Has been over 2 months now since Labour has announced the death tax for farmers and I need to get a few concept off my chest. People felt surprised by this “betrayal” of the Labour party, while I was not surprised one bit, and this all boils down to understanding who they are and what they really stand for.
To tell this tale we need to find common ground, and we can all agree that the Labour party is socialist in nature, it is clearly stated in its constitution that “the Labour Party is a democratic socialist Party.” Their party leaders have always been socialist, and so is the current one, Kier Starmer, by his own admission.
Established that they present themselves as socialists, why would you be surprised that they went after the farmers? What really is socialism? And here is where it gets funny, folks for some reason tends to believe that this an ideology of rainbows and unicorns that cares for the workers, all because in the last page, the very last slogan is “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”, ignoring everything that is written in the pages prior.
Socialists always stripped the farmers, they are seen as rich folks that built their fortune through inheritance and the riches of their fathers. If you have anything, there is a socialist somewhere that is jealous of you and wants it taxed away. You can look at history for examples. Stalin expropriated the Kulaks in Russia, Mao turned the farms into communes for the Great Leap Forward, Castro expropriated the farmers in Cuba. If you want more recent news, the Socialist ANC party has authorised just last month the expropriation of South African farmer.
Let’s go and see what the ideology says in the specific. There are different schools of socialism, but they all go back to a set of actions that Karl Marx defined in the Communist Manifesto; we can all agree that the guy that formally shaped the philosophy knows a thing or two about it. Well, according to Marx, in order to push for the socialist ideal world, all rights of inheritance must be abolished.
You heard that right, socialist ideology demands your inheritance. Allow me to list all 10 points from the Communist Manifesto, read point number 3:
- Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
- A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
- Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
- Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
- Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
- Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
- Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
- Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
- Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
According to the core ideology that Labour follows, upon your death you should be stripped of all your possessions, which should go to the state to distribute as they see fit, and nothing should be left to the family.
How do they go about this? Well, they start small, they tell you that the tax is only for the very rich, some don’t protest because it doesn’t affect them, and the public tends to go with the state, because they see you as rich, sitting on your 1.325 millions of farm land, blissfully unaware of your reality. How do they screw you? Queue inflation.
By the way, I am aware that there are different brackets, for the sake of simplicity and to make a clear example I am using the lower bracket. Also, on inflation, in the future I will dedicate a post to it, for the moment let’s keep it brief, inflation is created by the government every time they print money.
What they do is tell you that this measure only affects those with a farm above 1.325 millions, but they don’t consider that we have inflation, which currently sits around 5%, this means that because of inflation, if your farm is worth 1.260 millions, add 5% and next year it will be plump enough to be plundered. What about in 5 years? Well, if your farm is worth 1.038 millions today, in 5 years will be affected. And in 10? By the magic of inflation, in 10 years will be affected every farm that today is worth 810 thousands. If your farm is worth 500k, they will get to you in 20 years, that is, unless they review the brackets before that.
See how it works? They are in no rush, all they have to do is set some high threshold and tell you that you will never have to worry, it will never affect you, until it will, because of the power of inflation.
So, if you ever felt betrayed by Labour, maybe you should consider that they were never in your corner, they just lied to you all along because, if they would have told you what they really stand for, you would have never supported them to begin with.
For the sake of clarity, I would like to stress that I don’t like the alternatives either and I made this point before, this is not about promoting a party, this is about shining some light on the ideology behind those in charge of the country.
“Proverbs 13:22: A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.”