This paper examines whether, and if so when, luxury tax is justifiable. After a characterization of luxury tax, I critically examine several arguments that have been or can be made in defence of luxury tax, including Ng’s diamond good argument and a variation of Frank’s positional good argument. I put forward an alternative, expressive argument, according to which luxury tax can help to create and sustain social norms that discourage conspicuous luxury consumption and display of (...) wealth. I explain several ways in which luxury tax fails to achieve the expressive goal and brings about unintended consequences. (shrink)

This chapter proposes a policy to tackle the problem of global poverty, the Global Luxuries Tax. The GLT is a levy collected whenever a person, anywhere in the world, purchases a certain luxury good or service. The money collected will go towards a Global Poverty Fund to be used to alleviate the worst cases of global poverty. The tax is a miniscule percentage of the price of the good or service being purchased, so that the GLT raises money for (...) the Global Poverty Fund by virtue of the high number of transactions taking place. The first part of the chapter will highlight two main pitfalls faced by any potential solution to the problem of global poverty, the Unintended Consequences Objection and the Implementation Objection. The second and third parts will introduce the idea of a Global Luxuries Tax, first in theory and then in practice. Examples of luxuries to be taxed by the GLT include air travel, financial transactions, texting on mobile phones, and procreation. In the final part some objections to the GLT will be considered, and appeased. (shrink)

Economists generally associate the redistribution of resources with the apparatus of taxes and transfer payments. Such redistributions are done by the power of the authorities. However, resources are redistributed by other means as well. People give away income in a variety of ways, deliberate and unintentional. In this paper, agents transfer consumption goods in return for a good which lacks material qualities and affects their preferences because it has “value”. An example of a real life commodity without intrinsic value is (...) diamonds. The standard consumption value of a diamond is low, especially as artificial diamonds look the same as real ones to the naked eye. Many luxury goods such as art pieces have similar characteristics. Owning a house in a “rich” area could have extra benefits in consumption and, yet, one important motivation is simply to live in an expensive neighborhood. By holding such a good an agent refrains from acquiring resources that he could consume and, thus, frees resources for other agents. Our thinking on this issue originates from a naive question. Why are wealthy people striving to be wealthier? It is quite absurd to think that rich people wish to increase the consumption of standard goods as assumed in the classical consumer model. Indeed, by acquiring an expensive diamond or an original piece of art, a consumer demonstrates his avoidance of consumption. We construct and analyse an elementary competitive equilibrium model in which the value of “useless” jewels enter the preferences of consumers. We show that if jewels are scarce, they can trade at a positive price despite having no intrinsic utility. Under fairly natural assumptions, a positive price equilibrium redistributes consumption from the rich to the poor. Thus, the model demonstrates the common wisdom that the existence of luxury goods can have a positive effect on income distribution. This paper is mainly expository. The idea of consumption goods lacking intrinsic value and of prices entering directly the utility functions is not original.. (shrink)

A uniform carbon tax with equal per capita dividends is usually advocated as a cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions without increasing, and in many cases even reducing, economic inequality, in particular because of the positive balance between the carbon taxes paid by the worse off and the carbon dividends they receive back. In this article, I argue that a uniform carbon tax reform is unjust regardless of how the revenue is used, because it does not discourage the (...) rich from indulging in wasteful emissions. This is at odds with a normative account of the distribution of the GHG budget that I define as emissions limitarianism, which is a climate derivative of economic limitarianism. Emissions limitarianism holds that, under low GHG budget conditions, emissions permits should not be used to achieve functionings that over-consume the GHG budget without producing significant welfare gains relative to the achievement of alternative functionings. Accordingly, I argue that a uniform carbon tax should be complemented by a limitarian carbon tax, which restricts the capabilities of the rich to achieve wasteful emission-generating functionings. The article adopts a methodological multi-level perspective on capabilities as a measure of welfare, distinguishing between basic, secondary and tertiary capabilities. (shrink)

The present research is a historical perspective on luxury during 1781-1933. The major stake is represented by the response of the ecclesiastical authority to luxury, the rejection/blaming/damning of luxury; subsequently the acceptance of it. We notice here the church's incapacity to stop the 'illegitim' consumption, that kind of consumption which was beyond the possibilities of a common person, and the taxation of luxury - the one who had more than he/she needed had to donate to the (...) Church, meaning to the poor. The secular authority did the same - luxury would be progressively taxed, which led to a certain synchronization between Church and State. We also analyse the link between orthodoxy and consumption from sociological perspective. The excess is perceived as being a sin. That is why the Church undertakes the role of prescriptor/controller of consumption, be it dressing, food etc. We detect here stages in the process of modernizing of the Romanian cultural space, the social changing and stratification. Luxury was a benchmark in social comparison, a reason of frustration, of indignation, of philosophical reflection. Luxury is a key for understanding the struggle between old and new, between ethics promoted by the Church and that of liberalism, about the tension between traditional consumption (home-made, predictable, swimming with the stream) and the one generated by the circulation of goods, by the industrial revolution. (shrink)

