British businesses are now financing a government that has completely lost control of its spending, while being lectured about the need to contribute more.
The latest figures are staggering. The government borrowed another £24.5 billion in September alone, with £10.9 billion payable in interest on existing debt. That is the highest September interest bill on record.
National debt has now exceeded £3 trillion. Consider what this means for the millions of company directors struggling to keep their businesses profitable.
They pay Corporation Tax on their profits, employers' National Insurance on their payroll, business rates on their premises and countless other taxes and regulatory costs before they can even contemplate rewarding themselves for the risks they take.
Their employees are taxed on their earnings, their customers are taxed on their purchases, and virtually every commercial transaction generates another opportunity for the Treasury to collect revenue.
Yet despite this enormous contribution, the government still cannot balance its books.
In September, tax receipts actually increased by £3.5 billion compared with the previous year. Corporation Tax receipts alone increased by almost 10%. The reward for generating all that additional revenue? Another Budget threatening further punishment for the businesses producing it.
Labour is incapable of understanding a fundamental principle of economics. You cannot continually increase the cost of employing people, discourage investment, penalise profitability and then express surprise when economic growth disappears.
The £100,000 income tax trap is another excellent example of a system designed to punish financial success. Work harder, earn more, employ more people and the Treasury will find another way to take a larger share.
Meanwhile, the interest on yesterday's government spending is consuming billions that could otherwise support infrastructure, public services and economic development.
For company directors, the message is becoming impossible to ignore. Their businesses are expected to generate the wealth, create the employment, shoulder the commercial risks and finance an increasingly expensive state that shows precious little understanding of how wealth is actually created.
There is a limit to how much punishment the productive economy will tolerate before investment, capital and business activity move elsewhere.
Labour would do well to remember that businesses are not an inexhaustible source of revenue. Without profitable businesses and the people prepared to run them, there is no tax base to exploit.
Britain doesn't have a shortage of taxpayers. It has a government with a spending problem, and another Budget is approaching in which those responsible for generating the country's wealth will once again be expected to pay for it.