The Perfect Tax

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Have you met the perfect tax?

The duty that is both elegant, and fair. The regime that lets our economies grow, and have everyone partake in its fruits. The excise that reconciles efficiency with equity. The set of rules that raises the revenue for a potent polity, and, at the same time, curbs wasteful decadence, to form that more perfect union.

If you haven’t met the perfect tax, let me introduce you: the postpaid progressive consumption tax.

The secret of the perfect tax? It burdens that behavior which is truly wasteful and undesirable: excessive consumption. It leaves all other economic activities unaffected.

Together with a negative income-tax for poor income earners and, possibly, a wealth tax to avoid boundless capital accumulation, it can replace all other redistributive taxes, both on individuals and corporations. Read on for more.

Children's coats, starting at $340. Via flickr, originally uploaded by permanently scatterbrained
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Eurolektionen-Ergebnisse: Jetzt Online und als Buch

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“Die Schule der Nation ist die Schule.”
(Willy Brandt, 1913-1922)

Eurolektionen fragt: Sind die Schulen Europas eine gute Schule für den in Vielfalt geeinten Kontinent?

Eurolektionen präsentiert

Wir berichten aus Rumänien, Schweden und Berlin, von Lehrerinnen und Schülerinnen. Wir erzählen von einem sauberen Europa und einem friedliebenden Europa, von einem Europa der Identitäten und einem Europa ohne Visa, von einem Europa des Erinnerns und einem Europa ohne Eltern und einem in den Binnenmarkt verliebten Kontinent.

Wir fragen uns und wir fragen Sie: Lernen wir gut und lernen wir fair, nicht für die Schule, sondern für Europa?

Antworten auf diese Fragen finden Sie hier auf http://eurolektionen.de und im gleichnamigen Beitrag im 6. Sammelband des Studienkollegs zu Berlin Projekt Junges Europa, das heute im Wehrhahn-Verlag erscheint. Es ist ab sofort bei Wehrhahn und über Amazon zu beziehen.

Mehr über den Inhalt und die folgenden Posts hier.

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Structural unemployment and working poverty are not inevitable

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The plight of structural unemployment and gaggles of working poor, it appears, are here to stay. But are they the inevitable consequence of economic liberalisation?

They are not. If we balance the burden of economic transformation on labor and capital, and strengthen progression, we can have it both: near full employment and open borders.

 

Mindestlohn, DGB, 2009

The sentiment is right, but the policy is flawed.

 

No, the answer is not a minimum wage. No, it’s not protectionism. No, it won’t hurt growth. But yes, it will require fundamental reform, hard work and international cooperation.

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Foundations: benevolent, but undemocratic

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Foundations are booming in Germany and they are frequently cherished as the ideal way to harness private wealth for the common good.

I’m critical about the efficiency, equity and legitimacy of civil society, and I think foundations are a case in point. This tax-exempt, free-roaming and supposedly benevolent capital is subjected to only minimal public accountability and may sometimes reflect a troublingly elitist vision of the common good.

Bertelsmann Stiftung / AG Berlin, via Flickr, originally uploaded by Gertrud K.

Kommandantenhaus, Unter den Linden 1, 10117 Berlin: charity?

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Private property isn’t theft, but neither is taxation

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Peter Sloterdijk has recently called for a radical rethinking of redistribution. He criticized “compulsory taxation” (sic!) as fiscal kleptocracy inadequately degrading its citizens intosubjects of tax laws, rather than encouraging the rich to give. He cited US philanthropy and suggested to promote voluntary donations in lieu of taxes, thinking of (rich) people as givers, not as takers.

via Flickr, originally uploaded by Mindful One

Don’t tax me, I’ll donate?!

Sloterdijk’s hyperliberal argument may be spearheading the kind of uncritical naturalizing of private property that also underlies much of the praise of foundations. Sloterdijk has it wrong when he believes that he doesn’t owe the polity much to be taxed.

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Civil society: feeling good is not enough

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Civil society is everybody’s darling in politics and policy today. It’s hard to find a policy student who hasn’t interned at some NGO, founded her own grassroots initiative and isn’t excited about non-profits in any given policy field.

Animal vs. disability charities, via Flickr, originally uploaded my Mot

So is the third sector panacea? Uh, maybe not. A third sector? Non-governmental, non-profit? What kind of definitions are these, anyway? And what would be an uncivil society?

Whenever social sciences come up with such terms that convey little more but a vague sense of something being different, or gone (think postmodern) there is always the danger that really, we don’t know (exactly) what we’re talking about.

For all their shortcomings, we roughly know how markets and states function, and how they fail. By contrast, we appear to know relatively little about how whatever it is we call “civil society” works.

Is it then reasonable to assume that civil society is categorically devoid of dysfunctions? Hardly so, I think.

As long as we don’t know what we’re cobbling together in civil society, we’d better stick to our lasts: the market and the state.

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