Die ATB ist die traditionsreichste Editionsreihe der germanistischen Mediävistik. Begründet 1881 von Hermann Paul, wurde sie von führenden Fachvertretern, Georg Baesecke, Hugo Kuhn, Burghart Wachinger, betreut. Seit 2001 liegt die Verantwortung in den Händen von Christian Kiening. Die mittlerweile etwa 120 Bände verknüpfen exemplarisch Handschriftennähe und Lesbarkeit, wissenschaftliche Arbeit am Text und Blick auf die akademische Lehre. Sie umfassen anerkannte, zum Teil kommentierte Ausgaben 'klassischer' Autoren der Zeit um 1200, aber auch veritable Werkausgaben (Notker der Deutsche) und anspruchsvolle Neueditionen (Eckenlied, (...) Heinrich von dem Türlin). (shrink)

The Altdeutsche Textbibliothek [Old German Text Library] is the series of editions of German medieval texts with the richest history. Foundedin 1881 by Hermann Paul, it has been edited by leading Germanists- Georg Beasecke, Hugo Kuhn, Burghart Wachinger. Since 2001, responsibility for the series has rested with Christian Kiening. In the meantime, the series comprises some 120 volumes, with an exemplary combination of closeness to the original manuscript(s) with ease of reading, philological accuracy with concern for university teaching. It includes (...) recognised editions of "classical" authors from around 1200- some with commentary- but also presents veritable editions of authors' works (Notker the German) and high-quality new editions (Eckenlied, Heinrich von dem Türlin). (shrink)

Squeezed between increasing entitlement expenditures and static or declining real revenues, state‐funded urban development is increasingly perceived as an unaffordable luxury. At the same time, the power and significance of the banking sector is giving way to new kinds of financial institutions that have little or no interest in community development. Not surprisingly, it is often argued that pension funds ought to be more sensitive to community needs. However, some analysts argue that pension funds are properly only the agents (...) of plan beneficiaries; any investment that took into account community needs would be, in effect, an unjustified tax on individuals’ future welfare. Furthermore, analysts are very doubtful about the integrity of public pension plan investment decision‐making. In this paper, I set out a morally informed justification of public pension plan investment in community development. In doing so, I develop a model of community development that stresses the reciprocal nature of the obligations embedded in the relationship between the community and pension plan beneficiaries. This approach also has significant implications for a wide variety of private sponsored plans. The paper begins with an assessment of pension fund decision‐making and the practices of the investment management industry, drawing upon related research on pension fund capitalism. It goes on to issues of social obligation, referencing recent research on the nature of social contracts. To give the analysis empirical relevance I refer to the much disputed decision of the West Virginia legislature to require their public pension funds’ Investment Management Board to invest in the state government's corrections authority. (shrink)

Located astride the shipping routes linking southern Asia Minor with the coasts of Syria and Palestine and Egypt, the island of Cyprus has always been regarded as a stepping stone of the cultural and economic communications interconnecting different areas of the eastern half of the Mediterranean. Politically this role has been first enhanced during the Hellenistic, Roman and then in the early medieval period when in the seventh century Cyprus acquired an important role as military Byzantine stronghold. Economically, the significance (...) of Cyprus in the passage from the late antiquity to the early middle ages benefitted from its essential role as hub along the eastern tax-spine through which Egypt fed Constantinople and along the long-distance trade-routes based upon the sea-movement of luxury goods. This multifunctional role of Cyprus as a bridge between different regions of the eastern Mediterranean can be further assessed through the analysis of the numismatic material. Here, indeed, the study of the coins and coinage yielded by the archaeological excavations in urban centres like Salamis-Constantia, Paphos-Saranda Kolones, and Kourion should be paired with both the reassessment of the publication of the old Cypriot hoards and stray finds and the recent studies on the so-called Arab-Byzantine coinage found both in Cyprus and in the closer Syria-Palestine region. The examination of this material allows to develop a different interpretative scheme than the one traditionally adopted to interpret the fate of Cyprus after the Muslim raids and the occupation of Syria and Palestine. Cyprus and its cities were still frequented in the passage from late antiquity to the early middle ages, preserving a variable but still traceable degree of monetary economy including Byzantine emissions and Arab specimens, inferring the maintenance of political, commercial and cultural relations between the Byzantine Empire and the Umayyad Caliphate. (shrink)

