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Battle for more taxes

August 20, 2007 00:00:00


The market economy seems to have some proximity to mines. Pumping out too much of its minerals fast exhausts the deposit and the life of a mine. Similarly, a harsh battle for realizing more taxes can exhaust a free market economy's vitals and life at its adolescence.
More growth on growth generates higher state revenue. It works well as an ideal development philosophy where government patience endures like that of parents sending their wards to schools and institutions of higher learning. Wise parents do so to create the wider scope for the optimum utilization of the genetic potentials of their wards. Against it, child labour dooms the human kids to either untimely deaths or to be perennially in the merciless trap of poverty. The current battle for more taxes may finally authenticate the value of the last example. I dare to articulate so, as economics is a social science that holds no last word on any complex development issue. A relaxed attitude on taxes in this young economy seems more preferable for its sustained and faster growth.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) may follow one of its sister UN organizations -- the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in taking stands on the child labour of poor national economies, which have no capacity like the adult economies -- strong because of their strong internal support bases, grown and nurtured through centuries of exploitative colonialism -- while preaching or forcing ideas on taxes and duties on poor nations. Its advocacy for the free market economy without caring to buy arguments from the free market of ideas would be seen as a hoax. The government must not also think that it knows the best. It should also buy policy inputs from the free market of ideas.
The dismantled imperialism of yester years did one thing, which is immensely good. It connected nations to a common grid of knowledge and ideas. The definition of hoax has also become universal. The IMF and its likes should be aware of this positive development.
Mahmud Riaz
Rampura, Dhaka.

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