It's starting

[Cyberman]

It would have been worse under the Tories.

Yeah. The Tories had 98% tax in the 70s and went to the IMF despite this !!

[threaded]

Yes, late on in the Roman Empire it got to the case where slaves were more expensive to employ than free-men.

[ace00]

Age old idea mate....

There's a book I mean to read called "Downfall of civilizations" or something similar.
It investigates the collapse of major civilizations from Rome on.
Apparently every civilization collapses due to the state / despot / king becoming more and more over-bearing, taxing, expensive.
They say that by the end of the Roman empire, citizens would sell themselves into slavery to escape the onerous charges of he state (taxes, tithes, supplying children to be soldiers,etc.) . As slaves they had none of these responsibilities.
Interesting.

[ace00]

Oh, let's hope so. Could this be the catalyst to bring down the crass socialism-for-the-rich, capitalism-fo-the-poor torture?

Yes according to the paper (Times):

It was a good day out for old-guard radicals. After years of being told that they are on the wrong side of history, the Trotskyites, anarchists, Marxists, situationists and the other -ists feel that the tide has turned in their favour. SUD, an anarchist union, is on the verge of taking over the railways and Olivier Besancenot, a popular revolutionary postman and star of the Paris march is on a roll with his Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste. Libération, the lefty newspaper born in May '68, hauled in Alain Badiou, a philosopher, to set the revolutionary tone. “My dream is that Sarkozy will be chased out of power by the street,” he said

Sacre Bleau !

[DimPrawn]

Age old idea mate. Before the development of the nation state, Landlords extracted rent and taxes from the peasants, ‘for the upkeep of the estate’. Some enlightened landlords appreciated the value of good relations with the peasantry and recognized the interdependence of owner and worker; that’s why many peasants in the middle ages paid little more than 10% of their total production and were required to send not more than one son for military duties. At the end of their working lives many were allowed to continue living on the estate and received food and assistance from other residents.

It would have been worse under the Tories.

[Mich the Tester]

Where did the idea come from that its the governments job to extract as much money from the workers as is possible without causing a revolution

Age old idea mate. Before the development of the nation state, Landlords extracted rent and taxes from the peasants, ‘for the upkeep of the estate’. Some enlightened landlords appreciated the value of good relations with the peasantry and recognized the interdependence of owner and worker; that’s why many peasants in the middle ages paid little more than 10% of their total production and were required to send not more than one son for military duties. At the end of their working lives many were allowed to continue living on the estate and received food and assistance from other residents. Other landlords treated the peasantry with more disdain, not caring whether the farm labourers starved as log as they had a huge manor house and a long dinner table with lots of pigs, chickens, pheasants and wine piled up; see the history of Ireland, where the people quite rightly rose up and overthrew the existing powers who had left them in dire poverty while profiting from their labour.

[EternalOptimist]

Where did the idea come from that its the governments job to extract as much money from the workers as is possible without causing a revolution

[Mich the Tester]

Oh, let's hope so. Could this be the catalyst to bring down the crass socialism-for-the-rich, capitalism-fo-the-poor torture?

Do you mean the idiotic practise of taxing anything productive and petty regulation instead of expert supervision?

[threaded]

Oh, let's hope so. Could this be the catalyst to bring down the crass socialism-for-the-rich, capitalism-fo-the-poor torture?

[wurzel]

Oh, let's hope so. Could this be the catalyst to bring down this rotten administration?

[moorfield]

The French are at it already, and now us ...

strikes