The concept of progressive taxation, once lauded as a pillar of leftist ideology, aimed to embody progressiveness by imposing a heavier tax burden on the wealthy. It was envisioned as a means to uphold public services, with the wealthiest individuals leading the chariot, paying heinous tax rates of up to 45%.
However, this philosophy ignores a critical flaw. As the belief that only the affluent bear this burden is far from reality, as shockingly, a staggering 32.32% of the tax-paying population find themselves trapped in higher tax brackets, far beyond a mere trickle.
With a significant 53.1% of the UK’s tax revenue directly fuelled from just 32.32% of the tax-paying population – or in other words, a mere 18.1% of the UK’s total population -, it becomes clear that we have overlooked the potential to invigorate our financial system, through putting more money in the hands of the people. By doing so, we could meet the demands of the free market and stimulate economic growth, something which UK markets have so greatly been missing out on.
While decreasing the top rates of tax may seem delusional given the economic situation and current governmental regime, there remains a possibility worth exploring—a flat tax system. In a society where absolute fairness is demanded, regardless of common sense, one must question why society would reject such a concept. A flat tax is undeniably the fairest and most equal method of taxation, aligning with the very meaning of the word ‘fair’:
“fair, just, equitable, impartial, unbiased, dispassionate, objective mean free from favor toward either or any side. fair implies a proper balance of conflicting interests. a fair decision. just implies an exact following of a standard of what is right and proper.” [Definition of the word ‘fair’ [Merriam-Webster, 2023]
Therefore I ask, why not give a flat tax a chance? It treats everyone equally, regardless of socioeconomic background, offering an undeniable sense of absolute fairness. However, doubts arise when considering its feasibility, more particularly its success within the UK. While some countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, have implemented a flat tax providing positive outcomes, it is essential to acknowledge that the UK’s financial sector could potentially be destabilized by such a system. The financial sector not only sustains thousands of jobs but also serves as the lifeblood of the nation’s capital. Nonetheless, this does not mean that a flat tax is impossible for the UK.
Russia’s flat tax rate of 13%, introduced in 2001, led to an increase in tax revenue, alongside improvements in overall tax compliance and efficiency, supported by OECD. This simplification of the tax system was hailed as a significant success, considering the many complex loopholes which existed before its introduction.
Regrettably so, implementing a 13% tax rate across the UK would not be so easy, especially with the UK public’s insistence on retaining the NHS; therefore, I would propose a higher rate, potentially around 20%, tooling HM Treasury to strike a balance between taxation and state spending.
Through adopting this alternative approach, we would aim to solidify the medium in-between sustaining key public services and ensuring maximum disposable income, which after all, would be better reinvested throughout the UK’s markets, taking away a degree of power from the state. Through this, the basic tax rate would also remain the same (at 20%), effectively eliminating the higher tax bands of 40% and 45%.
The math behind this proposal makes sense, as a flat tax rate of 20% would lead to a decrease of approximately £49 billion in tax revenue compared to our current progressive system, representing a decrease of only 6.26%.
While losing out on £49 billion may seem significant, it would position the UK as one of the most attractive nations for wealthy investors, providing a clear economic incentive as compared to other competing nations. Fostering and enabling a true post-Brexit economic plan, which would provide the investment the UK so desperately needs.
To put this into perspective, HS2 is set to cost between £72-£98 billion, whilst yearly funding for the NHS costs £160 billion; this further solidifies the point that £49 billion is a figure which the government could work with, an amount which would allow the UK economy to grow out of stagnation and thus establish an empire of investment, indeed signalling to the world that we are ‘actually’ open for business.
As Friedman argued and I alike, we should focus first on economic restoration, above all else, and what better way to do so than restimulate our markets with more disposable income to spend across the nation.
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In Conversation with Curtis Yarvin (The Return of Don Quixote and Anglo-Meiji Restoration)
Curtis Yarvin, known by his pen name ‘Mencius Moldbug’, is one of the most prominent social critics and reactionary writers of the contemporary era. Yarvin’s blogs, ‘Gray Mirror’ and ‘Imperial Melodies’, can be found on Substack.
Yarvin’s words are in light.
There’s a little-known Chesterton work called The Return of Don Quixote. Don’t know it at all?