When Captain Binger traveled the Niger bend between 1887 and 1889, he saw numerous villages that had been drained of their lifeblood or left in ruins by violent conflicts that had left their mark in the form of fortifications. Above all he was struck by the region's depopulation, which threatened to compromise the potential for colonial exploitation of the country. But these conditions did not prevail throughout the entire area. Prosperous towns were engaged in trade, war parties were living in (...) ostentation, and rulers were collecting taxes from their subjects. The misery of the peasants’ lives contrasted with the opulent luxury of the courts and caravansaries. The black slave trade, and slavery itself, did not exert a uniform effect upon all of Africa. (shrink)

Once upon a time, a scholar, ascetic and relig-ious man named Abu Hamid Ibn Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Shafi'i al-Ghazali (AI-Ghazali, 1058-11 II) wrote a worl, called The Incoherence qf the Philosophers, 1\ clever philosopher, Abu AI-\Valid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Hushd (Averroes, 112li-1 ID8), responded to this by writing The IlIcolurence (!l the Inroherence. In IVhat is Art;;, Tolstoy refers to the importance of art in order to ridicule itl He notes the attention paid to art, music, theatre, filrn, (...) and books in the press. IIe notes the in\'(~stment of gm'ernments in the support of museums, theatres and the like. He notes the time spent by artists and perlilrmers in learning- their craft. He presents the most sardonic description of an opera rehearsal you will ever read. He describes the eHilrt and money poured into art as "stupefying", "repulsive", "a gigantic absurdity", and "utterly incomprehensible".~ I-Imv can art be so important that a peasant should have to sell his only cow to pay the taxes that maintain the artist-producer in grand luxury~. (shrink)

