"Europe's last dictator" finally finds the limits to power: taxing the unemployed during a recession

[doctorow]

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/20/europes-last-dictator-fi.html

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[TheGreatParis]

@doctorow

…but when he imposed a “social parasite tax” on unemployed people in the recession-devastated country, it proved too much.

The fool should have tried to revive coal mining instead.

[fuzzyfungus]

Someone seems to have forgotten one of the important governance cliches:

You can’t get blood from a stone; but you can form an angry mob and throw one through somebody’s window.

(edit: does “You can’t get blood from a stone; but you can draw blood with one.” have superior pithitude? Trying to iterate toward aphorism here.)

[popobawa4u]

One limit of power is finding people gullible enough to entertain one’s dictations. True power is discipline, which begins and end with one’s own person. Power over others is ideal which naive people pursue to avoid this reality - social parasite tax, indeed!

[Brainspore]

@doctorow

the kind of guy who can get away with arresting a one-armed man for clapping

Pity the government never produced a recording of said crime at the trial. The audio could have answered an age-old question.

[Modusoperandi]

He should’ve set aside the Moocher’s Tax to pay for more riot police.

[generic_name]

If there are no jobs then people hit with a “social parasite tax” aren’t going to suddenly say “shit, I better create jobs or I’m screwed”, and people who have jobs or businesses aren’t going to create more jobs just to help the unemployed. Conservatives in the US like to say “the government can’t create jobs” (even though they all run on the platform that they are going to create jobs) and it should be left up to the private sector to make jobs, but a tax on being unemployed isn’t going to create jobs either.

The whole idea of a punitive tax on being underemployed is completely idiotic.

[the_borderer]

Surely these are professional protestors, and the protests will stop after 184 days so they won’t have to pay the unemployment tax.

[Boundegar]

Oh hell. This is going to give Faux News a neat new idea, isn’t it?

[ficuswhisperer]

@doctorow

but when he imposed a “social parasite tax” on unemployed people in the recession-devastated country, it proved too much.

Don’t worry, guys. Trump will find a way to make this work here.

[cleveremi]

OK, that was a bit of a rage-like, because it is saddening, but he will if he can swing it.

[peregrinus_bis]

Faux News has been wielded by politicians in the UK now!

[gracchus]

It seems to be a characteristic of autocrats that the longer they are in power the more compelled they are to impose their awfulness on their subjects in absurd ways.

[Alfred_Packer1]

Welcome to the future of the American Republic.

[psychonaut]

Belurusian leader Alexander Lukashenko calls himself “Europe’s last dictator”

Uh, no he doesn’t. That’s what his opponents call him.

[petr]

Bart Simpson can do the one-hand clapping. I can too…

[tlwest]

@generic_name

If there are no jobs then people hit with a “social parasite tax” aren’t going to suddenly say “shit, I better create jobs or I’m screwed”

No, but they will stop reporting that they are unemployed, magically buoying the employment rate and making the government look better.

Remember, appearance matters far more than reality.

[Blaze_Curry]

No worse than criminalizing homelessness, or slashing social spending to nothing, or cutting already rock bottom corporate taxes.

[anon55609254]

Do sales taxes count? Even if you’re out of work, you still have to buy food and necessities. Some states don’t tax food, but do they all have that policy?

[ficuswhisperer]

Most states don’t tax groceries or they tax them at a different rate.

http://blog.taxjar.com/states-grocery-items-tax-exempt/