Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 54

MODERN AGE

FALL 2015

including massive redistribution, the warnings about control of
a dominant faction to prevent exploitation of the rest of society
become more pertinent. In the modern era, economists have
continued to analyze the effects of taxation on incentives to earn
income and to balance these against changes in social utility,
defined in some unmeasurable way. The philosopher John Rawls
added the twist of assuming that only the income of the person
at the lowest level needed to be a concern of public policy. But
economists and philosophers of the Rawlsian type do not stop
to consider the Madisonian question of what will happen to a
tax bill of the most sophisticated design when it is submitted to
Congress. Nor do they consider the possibility that the sovereign
is a revenue-maximizing entity at war with his subjects; that is, a
stationary bandit.

B

ecause of the impossibility of defining a "fair" tax, it is worthwhile searching for a different approach. The comment by
Mill, "It is not the fortunes that are earned, but the fortunes that
are unearned," provides the starting point. Of course, an income
tax becomes totally arbitrary and capricious if the IRS agent
has to review your return to judge each receipt for its "worthy
earnedness." Spare us that intrusion! In fact, it is possible to make
a distinction between earned and unearned if we are willing to
give up the idea of taxing the individual on his income and turn,
instead, to a tax levied on the source of the unearned income.
This does require giving up progressivity as it is usually defined
because that concept applies only to people.
The specific alternative to consider is the land value tax (LVT)
as developed with great vigor and insight by Henry George in his
bestselling book, Progress and Poverty (1879). Others, including
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2018winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017fall
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