Of trust and trusts

But the Marx, the font of most of today’s collectivist politics was a classic narcissist, so it is no wonder that people of a similar inclination would be drawn to his general philosophies.

But there is more at play here, and it is in the formula, enunciated most succinctly by Tanya Plibersek, and more verbosely by Albanese and Chalmers, that “People who work for a living should not get taxed more on their wages than people who are living on their assets.”

That is why the slogan matters. It is not merely a tax argument. It reveals a moral suspicion and even vilification of capital itself and comes directly from Marx’s surplus value theory of wages which holds that the capitalist and the entrepreneur bring nothing to the table except what they have appropriated from the worker.

It gives no value to innovation, savings, knowledge or organisation, the domain of the capitalist, all of which are essential to the worker being able to earn any wages at all. Without them we would be reduced to hunter gatherers pillaging and scavenging our living off the land.

The necessity for capital is the major reason that we tax it less than wages. (We also tax it less because it often includes inflation, delayed consumption, risk premium, retained earnings already taxed, and returns from assets bought with after-tax income).

Capital formation is what leads to productivity and leads to higher sustainable wages, yet everywhere you look in present day Australia this government penalises capital and awards unsustainable wage rises to workers in preferred, unionised, workforces.

With one exception.

If you put your money into superannuation, and that superannuation fund, likely to be run by a union, is less than $3 million, then you can have all the benefits of the old system.

But then it’s not really your money then, it’s theirs, and they will determine how it is invested.

These days we interpret many of the causes of the left through the prism of post-Marxism. The idea is that as capitalism lifted all boats, traditional class warfare based on class and economic deprivation no longer motivated citizens, so they had to find new classes of oppressed – sex, gender, race, disability and so on.

In this budget that class is the young, and they’ve found classic Marxist tropes to express the “exploitation” based on wage earners versus savers and retirees.

This is a final breach of trust. The Australian promise is not that everyone will be equal (the subtle connotation of that word “equity”) but that everyone will have a fair go. That fair go has from the beginning included the promise of home ownership and savings. The chance to get ahead. A fair go for those who have a go.

By trying to set up a war of wages against capital not only do they betray that promise, but they betray the workers because their real wages will suffer over time. But that’s OK by them because the poorer people are, the more likely they are to vote left.

And it’s not really about you, it’s always been about them. You can trust me on that.