A Note from the Author of The Crescent of Circumcision
As a travelling
salesman, I have walked, sailed, ridden, flown and driven over the ancient
trade routes from China to Land’s End and from the North Cape to Cape
Horn. I have sailed through the Panama
Canal and climbed extensively in the Pyrenees.
I have walked across the Andes and driven under the Alps. I have been robbed only twice: once by a
nice, old gentleman with a cut-throat razor; and once by a person unknown on board
one of Her Majesty’s warships which was enforcing the Freedom of the Seas. But as a businessman, I have been robbed by
tax-collectors in Russia and Brazil, South Africa and China, and as a consumer,
I have paid taxes in 50 countries.
I have sold
society-changing technology to the great British and Flemish textile
manufacturers, to the chemical process industry, to the military-industrial
complex, and to the largest industry in the world, the automotive; I have
worked in the paper and print industry, the military, and in IT, and I have
worked for bosses from America, Japan, China, Iran, Vietnam and Britain. I have toured factories from the industries
that have defined the global economy – the PC, the motor-car and sugar. I have had meetings in the rooms where James
Watt created the industrial revolution, and where the tank was first designed
and stayed in hotels next to the world’s first cast Ironbridge, the massive
gold deposits of the Witwatersrand, and in great cities of the Orient like Hong
Kong, Canton, Shanghai, and Delhi. [1] I was the first person in Europe to use a GPS
satellite navigation system, and one of the first non-academic users to have an
email address on the internet.
Wherever I went, I
asked the questions: why here ? Why then
? Why them ? The standard answers
provided by the guide and history books did not really answer the questions so
much as introduce others: Why did Britain
in the 19th century, Holland in the 18th, France in the
17th, Spain in the 16th, Portugal in the 15th
, Venice in the 14th Century AD, Athens in the 5th
century BC, Macedonia in the 4th, Rome in the 3rd, become
global powers, seeming to dominate the world ?
The common history books relate these results to great people, sometimes
to technology, sometimes to religion or philosophy. Looked at logically, these explanations fall
almost immediately. Britain, France,
Holland, Spain and Portugal all wanted to remain powerful countries, yet none
was able to maintain its position of power for longer than about 100
years. Whatever was the cause of their
rise to greatness also included its almost automatic demise. A human angle could account for such a rise,
except that in almost every case, the greatest humans of the time were against
such imperialism. Neither military competence nor great
generals seems to explain the rise or the fall of empires.
Although there is
a common human factor, in a great leader who is willing to spend his available
funds on international conquest, the common factor seems to be finance – both
cash and credit - gained from taxation.
But nowhere was this clearly set out as the reason, and there are few
books which even document this; mostly, facts relating to finance are injected
into books that would otherwise be nothing more than historical fiction. A good example is the plaque at Harlech
Castle, stating the cost of building. Harlech
Castle cost £ 18,000 to build. So what
? How was this calculated ? Who paid it ?
In what currency ? What terms
? Where did the money come from ? How much did Caernarvon Castle cost ? Was this price the starting price or was it
negotiated down from a higher starting price ?
Was the money ever paid ? How
does this compare to the English King’s annual revenues ? Did the tax-payer get good value-for-money
? Did the exploitation of Wales repay
the cost of conquest ?
In researching the
answers to these questions, far more popped up: how did finance work ? What was the role of religion ? Of military technology ? Why did people pay taxes ? Man’s curious nature, his ambivalence towards
violence, his eagerness to kill others, but only under certain conditions and,
worst of all, his ability to stand by and watch as literally millions of fellow
human beings died around him, had to be explained.
Taxation is like the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs. Each day, a small golden egg was laid by a big fat goose. Every day, the farmer got a bit richer, but each day he spent more and more money; eventually, he was desperate and killed the goose to get at the eggs faster. But when he cut it open, there were no eggs inside. [3] tax-collectors are like the farmer, ever increasing their demands on the tax-payer until the poor goose is taxed to death. sometimes the death of the tax-payer is clearly the result of the tax-collector's activities, but often the cause of death is hidden.
European countries
today have a legal requirement to charge VAT – up to 25% or more. [2] This tax is levied on money that has already
been taxed at least once – employers pay charges or national insurance contributions,
and employees pay their income tax of typically up to 40% or more. As well as paying VAT, drinkers, drivers and
smokers pay additional taxes, as much as 90% of the retail cost of drink,
petrol and cigarettes. High wage earners
can pay up to 75% of their money to their government in taxes.
Taxation has been
an integral part of civilisation since at least man learnt to write: indeed,
the word scribe means tax-collector in Egyptian, where they documented the
taxes raised to fund the pyramids: 20% of their agricultural produce, and labour
when there was no work to do in the fields.
It is unlikely
that taxation will go away but in a democracy it may be possible to reduce the
suffering that it can bring, and to delay the disaster that awaits the
tax-payers of Western nations. In
particular, tax-payers can refuse to support tax-spenders
who use taxes to bomb poor people, promote their own candidacy as
tax-collectors, and generally increase taxation.
Taxation followed
the money. What a single man could carry
was worth the effort of two men to steal, but a mule, an ox-drawn cart or a
boat could carry enough to make a village or a town rich if one passed every
day. Taxing it at 10% made sense because
it did not dissuade other mules, carts or boats; reasonable tax kept the goose
that laid the golden eggs alive.
In history, every
city or state that has taxed its citizens at rates as high as European states
do today has collapsed, either through civil war, foreign invasion, disease or
famine, or emigration, and often a combination of these. The original population has been reduced by a
third or a half and sometimes more. This
is a great warning, if it can be heeded.
Modern taxation
consists of millions of computers invisibly taking a percentage of transactions
and passing the details to a tax-collector, or visibly adding a percentage to a
bill to increase the amount paid and still passing the details to a tax-collector. Growing up with these systems, taxation seems
neither surprising nor onerous. Only by
looking at the world before taxation existed can its effects be understood.
[1] The SoHo Foundry is still in use as the head office of AveryWeigh-Tronix in Birmingham, and the meeting room is available for hire in the
White Hart Hotel in Lincoln. In fact,
the first tank in the world was designed and built before the Great War by the
Austrian Navy, but their mountainous terrain and inter-service rivalry meant
that it did not go into production.
Photographs of the tank are available at the Austrian Naval Museum,Vienna, Austria.
[2] Businesses can recover VAT, but as they have paid it upfront they
lose the interest on the money; the government treats business VAT as a cheap
loan.
[3] A traditional tale documented as early as Aesop’s fables.
