We might get that when we have a population that doesn't expect the state to keep topping up low wages, keep children for longer and longer hours at schools that must provide a bespoke service tailored for every individual need, wants medical treatment to be free at point of use ... And the list goes on. We want everything, but nobody wants to pay for it. If we genuinely want to pay lower tax, we will have to accept as a nation that things we expect to be subsidised won't be. If businesses want to pay less tax, they'll have to expect the minimum wage to increase so the government isn't picking up the shortfall.
A low-tax, high growth economy only works when people accept state provision is not granted by the existence of a magic money tree. Yes, there could be much better money management, but the fact is, there hasn't been, which means we simply don't have the money to keep it all up.
Lovely as it would be to keep paying every pensioner regardless of need a winter fuel payment, if we want it like that, we will have to pay taxes. Great as it would be for every school to open from 7am to 7pm 365 days a year so parents can take holidays when it suits them and don't have big childcare bills, somebody has to pay for that. Much as we would all love a better equipped, better staffed medical service, somebody has to pay for that.
As a nation, we want it all ways. We want cheap/free AND low taxes. It just doesn't work like that. We want a better deal for farmers, but we want to pay less and less for our local produce. Over the past 40 years we have killed our farming industry by allowing the supermarkets to set prices and import cheap goods to compete. One government takes away one benefit from farmers regarding inheritance tax and it's not 40 years of letting big supermarkets have all the buying power so we can have cheap food that's killed the industry, it's making a small number of landowners pay a reduced inheritance tax.
We buy cheap, mass-produced items from countries with appalling wages and conditions and moan we haven't any industry left, blaming high taxes and regulation, despite the fact that none of us would work 12 hours a day for 10 pence an hour. When we were willing to have less but pay more, we had a thriving industry. But we wanted fast fashion, cheap toys, all the latest gear at slave labour prices.
It's all come at a massive cost. One way or another, either by lowering tax and accepting individuals will have to pay more for goods and services, or raising taxes and accepting that in exchange for the services we have come to expect, we have to start being realistic about what it costs to raise and educate children, have the best medical care, eat locally grown produce.
We have, in fact, become disassociated with the realities of the sheer cost of having everything we want without relying on somebody in another country working for a pittance with none of the rights and safety we expect. We have no idea what the major surgery we get when we need it would actually cost if we had to pay for it without the NHS.
The only way for us to have low tax high growth is for us to be willing to find out what an unsubsidised life really looks like. And given some of the reactions to some of the latest government policies, we really aren't ready to find out.