The RSS feed of Edustajamme.fi is nice way to follow our MPs. The members of Perussuomalaiset party are very active in writing so many times their words are caught in my radar. Maria Tolppanen published this morning her speech at the parliament. She promotes herself on the blog page by writing ”I’m putting all my talents from thirty years of investigating journalism in to this. For you!”. Let’s see what the the thirty years of investigative journalism has brought us. Tolppanen seems to have found the buzzword inequality. She says that the time has changed since the war and there are now inequality among families and children. For some reason I find it hard to believe that inequality is something which has surfaced just recently. From what I’ve understood from the history lessons is that in the old days, we really used to have classes in our society. Sounds like rallying up on nothing to me. One of the things Tolppanen is complaining about is the increased candy tax, it being a flat tax and it not hitting the rich folks kids. Taxation can be used as a shortcut taken instead of educating and cultivating people. That shortcut, due to it’s easiness, is taken so many times and the Finnish tax laws reflect that. However, value added taxes on specific items is the most effective form of taxation when wanting to drive certain agendas on consumption of goods. I fail to see how Tolppanen can think that increasing capital gains would lead to the same outcome on candy. Can somebody honestly explain why increased progressive taxation and taxation on capital gains (currently 28%) is a good and the right thing to do in a society? Or is it just a trick to get the support of poor voters using a basic human emotion, envy?