Taxation and government policy related to it have only episodic appearance in classical Protestant ethical sources. Of the early sixteenth century reformers, Luther gave most attention to the subject, justifying taxation in general as necessary for the just service of government to the public good and calling the princes to spend tax monies for that good rather than their own luxury. Calvin made much the same claims but called more clearly for official church scrutiny of all government than did (...) Luther. Two centuries later John Wesley criticized English tax policy, appealing to standards of economic efficiency and compassion for the poor with little reference overtly to theology. The churches of colonial and post-revolutionary America developed no systematic, theologically rooted rationale for taxation ethics, either; but official Protestant denominational concern for such ethics has grown measurably in the most recent fifteen years. After a survey of these recent national church statements, and on the basis of them and the slender Protestant heritage on this issue, we end by posing four questions which we see as worthy of much serious thinking by contemporary American Protestant ethicists and church bodies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:184 THE ECONOMIC THOUGHT OF DAVID HUME David Hume's views on economics are expressed in his Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, Part II (1752). He was a contemporary of Adam Smith and read Smith's The Wealth of Nations shortly before his death. Some commentators have suggested that Hume exercised some influence over Smith's views on economics; others are not so sure. Hume's commentators over the last 200 years have (...) emphasized his theory of knowledge, doctrine of causality and belief, theory of morals and historical writing. His views on economics have been relatively neglected. The purpose of this essay is to summarize and clarify Hume's views on economics. Commerce and Trade Hume's essay "Of Commerce" is an extension of his view of property rights. Just as government should not impair property rights, it should not impair commerce, which is the freedom to contract between consenting parties. But Hume was not a 'pure' advocate of laissez-faire. He supported the infant industry argument: A tax on German linen encourages home manufacturers, and thereby multiplies our people and industry. A tax on brandy encreases the sale of rum, and supports our southern colonies. The bulk of workers are employed either in argiculture or manufacturing. In the more primitive societies, almost everyone is employed in agriculture (husbandry), and as agricultural techniques are improved, the land becomes able to support more nonagricultural workers, including artisans and providers of luxuries as well as manufacturers. Some of these 185 surplus (i.e., nonagricultural or manufacturing) workers are sometimes appropriated by the sovereign for use in the army or navy (OC 256), which prevents them from producing luxury goods and services, and leads to a different kind of state than would exist if their labor were not so appropriated. Increases in industry, the arts and trade generally increase both the power of the sovereign and the happiness of the people (OC 260). Trade is something that is mutually beneficial -- both parties gain. Hume spends a great deal of time refuting the idea that one nation's gain is another's trade loss. Thus, trade is a win-win rather than a win-lose situation, as some modern-day mercantilists (such as Thurow fThe Zero Sum Gamel and Batra G The Great Crash of 1989l)would have us believe. Hume views everything in the world as purchased by labor, and sees labor as being caused by people's passions (OC 261). In modern language, one could say that wealth is produced either from physical or mental labor, and that it is individual incentive that causes the human action to begin in the first place. Of course, this view overlooks the fact that labor does not exist in a vacuum, but is mixed with land and perhaps capital (which can be seen as the result of accumulated labor). Exchange occurs when producers of a commodity produce more than they can consume. At that point, they trade their surplus for other goods and services (OC 261). In peacetime, the farmers' surplus goes toward the acquisition of manufactures or the cultivation of the liberal arts. In war, the surplus can go toward the support of an army or navy. The state becomes more powerful as it can produce increasingly beyond subsistence, what Hume refers to as employment beyond mere necessities (OC 186 262). But rather than encouraging the increase in state power by force, such increase is best accomplished by allowing individuals to produce as much as they want, which they will do automatically in the absence of coercion, and then appropriate part of the surplus: It is a violent method, and in most cases impracticable, to oblige the labourer to toil, in order to raise from the land more than what subsists himself and family. Furnish him with manufactures and commodities, and he will do it himself. Afterwards you will find it easy to seize some part of his superfluous labour, and employ it in the public service, without giving him his wonted return. Being accustomed to industry, he will think this less grievous, than if, at once, you obliged him to an argumentation of labour without any reward. (OC 262) Countries that engage in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:154, DAVID HUME'S PRACTICAL ECONOMICS As Professor Eugene Rotwein emphasized in his introduction to David Hume: Writings on Economics (Madison, 1955), the philosopher made his observations on the eve of the industrial revolution in a period of accelerating change. Very often — as in the latter half of the seventeenth century — times of flux and turmoil call forth Utopian thinkers, who propose the creation of hierarchical, communal, authoritarian (...) societies, often patterned after a supposed golden 2 age. Hume emphatically rejected Utopian schemes of this kind. "All plans of government which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind," he said, 3 "are plainly imaginary." He repeatedly warned as well that "projectors" and visionaries would disrupt the balance in government between liberty and authority. Thus he could speak of or make reference to "the visionary system or ravings of Plato" (in The Republic), the ultimate impracticality of More's Utopia and James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana, and the absurdity of Robert Wallace's theories on 4 population and the paper money schemes of John Law. Even the Utopian republics of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the Scottish patriot whom Hume admired as "a man of undaunted courage and inflexible principles," were dismissed with the others on practical grounds. The key word we have extracted from Hume's economics is practicality. Much as Hume would have liked to have designed an empirical "science of man" — which, incidentally, would have permitted him to propose his own infallible scheme of political economy — he realized that his own attempts had fallen far short of his goal. Thus his nine essays devoted especially to economics: "Of Commerce," "Of Refinement 155. in the Arts," "Of Money," "Of Interest," "Of the Balance of Trade," "Of the Jealousy of Trade," "Of Taxes," "Of Public Credit," and "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," are cautious in approach and pragmatic in spirit. Most of these essays were specifically designed to challenge prevailing assumptions and Utopian grand schemes of one sort or another. In "Of Commerce," for example, Hume rejects the idea that a nation can achieve greatness as an agricultural utopia. In "Of Refinement in the Arts" he takes issue with certain religious thinkers who 7 denote luxury as evil. In "Of Money" he is critical of those who believe that an injection of money into O the economy will work long-term wonders, and in "Of Interest" he argues with those who reason that the 9 plenty of money leads to low interest rates. "Of the Balance of Trade" and "Of the Jealousy of Trade" are directed against the protectionist policies of the mercantilists, "Of Taxes" rejects the French physiocratic single tax on land, and "Of Public Credit" deplores the expedients of Lord Oxford's partisans to draw bills on posterity and imprudently 12 use public credit to create paper riches. Finally, he addressed his essay, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations" to a refutation of the doomsday thinking of 13 the Reverend Robert Wallace of Edinburgh. This is not to imply, however, that Hume's economic thought was merely negative, or that he believed governments could safely entrust their powers over the economy to an "invisible hand." Even Hume's advocacy of free trade (which his friend and pupil Adam Smith, of course, applied with less caution) left the government with room to maneuver. Hume was willing to employ both the market and authority in designs for human progress. In seeking his mix of "action, 156. consumption, liveliness and indolence," a contradictory, counter-poised economic actor, the individual, was not a simple pleasure maximizer, nor did the acquisition of wealth and luxury make him a villain. He was a person in whom the complex springs of action, the causes of labour, needed first one, now another counter-weight. Society benefited from both 14 free trade and from tariff. Hume believed that industrial development and the advancement of commerce were the springboards to progress and happiness. Less is less and more is more; Hume never got these simple verities mixed up. "The same age," he said, "which produces great philosophers and politicians, renowned generals and poets, usually abounds with skillful weavers, and ship-carpenters.... The spirit of the age... (shrink)

