough he generally save me money. He should be doing something more productive.

Consider the case of tax credits, probably the most fiendishly difficult tax relief system ever devised. In order to make it work we have some of our best computer programmers writing programmes and scripts so that people in call centres can deal with the ever growing problems. Surely raising the tax threshold would be the simplest way to give poor people a tax break? And then these creative programmers could be developing products that can be used to create wealth?