Sunday, August 14, 2011

A Tax on White Privilege

Desmond TutuSouth African reader RH sent us the article below, which describes the latest innovative proposal by Desmond Tutu, the retired (Anglican) Archbishop of Cape Town. The Most Rev. Tutu has proposed a new income-redistribution plan that could solve all South Africa’s financial problems: a tax on white people.

Come to think of it, isn’t that what was just imposed in England last week? Admittedly, that tax is indirect:

Step 1: “Youths” of color pilfer the swag from businesses.
Step 2: The insurance companies reimburse the merchants.
Step 3: Under the Riot Damages Act of 1886, the Government reimburses the insurance companies.
Step 4: Taxpayers reimburse the Government.

The vast majority of British taxpayers are, well, white. So there you go.

But back to South Africa. RH had this to say about the whole affair:

I’m just wondering what I can downgrade my car to… I currently have a 1.4 Chico that is most probably worth R30k (+/- $4000) - all whites must downgrade their cars he said on Friday.

I’m tired of people like him. They want to keep Africans poor while they line their own pockets. And in so doing they miss the irony: not only are his ideas racist towards white people, they are racist towards blacks, assuming the latter can never stand up and be counted unless it is with white money.

From Breadbasket to Begging Bowl; the Fall of the Rainbow Nation — that’s all I have to say.

And here’s the story from the Begging Bowl, formerly known as the Republic of South Africa. From News24:

Tutu’s ‘White Tax is Racist’

Johannesburg - Calls made by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu for white South African’s to be taxed were racist and thoughtless, the Freedom Front Plus said on Saturday.

“It borders on the emotional statements of [ANC Youth League president] Julius Malema and does not contribute to the debate on how to address the country’s economic problems properly,” FF Plus spokesperson Anton Alberts said.

Tutu, who spoke at a book launch at the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town on Thursday evening, said the damage apartheid caused was impossible to escape.

He said white citizens needed to accept the obvious: “You all benefited from apartheid.”

“Your children could go to good schools. You lived in smart neighbourhoods. Yet so many of my fellow white citizens become upset when you mention this. Why? Some are crippled by shame and guilt and respond with self-justification or indifference.

“Both attitudes make that we are less than we can be.”

The Cape Argus spoke to Tutu after the speech, where he expanded on his wealth tax call.

“There were many in the white community who were ready for this [at the time of the TRC process].

“It could be quite piffling, maybe 1% of their stock exchange holdings. It’s nothing. But it could have helped... maybe building new homes, and that would have been an extraordinary symbol of their readiness.”

Asked whether he was again calling for a “wealth tax”, Tutu said: “That’s what I’m saying.”

He then laughed: “What were you doing in there [the conference centre]? Were you listening?”

Tutu said he hoped whites themselves would “agitate” for it to be imposed upon them.

However Alberts said in a statement it was improper to single out white people as they have contributed disproportionately more to the fiscus than any other group for the past 17 years.

“The request for introspection and a greater moral contribution should instead be addressed to the ANC government itself.”

Tutu’s race argument was so much more immoral if taking into account the fact that there were already more than 600 000 poor whites, he said.

“Taxes levied on white people will merely be damaging social cohesion and will not contribute anything toward a sustainable economy.”

12 comments:

Jedilson Bonfim said...

Well Tutu, despite apartheid's disgraceful segragation of blacks, like it or not, their presence at the reins of South Africa's government for the time they were there is likely to be the main reason why your country isn't like the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Zenster said...

How is it that Africa ― the cradle of mankind ― remains so firmly mired in the Stone Age? For better or worse, Africa has had the opportunity to learn from a vast array of historical lessons, not all of them tragic. Yet, with stunning regularity, Africa's national leaders display the absolute worst judgement as they routinely descend into outright fantasy or superstition when it comes to political and financial strategy. That is, if they aren't simply indulging in flagrant tribalism to begin with.

It is bad enough that Africa is beset by two seriously destabilizing forces in the form of Islam and Chinese resource-based colonialism. Both of them promise nothing but grief as they are vectors for the most intense racism which the Africans themselves can have zero hope of overcoming or capitalizing upon.

As if that were not bad enough, we are treated to the sordid spectacle of a relatively well-educated individual like Desmond Tutu indulging in the fantasy of taxing his way to economic prosperity. It is the very worst example to set for a population that is already prone to adopting convenient solutions instead of the much harder choices that typically accompany real progress.

ENGLISHMAN said...

6 million whites are already keeping 40million blacks,the golden goose will never stand it,but it seems that commies have a monopoly on idiocy.

Whiskey said...

Let me say this is entirely predictable. The ANC has proven incapable of creating economic development, instead the typical African cronyism has led to rolling blackouts and electricity shortages, keeping mining and other resource-related activities (SA's only exports worth anything) hobbled. Malema's oft-stated desire to nationalize mines and other resources has led investors to pull out of SA and those with investments "stuck" to milk them as much as possible.

SA's ANC MUST deliver the goods, but cannot do so in a modern economy: rule of law, investment capital protected, create an educated technocrat class, etc. Therefore the easy way as it was in Zimbabwe and everywhere else is a White tax and ultimately seizure.

Whiskey said...

Barack Obama in Dreams From My Father: A Story of RACE and INHERITANCE has a passage where he and his half-sister eat lunch in a Nairobi restaurant, run by Indian emigres. Obama is outraged he and his sister receive substandard attention relative to White tourists, and that the restaurant exists. He then goes into a description of his father, Barack Sr. and his fathers plan to nationalize all property not belonging to Africans and expel all non-Africans.