A typical discussion around health reform in the U.S. focuses on how the nation can most effectively and efficiently extend insurance coverage to the rising number of people who have none. Furthermore, discussions about health care reform typically are centered on times of normalcy, when the health care system is not overly taxed and there is the luxury of time to think about everyday matters of health and health care, including health care services needed to prevent illness, treat conditions, (...) and address individual emergencies. But in light of the lessons learned over the past decade, it is also essential to consider how any reformed health care system will react to and mitigate the consequences of a public health emergency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Realm Without Angels: MENCs Partnerships with Disney and Other Major Corporations Julia EkIund Koza University of Wisconsin-Madison My interest in partnerships between the MENC: The National Association for Music Educators and major corporations such as Disney dates back to 1996 when I was invited to attend a free premiere screening of the movie Mr. Holland 's Opus.1 Never one to turn down anything free, in January of that (...) year I joined more than twenty-fivethousandmusiceducators, administrators, and friends ofthe arts, who gathered at fiftyone locations across the nation to watch the movie. Sponsored and promoted by theNational Coalition for Music Education, ofwhich MENC is a member, in cooperation with the National AcademyofRecordingArts and Sciences Foundation, the American Music Conference, and Hollywood Pictures (a Disney subsidiary), the promotional screening was the result of an education/business partnership. I did not like the film much even though I agreed with its message that public schools and public school music should be adequately funded, and I was sorry that MENC had entered into a partnership to promote it. Part ofthe problem may have been timing. I had recentlyreturned froma parental leave during whichIhad sufferedseriouspostpartumcomplications and had struggled fornearly a yearwithpoor health. January 1996 found me trying to figure out how I would manage a full-blown academic career, my still fragile health, and a lively child. Ibristledatthevisionsofprofessionalismfostered by Mr. Holland's Opus, recognizing that I would never again have the luxury he did of indulging myselfuninterruptedly in my career; I knew that I might never again be seen as a "real professional " even though I was more exhausted and working harder than I ever had. From my perspective the film's images of teachers, teaching, andprofessionalismwereprofoundlymasculinist; I also knew that a popular film can play a powerful role in shapingpublic imaginaries. Who tends tobenefit fromtheperpetuationoftheseimagesof teachers, teaching, and professionalism, I wondered? Who tends to be harmed? So my first step on this journey was to write a critique of Mr. Holland's Opus. I soon discovered that the film itselfwas but one small part of a much larger story about MENCs deepening involvement in education /business partnerships. One of the main themes of Mr. Holland's Opus is that budget cuts can have devastating effects on music programs. The education/business partnership forged to promote Opus and the manner in which the film was promoted suggested that the corporate world is socially responsible and genuinely concerned both aboutthe quality ofAmerican education and the demise of music education. In no way did they intimate that corporate practices may be at least partially responsible for any declines in the quality ofpublic schooling. I was also aware, however, of a corpus of scholarship suggesting that recent trends toward corporate partnerships and philanthropy are window-dressing at a time when corporations are sneaking out the back door carrying everything else in the store. Critics contend that on the one hand, corporationsengageinmuchpublicizedacts of gift-giving or school partnership, which cost the corporations relatively little (or in the case of Opus, result in considerable financial profit for the corporation), while on the other hand, they chisel away at the financial infrastructure of©Philosophy ofMusic Education Review 10, no. 2 (Fall, 2002): 72-79. Julia Eklund Koza 73 schools with unrelenting demands for special corporate tax cuts, breaks, and incentives. This practice is especially detrimental to the arts because, relegated to the feminized status of "frill," they may be among the first subjects to suffer. Tax breaks are but one example of what critics term "corporate welfare." John Hood, in Policy Review, provides a list ofincentives states use to attract and keep corporations. In addition to tax abatements and tax credits, Hood mentions land giveaways, releases from infrastructure costs, the issuanceoftax-exemptdevelopmentbonds, offers to promote products, and job training packages. These deals are unfair to existing businesses, Hood argues, especially small ones that can never hope to receive such treatment, and he concludes that there is no clear-cut evidence these forms of corporate welfare benefit state economies.2 Accordingto JayTaylor, school-business partnerships have become increasingly popular; they quadrupled between 1982 and 1992 as financially strappeddistricts found themselves "dredgingfor dollars."3 Taylor explains that "school officials... (shrink)