I don’t. I mean, I’m familiar with the original Don Quixote by Cervantes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Return of Don Quixote, and it’s about the victory of a joyous reactionary movement, written as an Edwardian novel, set in the future. It’s very interesting and it sort of catches the sort of joyousness right, which is an absolutely essential part of, like, any kind of restoration of this type.
And yet, you know, kind of Russian Hide And Seek, which is of course a much later work, is more…black-pilled, you might say, and perhaps a little more convincing. And I would say, sort of read them both. You’ll get kind of some of both of these ideas, but just breaking out of this incredible, I mean, it’s like, when you look in the rear-view mirror at Brexit. It’s like 0.1% of a British Meiji, right? And it’s a completely failed venture, and a completely failed thing, you know, I was reading Richard North’s blog EU Referendum, back in the earlier ‘00s, you know, I think he was associated to some extent with, like, early UKIP, and, um you know, the idea of having a referendum on Britain leaving the EU in 2005, let alone that referendum winning, it seemed like such, what we call here, a stretch goal.
It seemed so unimaginable and it happens. This incredible revolution happens and of course it happens and it doesn’t amount to shit. It just has no momentum. As soon as it wins it begins to lose. And, actually, the main effect of Brexit was to destroy the Brexit movement.
Pretty much.
You can’t help but feel that when you do something and people put that much effort and that much hope into something, and in retrospect you can look at it and just say “Well duh, obviously that was gonna…there was no way that could have worked in any way, shape, or form and done anything useful or relevant, or whatever,” and, the, you know…the definition of insanity is making the same mistake twice, and, right, and here, is just the form of government that has been how England rose to greatness and has been governed for pretty much all of the last two millennia, you know, before the invitation to William, right? You know, I guess, you know, William, it’s hard to know to what extent William of Orange was really interested in British domestic affairs. I don’t know how great it was.
Queen Anne was certainly pretty feeble and um, you did know that the um, the king has the right to veto legislation in parliament, right?
Yes.
And do you know who the last person, the last king, who actually used that power was?
It’s not going to be James I is it? Someone distant. Charles I?
Here’s a hint. It wasn’t a king at all.
Really? OK, so was it Queen Anne then? Was it in fact Queen Anne?
It was in fact Queen Anne. Uh, she did it once, and I forget over what. Probably some completely symbolic bullshit.
I see. They went “No, no, this is no good, we’ll get this Dutch fellow”.
Yeah, yeah, it was sort of their ‘lordships die in the dark’ moment. I think, like you know, the People’s Budget of 1911 or whatever. Yeah, Queen Anne was like the legitimate daughter of James II, right? And there was some hope that – and she was basically a Jacobite heir – it’s sort of like this woman Georgia Meloni who gets elected in Italy spouting all this rhetoric and then she’s like “We must fight for the Ukraine, the cause of Ukraine is the cause of all of us”, right?
You know, when I was in Portugal, I was in a small town in this summer and, you know, all of the…you would swear the whole population of Setúbal, Portugal, had come out and, like, popular enthusiasm for the cause of the Ukraine was everywhere, spontaneous graffiti, right, you know, and it’s like, these expressions of popular enthusiasm, like ‘workers of the world, unite’ in Czechoslovakia in 1976. You know, the greengrocer does not really care about workers of the world and I’m pretty sure that if you’re a bus driver in Setúbal, Portugal, your interest in the Dnieper isn’t really – excuse me, Dnipro – is fairly limited, and the uh, just, I mean, it’s increasingly comical, and so, the idea of just like, this whole structure collapsing in one boom is so much more realistic than the idea of Brexit. It’s so much more realistic. People think it’s unrealistic, no, it may be unrealistic, but it is vastly more realistic than Brexit.
I read your piece about a Meiji Restoration. I was sat in the middle of a bunch of naval officers and I was thinking “You know what? Rishi Sunak’s not very popular, neither is Keir Starmer, nobody likes parliament, what would actually happen right now if King Charles did in fact just go ‘guys’…”
Martial law.
Yeah exactly. What would actually happen? And you know, there’s been this sort of endless slew of headline after headline after headline of “Oh, this thing isn’t working, we’ll get the army in to drive trucks” and “Oh, this isn’t working, we’ll get the navy in to sort out this hospital”, and you just sort of look at this thing and think “Why is it that the last sort of functional bit of our government is essentially military?” And “Why is it that…” what would actually happen if…would anyone stop it? Would anyone in the military?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was in Dartmouth. I was at BRNC when the Queen died.
Oh wow.
