Government donate *our* money?

[vw1973]

My wife asked me this and I didn't know the answer...

It's great that the government are matching what the people are donating to the Tsunami fund.

But as all government income effectively comes from taxation, isn't it our tax money that they are donating for us, which will, on some (albeit tiny) level increase tax or reduce availability of money for public spending.

[woofgang]

yup

[inferno]

Yes - but so what?

[Elfin]

Yes, which is why all this fanatical public pressure on the government to outbid all other countries' contributions in a kind of bidding war is wrong.  They are probably the same people who will be complaining about future tax hikes or spending cuts when they have conveniently forgotten about this latest of humanitarian crises. 

[Kerplunk]

Don't they have some sort of slush fund for international aid?

[QmunkE]

The amount that our government has given shouldn't really instigate any sort of tax increase - a lot of the aid is in debt relief, i.e. letting the countries keep money that they "owe" us. The rest is so small in comparison to the government budget they can easily just take it out from somewhere else in the trillions of pounds that run through the country's economy each year.

On the other hand, they're almost certainly going to increase the taxes on smoking/drinking etc. above the rate of inflation, so we can use that money. Praise be to the addicts!