It was in the days when European society was in the throes of expanding industrial capitalism that Abraham Kuyper formulated his basic ideas about the pitfalls of the free enterprise system and the need for a structural make-over of society. Already two decades before his mature address of 1891 on the social question, he urged the church to concern herself seriously with the plight of the working classes. In 1874 he railed against “fictitious trade” and mere “paper assets.” In an (...) extensive commentary on his political party’s program he repeated his fundamental objection to the “fictitious expansion of capital”, calling for legislation to curb such excesses and to create a better balance in incomes between the different classes making up society. He argued for equity and justice rather than charity and philanthropy, and for wages and salaries proportional to effort, skill and education. Yet while the gap between rich and poor cried out to heaven, the first step toward solving the social question, according to the youthful Kuyper, was not to focus on the poor but to provide employment opportunities so that the able and willing working man could earn a living wage. He proposed raising import duties and protective tariffs, replacing taxes on necessaries with taxes on luxuries, abolishing government-run lotteries, and lifting the ban on organizing trade-unions. To achieve these reforms, it was essential that the lower classes be given greater representation in parliament and that selfish greed make way for neighbourly love and mutual solidarity. (shrink)

Squeezed between increasing entitlement expenditures and static or declining real revenues, state-funded urban development is increasingly perceived as an unaffordable luxury. At the same time, the power and significance of the banking sector is giving way to new kinds of financial institutions that have little or no interest in community development. Not surprisingly, it is often argued that pension funds ought to be more sensitive to community needs. However, some analysts argue that pension funds are properly only the agents (...) of plan beneficiaries; any investment that took into account community needs would be, in effect, an unjustified tax on individuals' future welfare. Furthermore, analysts are very doubtful about the integrity of public pension plan investment decision-making. In this paper, I set out a morally informed justification of public pension plan investment in community development. In doing so, I develop a model of community development that stresses the reciprocal nature of the obligations embedded in the relationship between the community and pension plan beneficiaries. This approach also has significant implications for a wide variety of private sponsored plans. The paper begins with an assessment of pension fund decision-making and the practices of the investment management industry, drawing upon related research on pension fund capitalism. It goes on to issues of social obligation, referencing recent research on the nature of social contracts. To give the analysis empirical relevance I refer to the much disputed decision of the West Virginia legislature to require their public pension funds' Investment Management Board to invest in the state government's corrections authority. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Political Economy and Classical AntiquityNeville MorleyThe literature of the ancients, their legislation, their public treaties, and their administration of the conquered provinces, all proclaim their utter ignorance of the nature and origin of wealth, of the manner in which it is distributed, and of the effects of its consumption.... The steadily increasing progress of different branches of industry, the advancement of the sciences, whose influence upon wealth we shall (...) have occasion hereafter to notice, and the direction of public opinion, at length estimating national prosperity as being of some importance, caused the science of political economy to enter into the contemplation of a great number of writers.J.-B. Say 1I. The science of political economy offered an entirely new way of understanding human society. 2 Say’s account of its emergence is teleological and self-serving, figuring his own work as the logical culmination of earlier enquiries, but it accurately reflects the way in which political economy was perceived and presented as a modern innovation. The more that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political economists turned their attention towards the economic rather than the political state of the nation, the more they became aware of their own originality in doing so. The writings of the ancients might still dominate discussions of political theory, but the moderns noted with satisfaction the failings and fumblings of classical authors in the study of the economy; they alone had discerned its significance and developed the tools with which to [End Page 95] analyze it. Moreover, there was no obvious reason why this new science should confine its attentions to the contemporary world; the economies of the past could be studied in the same manner, and thus political economy offered the possibility of understanding ancient society better than the ancients did themselves.Students of ancient society were slow to respond to this challenge. Neither Edward Gibbon nor George Grote had much to say about the ancient economy, despite their close relationships with economists of the Scottish Enlightenment and the Philosophic Radicals respectively. Gibbon was well aware of contemporary debates on luxury (see below), and he also disputed Montesquieu’s theory that taxes decrease according to the level of despotism in a state, but that was all. 3 A letter written by Grote’s wife suggests that his chapter on Greek colonization was intended to infuse useful doctrines on political economy and the principle of population, but in the published version this intent is limited to vague statements about the importance of agriculture in sustaining a colony. 4 Grote’s advocacy of comparative history—“not omitting the points of resemblance as well as of contrast with the better-known forms of modern society”—was in practice limited to politics and the history of ideas, above all in the debate on the merits of democracy. 5 The sole exception was a comparison of Solon’s legislation restricting Athenian exports with the British Corn Laws, to the advantage of the former. 6With the lone exception of Boeckh’s 1817 treatise on The Public Economy of Athens, the subject of the ancient economy was almost entirely ignored by historians until the middle of the nineteenth century. 7 Their own interests and those of the ancient sources on which they relied led them to conceive of history in terms of events, above all of events in the fields of politics and war. Economic matters were touched upon in their accounts of certain episodes—the reforms of Solon, for example, or the Roman agrarian laws—but never in detail or with much analytical sophistication, let alone drawing upon the theoretical insights of political economy. William Ramsay’s Manual of Roman Antiquities in 1851 devoted much more space to economic topics than had been customary, but was otherwise indistinguishable from its predecessors; the chapter on Roman agriculture was little more than a paraphrase of the writings [End Page 96] of Vergil and Varro, and his account of state revenues merely compiled information from the ancient sources as an end in itself. 8The drought was not ended until 1854, when Theodor Mommsen’s History of Rome not only devoted considerable attention to such subjects as agriculture, commerce, and... (shrink)

