Cash-in-Hand Traders under Attack

See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18975675

The Treasury Minister David Gauke has said that businessmen who ask, or allow, their customers to pay them cash-in-hand are "immoral"; this is because cash-in-hand payments are hard to prove taxable. He says that they're "robbing the nation" of revenue. This buffoon obviously feels very differently about the countless billions the Government have given the banks! The video in the BBC news story above is happily critical, and it even includes a backlash by The Philosophers' Magazine editor and author of a great book: What's it All About?, Julian Baggini.

The real motive for Gauke's outburst is that a cash-in-hand economy is an independent economy. The Government don't like that kind of thing! See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/welsh-pound.html I like the concept of an economic transaction being a personal and private affair between a tradesman and client, or employer and employee; it's one of the most vital definitions of human freedom there is. If Gauke had his way we'd no doubt be in the cashless economy, which I've warned about many times, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/coins-are-dropped.html and: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/big-brother-is-paying-you.html