The Current Ghanaian Political System

Are we moving forward.......?

Given our current system, we're no better off without reform, are we? Isn't the urgency driven by the future costs of our current system?

What about the urgency of the burden on small and entrepreneurial businesses, where jobs are created?

Or the ability of large companies to compete on the global stage when their foreign competitors have nationalized health care?

You realize on the other hand that, modern Ghanaian campaign requirements have made tax rise as much of a third rail as social security. Candidates must promise not to touch them in order to win the election, and can't risk breaking the promise for sake of reelection - so it's just a political hot-potato.

Any obvious revenue generators that would produce a noticeable hit on the disposable income of ordinary Ghanaian are probably off the table. We could tax yet to explore oil imports at $1 per gallon and generate up to $150 Billion a year.

A 2% national VAT could also be created, but people would get sticker shock every time they see the addition to their receipts. We could have some kind of national property tax of 1% (well, maybe, there might be a constitutional issue there), but existing property tax rates are already unpopular among most Ghanaians.

These days, the new strategy for politicians seems to involve a preference for couching even large new taxation schemes as fines on specific bad things, "negative" behaviors, or on "undeserving" wealthy people or big companies. They also prefer to claim that they will spend the money on particular (sometimes related) feel-good projects. The whole standard model of taxation - where general income taxation goes into general revenues for general expenditures lacks this ability to politically exploit a focus on particular goods and evils.

Ghanaians must get ready for the nudge taxes. We'll fill the state coffers and deincentivize Ghanaians behavioral problems to create both a balanced budget and a new social utopia.