It’s full of these young, early twenties cadets, who are going through…you know, I was there the day…so I think I was one of the last people to officially join the Queen’s navy and one of the first to join the King’s, and you know, everybody, the whole, the whole college just stopped. I went out onto the Parade Ground at about 5pm in the early evening and every church bell in Dartmouth was ringing across the valley. And yes, there’s a huge amount of symbolic nothingness to it –
But that symbolism can be converted back into reality.
Right!
And everyone would be stunned at how easy it was, and how obvious it was.
I don’t think anyone would say no.
Well, would Sir Arthur Scargill bring the unions into the street? Would like, you know, would the SpADs like set up barricades outside of Nelson’s Column? What?
Right, right. I don’t see it.
I don’t see it. And so you can have your New Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. You just have to realise that the chains that are bonding you are made of paper.
But that’s the question. The new Prince of Wales hands out copies of the Big Issue –
[*Laughs*]
And I just don’t see the king going along with this, so what do we do? Do we have some kind of new Cromwellian parliamentary lie where oh no, no, the king is held captive by these malignants and bad ideas, what is it? What on Earth are we doing?
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, um, maybe we, you know, uh, I don’t know, if Prince William did enough acid, maybe?
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Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
Since Brexit, an embittered, drawn-out separation procedure which homogenised the UK’s political news for almost half a decade, political commentators have routinely surmised the future of the UK-EU relationship.
Whatever differences may exist in the specifics of their predictions, many operate under the pervasive assumption that the relationship is a work in progress – it doesn’t quite know what it is yet, it needs time to root itself into something tangible, which thereafter can be analysed at a deeper level.
Unfortunately for professional pontificators, the essence of the post-Brexit UK-EU relationship has already materialised: “anything you can do, I can do better.”
One might argue that every international relationship is like this. Even where this concord and sainted ‘co-operation’, the vying interests of states lurks beneath the surface.
Whilst it’s true that competition is an indelible component of politics, it’s worth noting that just because states can act in their own interests doesn’t mean they will. Now more than ever, the course of politics is dictated by PR, rather than policy.
As such, when policy considerations arise, states are prone to pursue goals which aren’t necessarily in their interests but provide a presentational veneer of ‘superiority’ when compared to rivals.
“Shot yourself in the foot, eh? What’s that? With a flintlock pistol? Pfft. Amateur.”
*Proceeds to aim cartoonishly large blunderbuss at own foot*
The UK’s ‘divorce’ from the EU was officialised over 3 years, yet both are desperate to ensure the other is perceived, well-in view of family, friends, and random strangers, as the cause for the nasty, bitter, and very well-publicised breakdown of relations.
In response to the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, the world’s first AI regulatory framework, Paul Graham’s brief, but accurate, outline of the EU’s relationship with technology regained online attention:
Following the EU’s announcement, the UK government announced their intention to one-up them. Prime Minister Sunak pitched Britain as the future home for AI regulation.
On the surface, it looks like the UK is one-upping the EU, beating them at their own game, doing EU tech policy more effectively than the EU themselves.
This wouldn’t be bad thing if the EU didn’t suck at tech, something even its most ardent supporters have admitted. It’s not a coincidence that none of the top 10 tech global companies are from the EU, or that every tech start-up leaves for (or gets bought-up by) the United States or China.
In America, you are told to “get out there and do it!” In China, you are told to “get out there and do it, or else.” In Europe, you are told to “sit tight as we process your application.”
Despite their differences, whether ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘statist’ in their methods, both America and China have a far more action-oriented culture than Europe, which is inclined towards deliberation.
Given this, the UK is well-poised to become technophilic outpost in a seemingly technophobic region of the world – the beginnings of a positive post-Brexit vision.
The Prime Minister seems to, at the very least, loosely understand this fact, as the recent tweet gaffe would suggest, but continues to push the aspiration of turning Britain into Europe’s biggest bureaucratic wart.
However, this “Anything you can do…” attitude transcends the realm of tech policy, extending to other major areas, such as the environment and energy security.
Back in 2021, UK Environment Act came into force. Described by the government as the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth, the bill includes, amongst other loosely connected environmental commitments, new rules to stop the import of wood to the UK from areas of illegally deforested land.
Initially implemented as an expression of new powers acquired through Brexit, hoping to upstage the EU by implementing comparatively stricter environmental regulations, the EU have since ‘one-upped’ the Brits in pursuit of going green.
