I'm spending the day hosting a meeting at the European Parliament for taxpayer associations from around Europe. I can't tell you what a rare pleasure it is, in Brussels, to hear from groups which want less state intervention.
Economists call the phenomenon 'dispersed costs and concentrated gains'. People tend to notice the entitlements they get from government far more than they notice their costs, spread as they are over the entire population, disguised in an opaque tax system and, in most cases, deducted at source. Witness, for example, the protests in Britain from higher rate taxpayers over the mooted limitation of child benefit – despite the fact that, as higher rate taxpayers, they are massive net losers from the system that pays them this little perk .... Read mora at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk
