Death and Taxes, by Curious Spider in Flickr
Taxes! Taxes! Everybody hates them but they are as necessary as the air we breathe. However, it is hard to know taxation is growing all the time, beyond the good or bad economic environment. Modern Democracy is a thirsty monster who always asks for more money, more civil servants, more resources. Although we constantly create new public needs to solve public problems, the middle taxpayer feels things could be better. In fact, citizens believe public budget should be managed more efficiently. It is not an easy task as officials keeping the money depend on the increase of resources to survive. To play a political role is nowadays a professional career and no one wants to retire at 45. I would like, but I am not a politician. (more…)
Categories: General · Political Economy
Tagged: fiscal_neutrality, fiscal_policy, social_market_foundation, think_tank, United_Kingdom
Everybody knows that charity projects are the first victims of a financial crisis as donors cannot cope with their help. It happens also to management areas like advertising, public relations and philanthropy (If we can think of something called philanthropy in business).
Think tanks, as institutions supported by charity, they are suffering from donation cuts. I should say that it will not be a problem if it means that a good number of ultraliberal shops are going to dissapear. Nevertheless, I am sure that the main difficulties are going to be experienced by the left think tanks, a rara avis in the market imperium. They do not have the big budgets right think tanks, but as they depend basically on individual donations, it is understandable that they are going to have a financial shortfall. It is not a good news because we need an fresh and heretic approach that defies the inmutable laws of the market, well publisized by the neocon platforms (Heritage, IEA, Timbro, AEI and so on). We can do something to avoid the death of left think tanks. I do not agree with all their proposals, but I believe that real democracy in the marketplace of ideas need to have not only corporate and big power defenders institutes, but also small an letf centered foundations. As the Demos motto says, all need “think tanks for everyday democracy”.
I comment this because two or three weeks ago I receive a letter from the Director of Compass, Gavin Hayes, asking for a bit of financial help to maintain the office and projects. In this think tank they work only two people full time and I can assure they do not receive a CEO salary neither they have a venue like the Aspen Meadows Resort Campus of the Aspen Institute. It could be a good sunday action to donate 10 pounds to the project. It deserves to maintain its fight in favour of a left perspective in the public policy environment.
Categories: General · Think Tank Marketing and Fund Raising
