This is more other late night reading that becomes relevant. Two kinds of tax are opposed by different classes:
those with substantial incomes think that income tax invades their privacy (see here);
those with minimal incomes dislike a "poll tax" that is the same for all, taking no account of income.
In Britain, poll taxes have been opposed by peasants' revolts and, during Margaret Thatcher's Prime Ministership, by a non-payment campaign sometimes resulting in imprisonment as well as by demonstrations, disruptions of Council meetings and a riot. I was on some demonstrations but not on the one that became a riot. That tax fell and, soon after, Thatcher went.
Taxes are unpopular as attested by the Robin Hood story and by the New Testament. I do not expect late night reading when the lap top should be switched off to connect with Andersonian themes but it does. Good night.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I'm incline to sympathize with complaints about income taxes. They too easily become perverse, crushing, disruptive, etc. And I'm further inclined to regard with some favor ideas about taxes, like a poll tax, which is the same for everybody. Best, of course, would be moderate taxes levied by a state with strictly limited powers.
Sean
Kaor, Paul and Sean!
I, too, sympathize with complaints about income taxes, and I believe that a poll tax is greatly unjust, especially where there is substantial inequality in incomes, wealth, and landownership. If Joe works, and earns a living by the sweat of his brow, while Richard obtains a much higher income from the land rent paid by his tenants, whether on farmland or city land, how is it just that they pay the same amount of tax? Also, government programs, if they are not sheer waste, often have the effect of raising land rent. Richard’s downtown lot is valuable in large part because government roads and a government subway make it possible for people to reach it and to reach other places from it, and because the police and the fire department make the city a reasonably safe place. Without these, the land rent which Richard could collect from the businessman who actually had a high building erected on the land which Richard owns would be far smaller, if the city were inhabitable at all.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nichola!
I don't entirely agree. A poll tax which is the same for everybody strikes me as less perverse than many other kinds of taxes. That said, I am willing to try adjusting it so it would take into account the different incomes everybody has. A five percent tax on a man getting 20,000 dollars a year would be less than a similar five percent levied on a man with an income of 100,000 a year.
Sean
Kaor, Sean!
What you’re describing is a flat-rate income tax, which may be better than a poll tax (the same payment from everyone), but still involves the government in claiming partial ownership of its citizens, and inquiring into their incomes and other business in order to assess the tax. I think that charging them for their use of resources which they did nothing to create is a better way of raising revenue.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
Basically, I agree with what you said about taxes. NO tax system will ever be wholly satisfactory, no matter how hard the people running a gov't try to be just and fair (which is by no means always the case!). Where I disagree is the implication that people with the "...use of resources which they did nothing to create..." somehow have a lesser right to it. If we are going to have any kind of private property my view is that ownership in it has to be as absolute as Anglo/American law makes it. Else there will be no SECURITY of property for anyone. You can imagine the consequences, social and political!
Sean
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