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Kathianne
04-10-2013, 09:51 PM
Two separate artlcles. Yes, he managed to get in VAT tax too, in 1979:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/144256


Milton on Maggie by Milton Friedman (http://www.hoover.org/fellows/10630)
From the archives, we reproduce below two columns by Milton Friedman on the late Margaret Thatcher. Both columns appeared in Newsweek. “Hooray for Margaret Thatcher” (Newsweek, 9 July 1979)
We have become so accustomed to politicians making extravagant campaign promises and then forgetting about them once elected that the first major act of Margaret Thatcher’s government— the budget unveiled on June 12—was a surprise. It did precisely what she had promised to do.


Margaret Thatcher campaigned on a platform of reversing the trend toward an ever more intrusive government—a trend that had carried government spending in Great Britain to somewhere between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of the nation’s income. Ever since the end of World War II, both Labor and Tory governments have added to government-provided social services as well as to government-owned and -operated industry. Foreign-exchange transactions have been rigidly controlled. Taxes have been punitive, yet have not yielded enough to meet costs. Excessive money created to finance deficits sparked an inflation that hit a rate of over 30 per cent a year in mid-1975. Only recently was inflation brought down to the neighborhood of 10 per cent, and it is once again on the rise.

...


One retrograde step, in my opinion, is an increase in indirect taxes—the British general sales taxes, or VAT. This increase, which partly offsets the decrease in direct taxes, combined with lower spending will reduce government borrowing, facilitating a restrained monetary policy and releasing funds for private investment. The purpose is admirable. However, once taxes are imposed, it is hard to cut them. From the long-run point of view, it seems to me preferable to resort to a temporarily higher level of borrowing rather than to a possibly permanently higher level of indirect taxes.


I would also have preferred to see exchange controls eliminated completely rather than by degrees. The controls serve no constructive purpose. Eliminating them gradually only prolongs the harm and preserves a mischievous bureaucracy.


But these are quibbles. I salute Margaret Thatcher and her government for their courage and wisdom in moving firmly and promptly to cut Britain’s bureaucratic straitjacket. Britain has enormous latent strength—in human capacities, industrial traditions, financial institutions, social stability. If these can be released from bondage, if incentive can be restored, Britain could once again become a vibrant, dynamic, increasingly productive economy.

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