Alcohol 'more dangerous than heroin'

[Loki_999]

however I guess that could be achieved via an income tax if the idea you propose has a sliding scale, increasing for higher earners?

Erm...I think you should look up what a "flat tax" is.

I don't think people should be taxed on what they buy, but by what they earn from society. If you take more from society, you pay more, but at the same rate. For instance, I think that most governments could get away with a flat tax of 10% across the board, provided they planned well enough, made the government small (by splitting it up over districts, etc), and by pulling out of things that could be better handled by the private sector.

Its definitely a nice idea. Not sure about 10% though. The rich have good accountants who are good at (legally) hiding earnings. Laws would definitely need to be simplified for these loopholes to be closed.

I'm with you on privatising as much as possible. Not because I think privatization is a great idea, especially for things like health and education, but because having worked in government i've seen the inefficiencies that occur there. Empire building, too much management, poor management (promotion based on seniority instead of competence), ineffective incentive schemes, poor salary (at lower levels - insane salaries at high levels), and the stupid equal ops laws that require them to hire people who cannot do the job just so they can tick a box to show they have a retarded person (no offence, i mean this in the medical sense) employed, which then of course means employing a normal person to do the job the retarded person is meant to be doing.

Take for example the what used to be Disability Working Allowance. Disabled people would be given extra money if they held a job and applied for DWA. So, the tax department would tax their income, another department would issue them additional money for working, which would be another payment which would be taxed as well, not to mention all purchases they make getting taxed when they spend their money. Pure madness.