Raising Revenue

When the cost of providing good quality human interfaces, be it social care, restaurant service or answering customer queries becomes the overriding concern maybe it is time to take stock. Why do we use minimum wage staff, school children or third world call centre staff to respond to the complexities of human concerns. Simply because the hourly cost of employing staff is so high. If you paid a good wage to attract the best calibre of staff the services offered would be deemed too expensive.

Humans are remarkably adapt at carrying out complex, intricate, novel procedures and are able to apply these skills to operations over a period of time improving on their technique as they progress. Unlike machines they need variety, change of pace and swapping novelty for repetition. Men have and are being replaced by machines. Any repetitive task with a significant volume are increasingly being turned over to a machine. Humans are expensive to employ and have other ancillary non-productive social needs that make them even more expensive.

The traditional professions to large part owed the existence because of the information acquired over years of application. Yes there were other factors as well but the significant common theme was that they held the information on where to find, who would be able to provide, which consideration would apply. They relied on knowledge retrieval as the foundation of their particular skill. You had to use them as no one else had sufficient day to day recollection to know how to effect this or that. The professional bastion is being challenged by the online world where the very best information can be available to anyone anywhere. Information is no longer the privilege of a few but widely disseminated.

Just three acorns to get across the idea that the labour market as we used to know it is undergoing a silent revolution. It is now fact, we do not expect massive industrial complexes with thousands of people pouring in and out each shift to turn their wheels. This same scaling down of the numbers of people employed is spreading across all traditional work fronts. Yes some new employment industries are being created a long the way, but the slide, the direction of drift is clear. With a shrinking workforce in regular employment, Income Tax on the masses in employment as the main means of revenue generation is overdue a rethink.

Picking up on a theme I explore elsewhere, GB is a great marketing opportunity. High concentration of an affluent articulate population, compact with high density of interconnections and a gifted energetic advertising industry. A product maker or sellers dream. Great, but pay the going rate. Rather than Income Tax we should have Wealth Generation Tax. If you benefit from being in this country and selling to it then you will have to pay a tax on the income that arises. If you are just a distributor, everything manufactured overseas, shipped in and lorried around, a very high rate. If you have invested hugely in plant and or people, a very low minimal rate. If you don't produce goods or services but utilise your position here to make money, and I am thinking of Bankers, Insurances and footballers as examples, then extortionate rates apply.

There are many benefits and are sure to be many downfalls, but we have something worth charging for, the GB marketplace. If our revenue can shift to exploit that rather than adding to labour costs, who knows maybe, just maybe it will be possible to employ skilled persons again to interact with our citizens or craftsmen to fashion prototypes for production overseas..