My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyscientists and technicians. When they can show that an invention or initiative hasincreased the national wealth, they should be rewarded by a corresponding reductionin their taxation even before any industrial reorganisation has given them theincentive they deserve. I can see no reason why the same principle should not beextended to the factory floor, and initiative resulting in an increase of productionrewarded by reduction of personal taxation. These are instruments available togovernment in the ordinary fiscal system without awaiting an industrial show-down.The government has only to summon the courage to face and to eradicate thecrippling egalitarianism of the English disease.For years I have urged a large transfer of the fiscal burden from direct to indirecttaxation. In the old days of poverty economics there was a right and proper prejudiceagainst indirect taxation, which was often a shifting of the burden from the rich to thepoor when there was nothing like enough to go round. If this cannot today bedescribed as thinking of the stage-coach age, it can certainly be called thinking of therailway age, for it dates from the period when Gladstone changed Pitt's system ofindirect taxation into the direct levy of the present income-tax method, and since thenno one has done any really new fiscal thinking. Circumstances are entirely changed ina society which is, at least temporarily, affluent. Certainly, the basic necessities oflife—food, clothing and housing—should be free from all tax, but indirect taxationgraduated to the luxury element should replace the direct levy which falls on thethrifty and the spendthrift alike. The standards of luxury will of course change aseconomic prosperity increases and stability is assured, but the principle of taxingspending rather than earning could and should endure.Unemployment., public works, the trade unionsThe other sphere in which the government must give a decisive lead is in theorganisation of public works on a great scale. In an island or even a continentaleconomy overheating, with the result of inflation, can occur in a condition of fullemployment. On the other hand, to maintain a large pool of unemployment isinhuman and disastrous to the general morale. The answer to this dilemma of thepresent system is to avoid overheating and inflation by the restraints of credit policy,while taking up the consequent slack of unemployment in public works. No manshould be unemployed, and work should be available to all on a reasonable standardof life in a large public works programme, but there should be sufficient differential toprovide incentive to return as soon as possible to normal employment; re-training andre-deployment of labour schemes should always accompany a public works system.Public works should now be in active preparation in all Western countries to replacein due time the distortions of the economy of the Western world, which are initiallycaused by the semi-wartime basis of America. When peace finally breaks out, weshould be ready with the constructive works of peace to replace the destructive worksof America's small wars and the concomitant arms race. The world inflationarymovement, resting largely on America's deficit financing of its wars and arms, can atany time come abruptly to an end, either through peace or the objections of othernations to this financial process. So far, armament race and minor wars have taken upthe slack of unemployment which would normally represent the difference betweenmodern industrial potential and effective market demand. This has only been done bydistorting the economy and aggravating the eventual problem of peace. To maintainfull employment in a real period of peace only two methods are available—inflation,413 of 424