{"id":340698,"date":"2017-12-22T22:56:46","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T21:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/leftitarian-on-the-tax-bill\/"},"modified":"2017-12-22T22:56:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T21:56:46","slug":"leftitarian-on-the-tax-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/leftitarian-on-the-tax-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Leftitarian on the Tax Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Will Wilkinson, the vice president for policy at the Niskanen Center, does not like the tax bill just passed by Congress. Writing in\u00a0<i>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/https\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/12\/20\/opinion\/tax-bill-gop-democracy.html?smid=fb-share&amp;mtrref=www.facebook.com&amp;assetType=opinion&amp;mtrref=undefined&amp;gwh=6902593479D7E1B7476196238BA33104&amp;gwt=pay&amp;assetType=opinion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New York Times<\/a><\/i>, he finds the legislation \u201cnotably generous to corporations, high earners, inheritors of large estates and the owners of private jets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wilkinson has discovered a surprising source for the legislation he dislikes so much. It is none other than the libertarian idea, promoted by Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, that taxation is theft. Under their theory of \u201cabsolute\u201d property rights, taxation was \u201cmorally criminalized.\u201d\u00a0 Democratic majorities, in this view, cannot override property rights.<\/p>\n<p>Wilkinson rejects this account. \u201cThe idea that there is an inherent tension between democracy and the integrity of property rights is wildly misguided.\u201d \u00a0Democracy is a means for the poor and middle class to protect themselves from exploitative elites. Democracy is a relatively recent innovation; in pre-democratic states, ruling elites exploited the \u201clower orders.\u201d Those not in the ruling elite need the redistributive democratic state for protection.<\/p>\n<p>The fault is no doubt mine, but I find Wilkinson\u2019s line of thought difficult to follow. How does the thought that taxation is morally wrong to underlie a tax bill? If you reject taxation, would you not oppose taxes rather than enact new taxes? Perhaps what Wilkinson has in mind is this: in present circumstances, Republicans under nefarious libertarian influence could not proceed all the way to abolition of taxation. The best they could manage is not to tax the well-off as much as Wilkinson thinks appropriate.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmi-gold-silver.com\/blog\/buy-old-us-gold-coins\/?utm_source=LRC_Text_Ad&amp;utm_campaign=buy_old_us_coins\">Time to buy old US gold coins<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>If this is Wilkinson\u2019s idea, though, the question arises: What is supposed to be the way in which&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2017\/12\/david-gordon\/will-wilkinson-on-the-tax-bill\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will Wilkinson, the vice president for policy at the Niskanen Center, does not like the tax bill just passed by Congress. Writing in\u00a0\u00a0The New York Times, he finds the legislation \u201cnotably generous to corporations, high earners, inheritors of large estates and the owners of private jets.\u201d Wilkinson has discovered a surprising source for the legislation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-340698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}