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Title: The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice by Liam B. Murphy, Thomas Nagel ISBN: 0-19-515016-3 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: What a waste of ink
Comment: The short version of this dopey book is this: Without Uncle Sam to protect your stuff you'd probably get mugged without hope of getting it back. Therefore you dont actually own it. I think most mafia dons think along these lines.
In another context, the money sitting in your banks safe doesn't actually belong to you. It belongs to the security guard who keeps it from getting stolen.
John Locke is spinning in his grave. The Sophists are laughing their butts off.
Rating: 3
Summary: Tax Equity and the State of Nature
Comment: In the Myth of Ownership, Murphy and Nagel attempt to invert the baseline for determining tax fairness. Instead of using the more or less pure market distribution of social welfare as the baseline from which to discuss the equity of the existing tax scheme (Should we tax the wealthy more? Should we tax capital gains? Is taxation of dividends equitable to those receiving dividends?), the authors believe it is more appropriate to proceed from another baseline. Their preferred baseline can be, in my view, formulated succinctly by reference to Ronald Dworkin's claim regarding the nature of a just state, i.e. that the 'sovereign virtue' of the state is equal concern for the fate of all citizens. Thus, in Murphy's and Nagel's view, any discussion of tax fairness must begin with this imperative, the fate of all citizens, and must keep it in mind where there is any serious discussion of tax equity since such discussions are really discussion of economic and social justice.
In the authors' view, to proceed from the baseline of market distributions of social welfare - - which most people agree would allow serious and troubling social outcomes - - is to utilize a market-centric conception of social justice. As all citizens are first that, i.e. citizens, all have a stake in the social compact and all must be the equal concern of the governing organs of the state. Thus, all have a right to live lives free of poverty and the inequalities allowed by pure market outcomes.
Those tax commentators proceeding from the market baseline are those whom the authors call 'unreflective libertarians.' They are those who believe that they first owneth, and the government taketh away, and that their claims to ownership of their incomes and assets do not require government validation. The authors argue, conversely, that the only ownership we have is what government considers permissible (after taking Dworkin's maxim into account).
Murphy and Nagel argue that ownership, since only legitimized by government, is almost completely dependent upon government. To justify their position they invoke Hobbes and they assert that the 'state of nature' prior to the formation of government was a Hobbesian war of all against all. Thus, government, and robust government at that, performs more than a regulative role but is the condition sine qua non for the possibility of ownership, property rights, wealth and even civility.
While one might have sympathy for where Murphy and Nagel want to take us, their utilization of Hobbes to demonstrate the near heirophanic role of government is precisely what leads to many of their critics' charges of statism. Their argument could have proceeded without such strong claims (assertions, really) about human nature and government. Many conservatives would argue that government does not only NOT provide OF ITSELF the conditions for the possibility of ownership and property, they would argue that government at times impedes those conditions in unfair and inappropriate ways. As well, there are those who would argue that the authors' assessment of human nature is too dark, although convenient to their argument that it is government, and not social actors, that creates the legitimacy for claims of ownership and property rights, etc. Many would point out, in fact, that 'constitutional conventions' precede constitutions and thus that legitimacy flows from the people and the people's moral deliberations and not from government per se (Where, in fact, does non-despotic government obtain its legitimacy but from the people?).
The argument in the Myth of Ownership rests upon philosophical pillars that are unhelpful to its case and which lead to conclusions that are both philosophically problematic and politically fatal in a Western context, and so its central argument fails. Few would disagree with the claim that wealth and ownership are helped along by governmental frameworks, some safeguards against unjust seizures etc. But, I would have to reject Myth's statism, it's dark view of human nature, and so I come away disappointed at what promised to be a rubber-meets-the-road philosophical essay. It would have been a better book if the authors grounded the legitimacy of ownership and property rights claims in the moral imagination of human beings, rather than in Leviathan.
Rating: 1
Summary: Superficial
Comment: I was very disappointed and wrote to the authors without reply (to date). They seem unaware of the Lockean tradition and its handling by writers such as Henry George (who wrote far more clearly than they over 100 years ago).
The entitlements approach to justice is more in tune with the common law and history than the idea of collectivist "creation" of "rights", "offences" or "social mortgages".
As Pitt the Elder observed, taxation and the common law are strangers (which is why taxation statutes reeived a strict construction against the Crown).
I could go on but why? If this sort of stuff gets published I should have a go myself!
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Title: Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston ISBN: 1591840198 Publisher: Portfolio Pub. Date: 25 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Tax Justice: The Ongoing Debate by Joseph J. Thorndike, Dennis J. Ventry ISBN: 0877667071 Publisher: Urban Inst Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.50 |
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Title: Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit ISBN: 019824908X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1986 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought by Samuel Scheffler ISBN: 0199257671 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler by Edward J. McCaffery ISBN: 0226555607 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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