In December 2022, the European Commission approved a “first-of-its-kind” deforestation-free law: European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
EUDR is one of several measures by the EU to tackle biodiversity loss driven by deforestation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, aiming to achieve net-zero by 2050.
Set to be implemented in December 2024, the EUDR prohibits lumber and pulp companies ensure from importing any material which has contributed to deforestation after December 2020.
Additionally, companies must know the origin of their products, ensure their products are produced legally in their country of origin, and obtain precise geolocation data for all the products they place on the EU market.
If companies fail to comply with the incoming regulations, they will not be allowed to sell their products on the EU market. Expectedly, companies with business practices in violation of the EUDR will face criminal charges, including non-compliance penalties of up to 4% of their EU turnover.
Putting aside snide comments about European pedanticism (isn’t selling lumber definitive proof of deforestation, what more proof do you need?!), this new regulatory framework is significant for two major reasons.
Firstly, the EU accounts for one-sixth of the global lumber trade and over $4 billion in tropical timber-related imports alone, contributing to the highest import value in a decade.
Whilst wood imports to the EU from Russia have declined, largely due to incrementally impose restrictions dating back to the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia was still Europe’s main provider of wood, exporting (alongside Belarus and Ukraine) $6.71 billion’s worth of wood (including furniture) to the EU in 2022.
To provide such a strict and through regulatory framework for a market as large and as unprepared as the timber trade is ambitious, to say the least.
New data from the Zoological Society of London’s Sustainability Policy Transparency Toolkit (SPOTT) assessment shows only 13.3% of lumber and pulp companies are publicly monitoring deforestation within their own operations, and only 4.3% are monitoring their supplier’s operations.
Only 6.4% of the 90 companies surveyed by SPOTT are currently able to trace 100% of their supply to the location of harvest. Additionally, only 21.3% of companies report the processes they use to ensure suppliers comply with their legal requirements.
Secondly, during the winter of last year, firewood prices spiked, warehouses were placed under immense pressure, and crime (especially illegal logging) flourished, both in the EU and the UK.
In August 2022, firewood sales in the UK surged by a fifth, around which time wood pellets nearly doubled in France, Bulgaria, Poland, and several other EU counties, with practically all of Europe scrambling for firewood, drowning out the protestation of environmentalists.
Whilst this was certainly caused by Europe’s ‘green’ policies, such as the closure of Germany’s last operating nuclear power stations, and the embargos on Russian gas, leading people to source alternative sources of fuel, the EU’s less-than-publicised import ban of Russian wood and pellets in the month prior certainly did the trick.
Given that building up a reliable, long-term stock of relatively clean energy is politically untouchable, it’s safe to assume things will get worse, if not much better; that goes for both the Europe-wide energy crisis and the UK-EU relationship.
Indeed, “Anything you can do…” has trickled down into the media class. Several commentators have remarked that as Europe lurches rightward, the UK has remained a bastion of liberalism, on course to elect the centre-left Remainer-led party by a landslide.
This flies in the face of several important facts, such as Britain’s electoral system which does not reward upstart or fringe parties in the same way many EU countries do, or that Britons (when asked) generally display conservative views on immigration (and have done so for over 30-odd years), having arguably led the ongoing ‘right-wing populist revolt, etc, etc.’ with UKIP, Brexit, and the 2019 General Election, or that Christian, social, and liberal democratic still have a lot of electoral influence across Europe.
If Britain is a bastion of liberal/social democracy, and Europe is becoming a post-fascist conservative bloc, where does that leave their droopy-eyed fascination with ‘Bregret‘?
The rather boring reality is that the politics of the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU will be non-existent. Policy agendas and goals remain aligned on a fundamental level, with the only ‘political’ tension constituting a war of nerves – in short, not especially political at all.
If it was political, there would be room to instate the reform our state so desperately requires.
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This is Anglofuturism
Britain is in doldrums, the days of Cool Britannia are a distant memory, the Empire is now our greatest shame, and pride in our nation has been replaced with an ever-expanding circle of chaos. Whether it’s the Tories’ latest political implosion, Labour backbench rebellions, the cost-of-living perma-crisis, Brexit bickering, or simply ‘decolonising’ anything and everything involving a dead white male. We’re in a mess, the vibe is gone, it’s so over, as they say.
But wait, what is this? Is that a green shoot of optimism I see before me?
