I think you have mostly missed the point. Most of Labors Leftist support group, would be, at the very least, soft-atheist, or agnostic if we are lucky. For him to publicly join christianism and socialism at the pulpit, the lecturn or in the House, would mean political suicide. He would be un-secularising the Party; a Leftist no-no. Even their middle-age alchemy coudn’t join the two.

But dont worry, he coudnt fall on his sword, because it is made of Tin i say Tin.

To take myself as an example, I actually know quite a number of Christians, and I am certain that none of them are socialists. Not one, of any denomination. A large number of them (but by no means all) do believe in some form of the welfare state, and in a duty towards one’s community, but they all believe in individual responsibility and freedom, as well. A far cry, it seems to me, from any usage of the word socialist in the last 50 years.

Russell Trood made a speech in the senate where he called this form of political devolution ‘regionalism’.

Speaking of language – is there another term for this political decentralisation? Localisation? Rhizome?

Any suggestions?

I have always been a believer that keeping decisions at it’s lowest political level possible is best. (see 20 Keys #6)

For one thing it creates competition – if your council is getting bloated or inefficient you have the option to moving to a neighbouring council. The same goes with states and nations, though the higher you go up, the harder it is to move – thus less competition.

Seecondly it allows for diversity. Councils or states can more readily reflect the climate, landscape and type of people. Think Nimbin vs Sydney CBD.

Thirdly it allows greater chance for change from the population. A council is like a tinny, while a nation is like an ocean liner. The tinny is much more manueverable.

Fourthly – it keeps the consequences close to the decision makers. So if one region chooses a bung politician or scheme, another region on the otherside of the country doesn’t pay for it. The first region will learn not to make that choice again.

Although some areas (like defence) need to remain national, decentralization whenever possible is a grand idea.

Payroll services have become increasingly commoditised lately. The previous company I was with signed on to a payroll software service where the service managed the income tax rates and compliance from state to state.

I was surprised to hear a few months ago that Costco, Walmart’s main competitor, is offering payroll and pay cheque services. If the big-box stores are getting involved the margins must be tiny on payroll services.

I certainly agree with you re sales tax. From my very limited experience companies do find it very complicated. I also agree re property taxes and local fees and services taxes (the last two being two means to the same end, usually).

I disagree re income taxes, partly because I think the difficulty is greater than merely the difficulty of devising software to pay it (eg income must first be accounted for, which for a small percentage of businesses to which I am over-exposed is often quite challenging when merely distinguishing between Australian and overseas, let alone when breaking it down state-by-state), and partly because I think there is a significant hazard in making the funding of many ‘social’ services dependent on localised taxation and provision, which would be necessary if income tax was to be localised since sales tax.

That said, I came down in favour of it because my intellectual curiosity outweighed my conservatism.

In the county I am currently in 80% of businesses have ten employees or less. Its budget is about 1B USD, so it is about 1.8 Brisbane City Councils in economic size. The county also has AOL and MCI in its boundaries. Apparently recently they did a survey and freaked out after discovering that the main economic activity in their county was small and medium business – not national or international ones. They changed a bunch of laws and fees to make it easier for business with small numbers of employees.

Also, can there really be sufficient advantages from state/municipal tax competition to outweigh the considerable disadvantage of different tax systems?

Software is making compliance easier and cheaper. I have been involved in systems that have had to take into account sales and payroll taxes. In the US the feds mainly tax on income, while the states do a mix of income and sales tax. The counties/cities/towns tend to do fees and property taxes. By far and away the most complex of those is sales taxes. We had one issue in Minnesota where one side of the river (Minneapolis) it was one thing, but on the other side of the river, the same service, was the opposite (St Paul). We solved it in software, but it was an exclusive case that had to be accounted for.

IMO sales tax [GST] is best done at the national level in a uniform manner. Income tax, fee-based, user-pays, property taxes etc are much simpler. So the states and local governments should get first dibs at them. I have seen issue after issue rise with fifty states and cities leveraging their own idea of a sales tax (is food exempt etc, same reason Hewson got himself in knots), but income tax and fee based have not been issues IME.

Would Cam argue for constitutionally binding the different levels to an essentially compatible company tax system?

