Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 40

MODERN AGE

FALL 2015

The Roman Empire and many others extracted tribute from
weaker nations. Often local agents (the hated "publicans" of the
Bible) would be granted the tax franchise for a particular area.
Each agent was responsible for paying the contractual amount to
the government but could keep whatever he could squeeze out
of the populace. This ancient device of "tax farming" persisted in
some form for many centuries, which suggests the value of using
someone with local and particular knowledge to estimate what
the government could extract from taxpayers. The problems
with authorizing an agent of government to squeeze an arbitrary amount from the taxpayer have led most commentators
to condemn any practice that seems to put revenue agents on
commission.
The details of the taxes and forms of government varied from
place to place and time to time, but from the viewpoint of the
mass of mankind, the differences were not great. The masses
could expect that nearly all the surplus above subsistence would
be extracted from them either as taxes or as rents to a landlord.
When taxes became intolerable, the masses were squeezed to
the point where population would actually be decreasing from
malnutrition or because people fled from the high-tax civilization
to refuge with the barbarians.

E

ven before the great invasions of Rome in the fifth century,
central control of the empire had weakened. As taxes on farmland were raised to the point where small farmers abandoned
their plots, the large landowners absorbed the smaller plots and
became the feudal lords who contended with each other and with
kings for power and taxes throughout the Middle Ages. Much of
the political history focuses on barons, dukes, princes, and kings,
40



Modern Age - Fall 2015

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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2018winter
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