Mrs. Thatcher's Poll Tax

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 by Murray N. Rothbard

[This article is featured in chapter 62 of Making Economic Sense by Murray Rothbard and originally appeared in the June, 1990 edition of The Free Market]

Riots in the streets; protest against a hated government; cops arresting protesters. A familiar story these days. But suddenly we find that the protests are directed, not against a hated Communist tyranny in Eastern Europe, but against Mrs. Thatcher's regime in Britain, a supposed paragon of liberty and the free market. What's going on here? Are anti-government demonstrators heroic freedom-fighters in Eastern Europe, but only crazed anarchists and alienated punks in the West?

The anti-government riots in London at the end of March were, it must be noted, anti-tax riots, and surely a movement in opposition to taxation can't be all bad. But wasn't the protest movement at bottom an envy-ridden call for soaking the rich, and hostility to the new Thatcher tax a protest against its abstention from egalitarian leveling?...... Unfortunately, the local tax case is characteristic of the Thatcher regime. Thatcherism is all too similar to Reaganism: free-market rhetoric masking statist content. While Thatcher has engaged in some privatization, the percentage of government spending and taxation to GNP has increased over the course of her regime, and monetary inflation has now led to price inflation…..To Read More….

My Take - This may be a bit simplistic in explaining both of their public policies versus their personal views because they both had to deal with entrenched legislatures that had been bent on socialist ideals for years and passed legislation that was not easily overcome.  There is one point that is made very subtly here regarding "statist content".  I think it important to remember that both Reagan and Thatcher were surrounded by "weak sisters" within their administrations and within their own parties and those types, and in some cases the same people, have been driving policies of increased statism by presenting themselves as reasonable and moderate.   Albeit more slowly than their counterparts, but they are driving statism non-the-less.