Post AS2f0ErFR17I6MBco4 by dougbamford@mastodon.sdf.org
 (DIR) More posts by dougbamford@mastodon.sdf.org
 (DIR) Post #AS2ZuB0EM6hYdXg6CW by dougbamford@mastodon.sdf.org
       2023-01-26T15:51:37Z
       
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       I was asked to review the book "Political Philosophy and Taxation" for the British Tax Review. As it is behind a paywall I've put the text on my blog: https://dougstaxappeal.blogspot.com/2023/01/book-review-political-philosophy-and.html?spref=tw
       
 (DIR) Post #AS2ZuBdE17tSaTvEyu by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
       2023-01-26T16:33:20Z
       
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       @dougbamford Does it cover Georgism?Lately, I've been feeling the need to point out that, while it's true that democracy (more particularly, electoral democracy without social and economic democracy) has serious problems as a decision-making mechanism, pretending to remove decisions from the sphere of politics by invoking market mechanisms is at least as bad. In practice it gives disproportionate weight to the choices made by a few wealthy people, who cannot be trusted with the common good.
       
 (DIR) Post #AS2bYvvvO7nHj7f7VQ by dougbamford@mastodon.sdf.org
       2023-01-26T16:51:54Z
       
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       @publius. No I don't think there is anything about Henry George in this book. He doesn't fit into the schools discussed. Could have been discussed under libertarianism (left-libertarianism) but the authors of that chapter were clearly right-libertarians, like the editor of the book. There is a chapter on "democracy" but the proposals there seem completely opposed to democracy from my perspective - explicitly giving the rich more political power than they already do.
       
 (DIR) Post #AS2f0ErFR17I6MBco4 by dougbamford@mastodon.sdf.org
       2023-01-26T17:05:57Z
       
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       @publius Henry George's land tax does get a brief discussiong in one section (pp231-5) of another book about taxes that I've just read: Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom Through the Ages by Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod.
       
 (DIR) Post #AS2f0FQhJDTNsIlw3s by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
       2023-01-26T17:30:28Z
       
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       @dougbamford Georgism gets talked about far less than it deserves. Do you realize that it resulted in a wholesale re-writing of economics textbooks?David Ricardo, the second name in classical economics after Adam Smith, said "the landlord is the enemy of the remainder of society", but you won't find any mention of that in modern economics books. About the turn of the 20th century, there was a massive effort to recast land as equivalent to capital, as an ideological defence against George.
       
 (DIR) Post #AS6EjjebrUUUW0aJkm by dougbamford@mastodon.sdf.org
       2023-01-28T10:54:58Z
       
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       @publius I don't know about that history. Combining land with other capital inputs seems to follow from the marginalist revolution. But, even before then, Marx and Mill (1848) switched to 'nature' and 'capital' as inputs alongside labour, rather than land and labour.