Taxation and government policy related to it have only episodic appearance in classical Protestant ethical sources. Of the early sixteenth century reformers, Luther gave most attention to the subject, justifying taxation in general as necessary for the just service of government to the public good and calling the princes to spend tax monies for that good rather than their own luxury. Calvin made much the same claims but called more clearly for official church scrutiny of all government than did (...) Luther. Two centuries later John Wesley criticized English tax policy, appealing to standards of economic efficiency and compassion for the poor with little reference overtly to theology. The churches of colonial and post-revolutionary America developed no systematic, theologically rooted rationale for taxation ethics, either; but official Protestant denominational concern for such ethics has grown measurably in the most recent fifteen years. After a survey of these recent national church statements, and on the basis of them and the slender Protestant heritage on this issue, we end by posing four questions which we see as worthy of much serious thinking by contemporary American Protestant ethicists and church bodies. (shrink)

Allan Hazlett challenges the philosophical assumption of the value of true belief. He critiques the view that true belief is better for us than false belief, and the view that truth is "the aim of belief". An alternative picture is provided, on which the fact that some people love truth is all there is to "the value of true belief".

Luxury is one of the main polemic targets of Baron d’Holbach. It brings one to run after imaginary needs they cannot fulfill, dooming them to live an unhappy, grim life. This critical view of luxury is no news and was shared by many others _philosophes_. In this paper, however, I argue that in d’Holbach’s account, luxury is more than an economically and morally disruptive force. It is also a tool to reinforce oppressive power. First, I reconstruct d’Holbach’s (...) well-known account of luxury contained in his _Politique Naturelle_. Secondly, I show that a closer reading of his later work _Morale Universelle_ discloses a new element: according to d’Holbach’s social philosophy, luxury is a mystification strategy used by tyrants to be seen as gods and consequently dominate their subjects. Finally, pivoting on the continuity between human nature and modern society in the _Système de la Nature_, I show that luxury is inscribed into a natural process. It is nothing mysterious nor supernatural. This naturalization of luxury allows people to unmask the god-like tyrant as a common human being, showing that understanding how nature works can set man free not only from religion, but also from oppressive political power. (shrink)

Antibiotic use in animal farming is one of the main drivers of antibiotic resistance both in animals and in humans. In this paper we propose that one feasible and fair way to address this problem is to tax animal products obtained with the use of antibiotics. We argue that such tax is supported both by deontological arguments, which are based on the duty individuals have to compensate society for the antibiotic resistance to which they are contributing through consumption of animal (...) products obtained with the use of antibiotics; and a cost-benefit analysis of taxing such animal products and of using revenue from the tax to fund alternatives to use of antibiotics in animal farming. Finally, we argue that such a tax would be fair because individuals who consume animal products obtained with the use of antibiotics can be held morally responsible, i.e. blameworthy, for their contribution to antibiotic resistance, in spite of the fact that each individual contribution is imperceptible. (shrink)

Ideal carbon tax policy is internationally coordinated, fully internalizes externalities, redistributes revenues to those harmed, and is politically acceptable, generating predictable market signals. Since nonideal circumstances rarely allow all these conditions to be met, moral issues arise. This paper surveys some of the work in moral philosophy responding to several of these issues. First, it discusses the moral drivers for estimates of the social cost of carbon. Second, it explains how national self-interest can block climate action and suggests international policies—carbon (...) border tax adjustments and carbon clubs—that can help address these concerns. Third, it introduces some of the social science literature about the political acceptability of carbon taxes before addressing a couple common public concerns about carbon taxes. Finally, it introduces four carbon revenue usage options, arguing that redistributive and climate compensation measures are most morally justified. [Open access]. (shrink)