The current Auian constitution limits the areas the federal government could tax in, though you wouldn’t know it from the practices out of Canberra. The states should be able to compete in economic policy. Queensland is a good example, the homogeneity that Canberra is forcing on the states is not a good thing IMO. I am comfortable with the states competing in tax policy with individuals and companies.

But in practice, I have some trouble identifying particular foci for decentralisation. An interesting example is taxation, which you touch upon. Clearly it is desirable that the spender is actually responsible for raising/earning the money spent, no matter whether it is a government, a business or a person. It also seems preferable that taxes be levied at the smallest, hence ‘closest’, unit of government possible, for all the reasons Cam has (but particularly relevance, or responsiveness, and competition).

Unfortunately, so much is only weak support for decentralisation of taxation. It supports, strongly, shifting the responsibility for services to the municipal level, and hence the responsibility for the support of, whether by taxation or fees, those services. Although one does wonder whether this is only attractive because we already have the fundamental infrastructure to make it work.

The same argument is however support for the centralisation of business taxation – for what is the ‘closest’ unit of government to an Australian business? Or to a foreign business operating in Australia?

Also, can there really be sufficient advantages from state/municipal tax competition to outweigh the considerable disadvantage of different tax systems? Would Cam argue for constitutionally binding the different levels to an essentially compatible company tax system?

Finally, what about the ‘social’ services so dear to many of this site’s readers? Should they be municipal responsibilities? Would this lead to municipalities one after another ‘washing their hands’ of somebody else’s problem(s)? Would it prick the bleeding hearts of comfortable suburbia into actually paying for (not to mention coming up with) the solutions they want others to come up with, or would it merely shut them up?

Just to answer that last question, in fact, consider me a supporter. After all, the prospect of different municipalities competing to best reintegrate the marginalised is rather attractive – even if those reintegrated did immediately jump ship for a lower-taxing locale…

Cool. I was wondering if city councils ever devolved into smaller units.

The current Labor state government want to amalgamate the councils of the western suburbs into a super-council, allegedly on grounds of efficiency but most likely for efficient linking of State bureaucracies to council ones.

The states have been busy undermining the Federation since they all got incumbency. And there is no better expression of national hypocrisy than a bureaucrat giving a spiel about the choke-point that is federalism.

What we are seeing now is a move toward the Singaporisation of the nation, I reckon. Rudd and the dream team (along with its Leftoid intelligentsia) love America for its socio-political, capitalist culture; and they also love Singapore at the regional level with its total control mechanisms over the body politick.

All these catch-cries of ‘building’ ‘modernising’ and even adapting are all symptoms of a symbiotic regime attaching itself to Australia’s shoreline.

Consequently ‘These types of decisions are only possibl[e] with massive amounts of external inputs to prop up the inefficiencies. The Soviet Union ended up collapsing because it ran out of money to maintain its inefficient structures.’ And so it could end up being with Labors endless pseudo-despisement over the GST, which in fact it so secretly loves and adores. And which it intends to hijack.

And Matt, the bit about Christian Socialism was a repercussion over Labors previous 10-year mantra of the Liberals being Nazis. When the Leftoids found out that in fact Bonhoffer was warning about the dangers of National Socialism

I’ve never met a bureaucrat in Canberra that understands the importance of a primary school to a community in rural Queensland for instance better than the locals or whether there is a bad stretch of road in SA which is costing lives every year. Greater centralisation also goes against the biggest trend we continue to see on the internet and in global society which is the formation of groups and communities around interests, be they local or global. The world is decentralizing and we are all focused on centralizing.

Kevin Rudd on this issue is sounding like the “have it both ways Kevin” we are beginning to become all too familiar with. He spends a lot of time talking about the importance of community on the one hand but on the other he wants to replace it with more “effective federalism” (i.e – Whitlamite centralization with Tony Blair spin). That sounds about as consistent as his article a few months ago talking about the values of Christian Socialism and then declaring himself not to be a socialist. Reminds me of John Kerry and the “flip-flopper” he was in 2004.

Government needs to become more effective at dealing with customers (voters) and putting them all in Canberra is going to make it worse not better.