It's legal plunder time again

John Healey faces £35billion budget black hole, IFS warns

Chancellor John Healey faces a £35billion shortfall in the public finances ahead of his first Budget, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The economic think tank warned that the Government may have to raise taxes, cut welfare spending or scale back some of its promises to balance the books.

Rising inflation has increased the cost of running public services, while the Government also wants to spend more on defence, council housing and a new national care service.

Helen Miller, director of the IFS, said the Chancellor could not deliver a quiet Budget without making difficult decisions.

She said: "A 'steady-as-she-goes' Budget is not an option available to the Chancellor."


Here we are yet again with UK Chancellors plus the media busy redefining Frédéric Bastiat's 'legal plunder' as 'the public finances'. 

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Frédéric Bastiat - The Law (1850)

Taking Bastiat's more accurate terminology a little further, we could usefully refer to a 'steady-as-she-goes' Budget as a 'plunder-as-she-goes' Budget.