The wealth tax cure-all is having its day. Long time a favourite of the ‘progressive’ left to ameliorate the evils of capitalism, it has gained extra exposure from Gary Stevenson, the City trader turned bestselling author, YouTuber and leftist poster-boy. This self-acclaimed “very, very good economist” puts taxing the rich at the centre of his crusade for a fairer society. More recently, with the Labour government’s fiscal plans in tatters, their former leader Neil Kinnock floated the expediency of a 2 per cent tax on assets valued above £10 million. Subsequently at Prime Minister’s Questions the current leader Keir Starmer refused to rule out a new tax on wealth. 

Little better illustrates today’s political and cultural barriers to economic growth than these voguish proposals for a wealth tax. The suggestion of taxing the super-rich to address the government’s fiscal hole is another lily-livered evasion of the tough decisions required. It expresses the cultural and political elites’ prerogative that there is always some other group who can pay for social needs and for their own privileges.

Governments need to stop assuming there is always someone to pay for their spineless overspending. 

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