In 2012 I was asked to explain what tax was for in six tweets. This is what I wrote. In view of his announcement on tax this morning I think David Cameron needs to take note:
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Thank you for this. I was not around these parts in 2012.
Looking foward to (ahem) the new book.
I promised the publisher it is on its way, yesterday
The delay is entirely beyond my control, but I’ve not been inclined to discuss family health on the blog
Tax delivers prosperity in the same way that strangulation delivers life. Marx thought that tax was unnecessary and he was correct. Tax is a curse.
You clearly have not read Marx properly
Come back when you have
Ouch!
Wow – there’s one for the record – a neo-liberal (I presume, certainly a member of the “tax is theft” brigade), actually calling on MARX!!!! to support his argument. Real “Through the Looking Glass” moment!
Graeme,
The primary purpose of tax is to give value to the pound in your pocket…
“If the state is willing to accept the proposed money in the payment of taxes and other obligations to itself, the trick is done.”
Abba Lerner, 1947.
https://lfb.org/the-real-reason-the-u-s-dollar-has-value/
So. A curse? No, tax is a blessing
Indeed
What a ludicrous assertion. Marx was indeed concerned about the taxation that made the life of workers even worse but this bears no relation to contemporary conditions where we have had swathes of tax cuts to the rich and rising inequality not to mention the multifarious ways the high net worth brigade have of avoiding tax.
here’s the relevant quote from Marx:
“The modern fiscal system, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of subsistence (and therefore by inÂcreases in their price), thus contains within itself the germ of autoÂmatic progression. Over-taxation is not an accidental occurrence, but rather a principle. In Holland, therefore, where this system was first inaugurated, the great patriot, De Witt, extolled it in his Maxims as the best system for making the wage-labourer subÂmissive, frugal, industrious…and overburdened with work. Here, however, we are less concerned with the destructive influence it exercises on the situation of the wage-labourer than with the forcible expropriation, resulting from it, of peasants and artisans, in short, of all the constituents of the lower middle class. There are no two opinions about this, even among the bourgeois economists. Its effectiveness as an expropriating agent is heightened still furÂther by the system of protection, which forms one of its integral parts. (Marx, Capital, p. 921)”
It is clear that Marx did NOT mean the Rich should not be taxed or that tax in some way is the appropriation of the hard work of the super-wealthy!!
As Richards says – try reading Marx.
Indeed
“… application of all rents of land to public purposes.” “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” Communist Manifesto.
I wonder whether you could explain why taking wealth that some have earned and giving to others who have not is “fair”.
Did they earn it?
All on their own?
Wholly unaided?
Without the benefit of their state education, roads, infrastructure, legal system, trained employees and so much more?
No, of course not
But the market allocates uneven bargaining power – it is not the fiction of economics 101
So the state has to correct that
Precisely to make sure the rich continue to have the opportunity to earn more than others because if it did not intervene that would not happen – markets and society would fail
So it does intervene – to help the best off more than anyone else
Boots the chemist for example, is owned by a group of people who borrowed the money to acquire the asset. Many of the richest have inherited it. Where does the borrowed money come from? Often the savings of the many-or even just ‘printed’.
‘Wealth’ is created by labour/workers. Capital and land are inanimate. Only labour ‘earns’ a return.
Read Marx yourselves!
As you quote:
In Holland, therefore, where this system was first inaugurated, the great patriot, De Witt, extolled it in his Maxims as the best system for making the wage-labourer subÂmissive, frugal, industrious…and overburdened with work.
I think we’ll all correctly interpret that