The problem with the current political system is that governments have the money and the means but not the time. Increasing taxes isn't really going to help a great deal in funding long-term projects because no matter how much money you may or may not have they're still going to have the prospect of a future administration ditching the whole thing in three or four years' time. The current Australian government has this situation; they have a massive budget surplus and they're pouring hundreds of billions into several funds, such as the 'Building Australia Fund' for major infrastructure projects. Many of these projects are within a term but many of them (port upgrades, rail networks etc.) aren't. So they're having to try and set it up as a separate fund which is difficult to close down.
It's natural for a new administration to want to leave its mark on the system, and of course during elections we get many promises, which may or may not end up being 'non-core'. The trouble lies in the fact that a government
has to plan around a three or four year election schedule, and it's this, not tax availability, which limits their possibilities. I think the only true way to make a governmental system more friendly to future planning is to increase the length of terms to approximately five years. If a project can't be done, or at least got sufficiently underway that it's difficult to cancel, in five years then there's really nothing you can do to make it attractive to a government that isn't a non-term-limited dictatorship.
The example given, of the 'green tax', is entirely separate to government long-term planning. It doesn't take a term to institute a tax (actually it can take many - the last Australian tax review was initated by one administration, finished by the next and ignored by the one after that - but my point is that such things are down to bureaucratic inefficiencies, not the actual issue of instituting a a working system, which will take probably three or four years at the most, depending on the size and importance of the system/changes to existing systems being instituted), the issue is the percieved economics of climate change, which is of course a totally different topic. Taxes are very much short-term (read: election) planning unless it's something like GST, which as the last Australian government showed, took several terms to consolidate, and starts when the government is in power.
Companies really have no stake in national planning beside their own business ambitions, and already pay whatever taxes they have to, so they're not really relevant here either. If you try and lock them down into these sorts of long-reaching plans (though I can't exactly think of an example) then as Wizard said they'll just go and find another customer, often in a different country.
Summary:
In my opinion:
'Foward-looking prospects' that are the visions of governments are not currently viable because administrations cannot be guaranteed they will have the time it takes to implement them.
Taxes will be be determined by the economic and political climate and will influence such prospects. Not the other way round. No project will be so large you need to raise the entire nation's taxes to cope with it; that's what budgets are for. Reshuffle it from somewhere else that you hope the public won't notice. Anything that
is that large will never be attempted thanks to the time limitations, not budgetary ones.
Companies have no stake in national planning. They have nothing to do with national infrastructure/systems/taxes etc., just their business plans, so why should they fund it?
Edited by CommanderJB, 14 October 2008 - 00:45.