I am not unsympathetic to this view, or to Malema or Tutu. But ... this points out that even non-Whites acknowledge multiculturalism and PC and diversity do not work. Obama's Grandfather, the Mau-Mau, wrote that the African cannot make his own bicycle (true today as well) but that the struggle for independence was worth it even if it meant defeat or victory living in squalor and poverty -- because at least Africans would rule themselves however badly. And that Whites had no place in Africa, that Whites and Indians and all the rest did not belong in Africa, period.

I am not unsympathetic to this view, and its corollary that non-Europeans do not belong in Europe, either. Doors open both ways, etc.

Absolutely there WILL be a White Tax in South Africa. Whites will all leave, one way or another (or likely be killed if they remain). It will be ignored in the media, or hailed as a victory, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Social peace is impossible when you have different races together, with vastly different levels of wealth-generation, education, skills, social values, and the like.

Malema's and Tutu's argument WILL be cited by those wishing to preserve European Welfare States (patronage systems akin to Africa's Big Man ones) by kicking out non-Europeans and non-Nationals (Roma, Eastern Europeans) etc. Why should Italy take in all those refugees? Why not simply send them home, and use the money to spend on Native Italians? The White Tax success means sending non-Europeans back to wherever.

Findalis said...

Tutu must be a total idiot if he believes that White people are going to impose upon themselves a special tax to give free money to Black people (In reality into his and his cronies' pockets.) for supposed crimes they did.

Without White People there would be no schools, hospitals, roads, industry, etc...in fact no civilization.

Tutu's people were nothing more than glorified hunter/gatherers with no civilization and a very primitive culture.

And if this sounds racist, then the truth is racist.

Franklin said...

I'm surpised that there are still white people living in South Africa!

Zenster said...

Whiskey: Social peace is impossible when you have different races together, with vastly different levels of wealth-generation, education, skills, social values, and the like.

All of which beggars the question of how and why the clearly dysfunctional value structures currently in place for sub-Saharan Africa are retained with such vigor despite them, literally, poisoning all chances for success.

No better example of this exists than how the ANC (African National Congress), refused to even censure, much less condemn, Robert Mugabe despite his turning the continent's one-time breadbasket of Zimbabwe into a impoverished recipient of famine relief.

This refusal to admit obvious failure in the face of overwhelming evidence will continue to haunt Africa in the form of pandemic HIV/AIDS, repeated genocides, endemic poverty, institutionalized misogyny and a host of other social ailments that are perpetuated with an astonishing degree of pride as if they are cherished elements of "cultural identity", much as something so heinous as FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), continues to be treated to this day.

In the face of repeated, abject failures, we see such a crippling lack of "wealth-generation, education, skills, social values, and the like" left open to dispute where the undeniable havoc that their absence creates has long ago been established beyond doubt.

One is obliged to suppose that Liberalism and the MSM's untouchable Narrative simply cannot be compromised at any cost even when its glaring failure becomes obvious to all but those with a shoe-sized IQ.

The horrific consequences that this portends for Africa in general are playing out across Europe as a flood of illegal immigrants seed the same mayhem and criminality which has already maimed an entire continent for countless centuries.

laine said...

The vast majority of blacks be they in Africa or elsewhere appear to lack the capacity to introspect and take responsibility. They continue to embrace tribalism with its inevitably low standard of living in return for someone else making all the decisions. (so they are a perfect fit for leftist parties who herd them like sheep by dangling handouts). Muslims share the exact same cultural weaknesses - blaming someone else for their own lack of success and tribalism. Both groups have hit on whites as their eternal scapegoats. No other group, Asian, East Indian, Hispanic etc. has a sizable and influential sub group like white lib lefties, willing to sell out their fellow whites for (temporary) power, power that ends when their black and Muslim tools decide to help themselves without the lib left middleman.

Anonymous said...

Let's cut to the chase: blacks in South Africa under Apartheid (the only workable solution for white and black to live in peace side by side) had by far and away the highest standard of living, education, health care and nutrition than any other blacks anywhere in Africa. This would account for the fact - totally ignored by the MSM for decades - why millions of blacks from the entire sub-continent of Africa streamed into South Africa. Yes, even under the "vile" system of separate development known as Apartheid.

Today, under a black ANC government, the average black in South Africa is worse off than in the Verwoerd era. Life expectancy has declined significantly, literacy has all but disappeared, crime has soared and the average cost of living is above what most can afford.

In contrast, the black parasitic elite live in disgusting and conspicuous wealth unknown by most people even in wealthy First World countries.

The false prophet Tutu is only one of the pigs with his snout in the trough.

The Western world better start budgeting for the "humanitarian aid" begging bowl that will soon be passed around by the communistic ANC kleptocracy. The 4 million white taxpayers can no longer afford to support this parasite and its 45 million minions and will soon collapse.

All European countries and the USA can take the collapse of the erstwhile First World South African state as a case study in what lies ahead for them. Their suicidal immigration policies will soon see blacks and other non-Europeans become minorities in their own countries.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, last sentence should read: "Their suicidal immigration policies will soon see whites become minorities as blacks and other non-Europeans swamp them in their own countries."

Zenster said...

Johan: Today, under a black ANC government, the average black in South Africa is worse off than in the Verwoerd era. Life expectancy has declined significantly, literacy has all but disappeared, crime has soared and the average cost of living is above what most can afford.

Don't expect the MSM to trumpet this about anytime soon. It goes against their precious Liberal Narrative and, therefore, must not see the light of day.

The Western world better start budgeting for the "humanitarian aid" begging bowl that will soon be passed around by the communistic ANC kleptocracy.

Why? Sending any further aid, especially financial assistance, is merely rewarding some of the most corrupt regimes on earth (see linked map of global corruption).

Far better to heed Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati when he tells us, "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" An excerpt:

Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid. [emphasis added]