Taxonomy

Not much would have been remembered about Geoffrey Hawks, an academic with a speech impediment that worked in a little known think-tank called Cyclops, had his ideas not been championed by the leader of the Conservative Party. His idea was so radical that it seemed new and even innovative, which for conservatives could never be a good thing. It split the party faithful into competing factions even more than the disagreement about leaving The European Economic Community. The idea was quite simple and income based. Citizens as they grew older should pay more tax.

Hawks, a trained statistician, argued that this was a more efficient use of public resources because the elderly were just as likely to use a new road as a younger person, but they would have less of their life to pay for it. The older one got the more likely one was to have an accident, or be the victim of a crime. They were more likely to be hospitalized for extended periods, or end up in care homes. They were more likely to require plots of land to plant their loved ones; the opportunity cost being a loss of arable land, in which vegetables could be produced, or new housing built. In sum, Hawks concluded, statistically, the older one got the greater the cost to the public purse and the less use value older people were. His innovative idea was front-page news in The Financial Times and The Guardian and found its way into legislation. By 1st April 2013 a new tax structure was in place. It was lauded by The Economist for its simplicity and its fiscal bias towards the family values of Planned Parenthood at a younger age when less public resources were needed. It printed a table to show how this worked.

Those ten- years of age, or under, on that date, paid annually 0.0001% of their income.

Those over ten-years of age: 0.1%.

Ten- to- fifteen years: 1%.

Fifteen-to-twenty years: 5%.

Twenty-to- twenty five years: 10%.

Twenty-five-to-thirty years: 15%.

Thirty-to-thirty five years: 20%.

Thirty-five-to-forty: 25%.

Forty-to-fifty: 35%.

Fifty-to-sixty: 50%.

Sixty-to-seventy: 70%.

Seventy-to-eighty: 80%.

Eighty and over: 90%.

The Hawk’s experiment -- or the fossil fuel tax, as it was dubbed by its critics -- after two years reported a number of major trends. People filling in their own tax returns claimed to be younger than they were and didn’t seem to age any. A year was spent in cross-party discussions, but it seemed much longer. The Skein Report suggested building a Drop-Them-In-It- Centre, for the cheats and fiddlers, those that didn’t play fairly, on every street corner and promised there were be a bureaucrat sitting in the living room of every home. Those guilty of wrong doing would have their houses, cars and consumer good possessed and they would be liable for the cost of these repossessions in-perpetuity and would face a mandatory five year prison sentence. To incentivise those providing information would themselves pay no tax for ten years and would receive ten percent of the aggregate government savings made. The ten-ten rule was a great success.

The building industry couldn’t get enough workers. The price of copper and steel went up as superfast broadband was needed to keep up with the flow of information being provided. ‘Are we turning into a nation of supergrasses?’ asked the front page headline of The Sun. ‘You betcha!’ it answered with glee. Fifteen percent of the population were in purpose built jails run by large corporations. ‘Let’s nail even more of those daffy old scroungers!’ urged a special edition, in the colours of the England flag. Despite inflation of four percent, the economy was on an up and up. Stalls selling hamburgers, sausages and chips began to appear outside Drop-Them-In-It- Centres such was their popularity. The Conservative Party was re-elected in a landslide.

The backlash when it came focussed not on the quantity of information that was being received. A government graph showing the number of reports that was processed showed statistically every man, woman, child and their dog had made the equivalent of at least one visit to a local Drop-Them-In-It- Centre. Nor did it focus on the increase in intergenerational crimes of younger citizens against older, which went largely unreported and were given the same kind of priority as littering by the national police forces. Concerns were growing, at the Cabinet level, with the quality of information received. Fiscal fishing it was called. People that had died were being accused of having cheated the system, in the hope that an investigation of their assets would produce tangible rewards. The late Queen Elizabeth II had, for example, more than 10 000 reports from as far away as the Hebrides. The numbers receiving a discounted tax rate was growing to unsustainable levels. Growth in the economy was also slowing.

The new government strategy of Righting-The –Wrong-That-Was-Right was introduced. New centres were needed to report those that had erroneously reported someone that had committed no crime. Their good and assets would be confiscated and ten percent would be distributed to the citizen reporter doing his or her duty. Professor Hardcastle, a specialist in moral philosophy, was employed by the government to produce a report. She argued, to encourage right-the- wrong-doing, new offices would be needed and they would need to be less than fifty yards from Drop-Them-In-It- Centres and be able to be seen from every window of the latter. This meant clearing streets and rebuilding roads, but the boost to the economy was enormous. Following Professor Hardcastles advice, Righting-The –Wrong-That-Was-Right were identical to Drop-Them-In-It- Centres: architecturally, in terms of the number of staff employed, their pay structure and even the uniform they wore of white shirt or blouse, blue jumper, grey slacks or skirt and black shoes. The only difference was the motif on the worker’s jumper.

The number of visits logged for the Righting-The –Wrong-That-Was-Right Centres followed an upward curve on the graph, but then began to level off and seemed to have an inverse relationship to those visiting Drop-Them-In-It- Centres. The Sun trumpeted that the nation was becoming ‘Too Honest for its Own Good!’ and bemoaned the effect on economic growth.

The uncoordinated wildcat strikes at the Drop-Them-In-It- Centres, in the following months, grew nationally and caught everyone unaware. Workers weren’t looking for better wages or working conditions, they demanded, instead, to be allowed to work in ‘Righting-The –Wrong-That-Was-Right Centres’ because they were morally superior and no longer felt valued.

Workers were offered counselling and an extra day off, but ACAS Arbitration between the government and its employees failed. A two-day week was the outcome. The Sun called them ‘Picketing Scum That Threatened to Bring the Economy to its Knees!’ A general strike was threatened by the TUC. Soldiers were brought in to man Drop-Them-In-It- Centres. The Government promised to prosecute with the full force that the law would allow those responsible for such barbarity. New legislation was brought in to make it an offence for civil servants to pursue strike action. Soldiers were positioned at checkpoints, outside the Drop-Them-In-It- Centres, with orders to enforce a shoot to kill policy, for those staff attempting to leave the building out with their usual office hours.

But the graph showing visits to the Drop-Them-In-It- Centres fell to one percent of the previous year’s total. Cabinet ministers thought soldiers being positioned outside may be putting constituents off and it would be a temporary blip. Others argued people had lost faith in that venerable institution. Aggregate earning fell. Honest citizens could no longer pay their mortgages, or their taxes. House prices fell. Shops closed in the High Street. Geoffrey Hawks was publicly stripped of his knighthood by King Charles. The Sun let slip Hawks was almost seventy-years old –almost a crime in itself—and called for him to be hanged. It got over a million signatures to support the motion.