On Thursday, January 16, 2003 4:06 AM Grey Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > even more than direct/indirect, you need to > specify what is "neutral".
I don't think the definition of neutral in this context would be all that controversial. It would be one that would not impact any person or group more than any other person or group. I.e., there would be no redistributive effects from the taxation. This is what I thought Fred meant when he used the term. This is the way Sechrest defines it (p95 of the work cited previousaly and below:) -- and he's basically following Rothbard's usage here. I don't think a poll tax is neutral. That said, some taxes might cause less of a redistribution than others. Still other taxes might be more beneficial in terms of expanding production. I'm against taxation, but I don't think all types of taxes have the exact same impact. A poll tax, for example, would fall more heavily on the poor and historical experience seems to show it was used -- in the US at least -- to keep certain people -- namely, Blacks -- from voting. Therefore, it was not economically neutral, since this was a way of denying certain things to those who could not afford the tax. (You might think of the poll tax as the price of government, but that would only be the case if government did not enforce its monopoly on government services.) BTW, Larry Sechrest's essay "Rand, Anarchy, and Taxes" actually appeared in the 1(1) [Fall 1999] issue of _The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies_. Sorry for any confusion over that. Cheers! Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/ "The factors that determine whether a family is well-functioning often are independent of the form that family takes, and have more to do with relationships among family members, dedication of the primary caregiver(s), and support from extended kin. Those sorts of considerations, and not form alone, determine how functional families are. Moreover, the form of families is often strongly a product of broader social forces, such as economic, cultural, and technological change. Most, if not all, of those changes are not reversible (nor would reversing them likely be viewed as desirable), so the real challenge is to understand how these new family forms function and to find policies that facilitate that functioning (and avoid policies that retard it), rather than hoping to turn back the clock. Any family form that creates attachment, socializes well, transmits moral rules and social norms and does so in environment characterized by love and trust, will function well." -- Steven Horwitz, "The Functions of the Family in the Great Society," http://it.stlawu.edu/shor/Papers/Functions.htm
