Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 42

MODERN AGE

FALL 2015

fairness. Aristotle (Ethics 4.2) described the contributions that
a man should make to his community. They should reflect his
wealth and station in life, being neither too cheap and tawdry
nor too extravagant. For example, a very rich man might present a well-equipped naval vessel to his city. Someone with less
wealth could offer a good banquet to the poor of the city. By the
time St. Thomas Aquinas brought the later works of Aristotle into
the mainstream of Western scholarship, that version of justice in
taxation was firmly established. That is, the individual's contribution to the community should be somehow proportionate to the
wealth and standing of the individual, but there was no thought
of using taxes to change the wealth of one person relative to
another.
King Louis XIV is reputed to have responded to reports that
the people were complaining about high taxes by stating, "It is all
mine anyway, I can take whatever I want." That claim is a throwback to the view that taxing power is just the continuation of the
plunder by the roving bandits that is justified by the power of
the government. In stark contrast, the roughly contemporaneous
words of John Locke (1690) define the new intellectual atmosphere: "Every man has a property in his own person; this nobody
has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work
of his hands, we may say, are properly his" (The Second Treatise of
Government, section 27). That leaves no room for slavery or feudalism and room only for those taxes to which he has consented.
At this stage, reached in different countries at different times, it
becomes possible and seemingly useful to speak of "fairness"
in taxation. The concept presupposes the existence of a surplus
above subsistence for the masses-a surplus that is not considered to be rightfully the property of landowners or governments,
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Modern Age - Fall 2015

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