Yes, last year a bold new philosophy for Britain was articulated by Aris Roussinos, he called it Anglofuturism, and after being published online it promptly disappeared into the dark corners of the internet where old e-articles go to make out with forgotten cat memes.
That is until it was rediscovered by a Twitter anon who armed appropriately enough with futuristic AI technology created the infamous ‘Anglofuturism Aesthetics’ thread, propelling the concept from online academic-journal obscurity to the heady heights of niche micro-influencer obscurity!
And what followed was the birth of an idea; obscure YouTubers envisaged a steam-powered galactic empire, a heady mix of nostalgia and farsighted fantasy. It was, dare I say in our grim times, fun! This sense of frivolousness prompted me to seek out the original article ‘It’s time for Anglofuturism’ and what I found surprised me.
Anglofuturism was no glib joke, but contained the seeds of a whole new mental model for Britain and the Anglosphere itself. While these ideas were not fully formed and the lively debate in the comments section indicated there was not a consensus, it did get people talking. Most importantly it took aim at a positive vision for the future, in stark contrast to the managed decline offered by our managerial class. But what is Anglofuturism?
Firstly, it is an acknowledgment of where we are at, the economic tailspin we are in and the cultural collapse we are experiencing. This is the death of neo-liberalism and we have front-row seats. The once shiny new successor to Keynesian economics (which itself came to an inglorious end during the strikes and uncollected rubbish of the Seventies) has now also had its day. The ruinous effects of neo-liberalism’s gluttonous money printing, addiction to debt and slavish devotion to short-term profits are all becoming horribly clear. And the consequences of this will only intensify.
Further the people’s discontent with an intellectual elite wedded to bizarre continental philosophies that distort reality, destroy grand narratives, and reduce everything to a mere power struggle is growing too. It is becoming clear that postmodernism and Marxism in its various strains are also destined to join neo-liberalism on the scrapheap of out-of-date and out-of-touch ideas. They’ve had their moment and that moment is over. But the problem we face is the lack of a clear successor waiting in the wings.
And so, we must build it. And this is Anglofuturism, the blueprint for an exciting new intellectual direction. One that is deeply Anglo incorporating the key cultural attributes and identity that have been the source of Britian’s strength for centuries.
It begins with the nuclear family, recognising this is the engine that drives our society, and one we must embrace, cherish and support if we are to have a future. Then housing, the cliché that an Englishman’s home is his castle points to a deeper truth; our homes are our security and our sanctuary. But the recent trend to treat them like speculative financial products rather than where we live and raise the next generation of Britons is a massive social failure that must be rectified.
Next is crime; a low-crime society is a high-trust society, and a high trust society is a wealthy society. For centuries we ensured that crime was punished so communities could flourish and we must resurrect this ethos. Education is the bedrock of Anglo inventiveness and creativity, which gifted us the Industrial Revolution that we generously shared with the world. We must reinvigorate our devotion to learning to once again unlock new opportunities.
And finally, competency. The ‘best man for the job’ is a trope, but it is one that took centuries to establish. From breaking down clannish tendencies to banning cousin marriage and establishing trade guilds, the Anglo vision of a society is one built on competence. We must again enshrine this in our nation. This is the rich cultural heritage of the Anglosphere. Our current reticence to embrace it, and profit from it, is the result of the huge shifts in consciousness that have taken place since the cultural revolution of the Sixties, and the hangover from a century of brutal warfare that we are not yet recovered from. However in terms of the timespan of Anglo culture itself, this is a mere blip, we must look back over a thousand years of intellectual capital and remember the boldness of King Alfred the Great, who, alone with no more than 30 acres of swampy marshland in Wessex, had a vision to unite the warring Kingdoms of Britain into a single England. It’s because of his grand vision that we are the land we are today.
But Anglofuturism is more than looking back. It is also about creating a vision for Britain that is not focused on the next election cycle or TikTok politics of popularity. Instead, it is a commitment to a multi-generational project that truly looks to the future. A future that we as a nation create for our descendants, and the belief that we should leave to them a prosperous, resilient and united Britain, rather than a collapsing economic zone drowning in debt.
A belief that we should utilise our ingenuity, creativity, and technological acumen to power a bold vision for 21st-century Britain, fearlessly embracing radical new ways of doing things that can exponentially change our world. Think of the revolution that was the steam train then times it by a thousand; this is Anglofuturism.
