While I have been critical of the government's proposed VAT increase from 7.5 percent to 12 percent I have at least attempted to offer alternative ideas like cutting public expenditures further, control wasteful spending, commence a national lottery and improve the ease of opening and conducting business.
The business community/private sector is the largest tax collector in the country, often paying taxes up front to collect them from the consumer and collecting Value Added Tax (VAT) on goods and services. With ever increasing regulation and taxes government jeopardises the very sector it relies on for revenue.
Of course there needs to be checks and balances and this is where governments role is best suited. Act as referee and not in determining outcomes.
This excerpt from and article “Fair versus Free” by Milton Friedman Newsweek, 4 July 1977 (pdf) puts it succinctly
"Is then the search for “fairness” all a mistake? Not at all. There is a real role for fairness, but that role is in constructing general rules and adjudicating disputes about the rules, not in determining the outcome of our separate activities. That is the sense in which we speak of a “fair” game and a “fair” umpire. If we applied the present doctrine of “fairness” to a football game, the referee would be required after each play to move the ball backward or forward enough to make sure that the game ended in a draw!"
But unfortunately there is a school of thought that the free market or Capitalism is the problem and their veiled suggestion is government policy should be directed to replacing the business community with some imagined utopia without offering specifics on the public policies they recommend.
Of course ideas are important but to simply regurgitate that Capitalism is bad over and over without offering policy ideas becomes a perpetual roller coaster like ride - going in circles for the sake of getting dizzy.
By all means critique public policy as some good may come out of counter proposals but just finding fault for it's own sake is useless.