This manuscript proposes that tax avoidance can be better understood and mitigated as a sustainability problem. Tax avoidance is not just a financial problem for tax authorities, but one that erodes critical common spaces necessary for the smooth functioning of regulatory compliance, organizational integrity, and society. Defining tax avoidance as a sustainability problem offers a broader and more holistic understanding of the organizational and societal consequences of tax avoidance behavior. Sustainability is also a mature and legitimized concept that can readily (...) incorporate taxation. A variety of established sustainability metrics have the capacity to incorporate anti-tax avoidance measures or publicize firms that engage in fair tax practices. This manuscript concludes that integrating sustainability principles, in conjunction with important extant work on corporate social responsibility and taxation, can advance the goals of decreasing the occurrence and acceptability of tax avoidance. (shrink)

A major resource expanding the study of early Chinese philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, this book features the first complete English-language translation of the_ Luxuriant Gems of the "Spring and Autumn"_ (_Chunqiu fanlu_),_ _one of the key texts of early Confucianism. The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors working within an interpretive tradition that spanned (...) several generations, depicting a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius's legacy to the world. The Spring and Autumn (_Chunqiu_) is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. _The Luxuriant Gems_ follows the interpretations of the _Gongyang Commentary_, whose transmitters belonged to a tradition that sought to explicate the special language of the _Spring and Autumn_. The Gongyang masters believed that the_ Spring and Autumn_ had been written by Confucius himself, employing subtle and esoteric phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. The _Luxuriant Gems_ augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions, reflecting the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state. To elucidate the text, Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major divide their translation into eight thematic sections with extensive introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the original text and the evolving _Gongyang_ approach. (shrink)

A major resource expanding the study of early Chinese philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, this book features the first complete English-language translation of the_ Luxuriant Gems of the "Spring and Autumn"_,_ _one of the key texts of early Confucianism. The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors working within an interpretive tradition that spanned several generations, (...) depicting a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius's legacy to the world. The Spring and Autumn is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. _The Luxuriant Gems_ follows the interpretations of the _Gongyang Commentary_, whose transmitters belonged to a tradition that sought to explicate the special language of the _Spring and Autumn_. The Gongyang masters believed that the_ Spring and Autumn_ had been written by Confucius himself, employing subtle and esoteric phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. The _Luxuriant Gems_ augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions, reflecting the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state. To elucidate the text, Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major divide their translation into eight thematic sections with extensive introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the original text and the evolving _Gongyang_ approach. (shrink)

International tax competition undermines states’ capacity for redistributive taxation. It is thus problematic from the point of view of both cosmopolitan and internationalist theories of justice. This article examines the proposal of a fiscal policy constraint that prohibits tax policies if they are strategically motivated and harmful to effective fiscal self-determination internationally. I argue that we should opt for a more robust, preference-independent mechanism to prevent harmful tax competition instead. States should, as a matter of justice, accept global minimum tax (...) rates on mobile tax bases. (shrink)

Population obesity and associated morbidities pose significant public health and economic burdens in the United Kingdom, United States, and globally. As a response, public health initiatives often seek to change individuals’ unhealthy behavior, with the dual aims of improving their health and conserving health care resources. One such initiative—taxes on sugar‐sweetened beverages (SSB)—has sparked considerable ethical debate. Prominent in the debate are arguments seeking to demonstrate the supposed impermissibility of SSB taxes and similar policies on the grounds that they interfere (...) with individuals’ freedom and autonomy. Commentators have often assumed that a policy intended to restrict or change private individuals’ consumption behavior will necessarily curtail freedom and, as a corollary, will undermine individuals’ autonomy with respect to their consumption choices. Yet this assumption involves a conceptual mistake. To address the misunderstanding, it’s necessary to attend to the differences between negative liberty, freedom of options, and autonomy. Ultimately, concerns about negative liberty, freedom, and autonomy do not provide strong grounds for opposing SSB taxes. (shrink)

This chapter examines the nature and normative significance of taxation. In particular, it identifies and explores two central normative questions: (1) What tax arrangements should a state or society put into place? (2) How should a citizen or taxpayer relate to an existing system? In thinking through these and relate questions, the discussion also critically engages with the broadly Rawlsian view of taxation defended by Murphy and Nagel in The Myth of Ownership.

This study used a national sample of professionals and a questionnaire containing equitable relief vignettes to explore whether the new equitable relief subset of the revised innocent spouse rules is helpful to the IRS when making relief decisions. The study also addressed the ethical and gender issues associated with equitable relief innocent spouse cases. The results suggested that several equitable relief factors are useful as discriminators in the relief decision. The results also demonstrated that the recognition of an ethical issue (...) and perceptions of moral intensity affected the decision to grant relief in innocent spouse situations. Finally, women subjects were more ethical and more sympathetic toward the victim in an innocent spouse situation than were their male counterparts. These findings have numerous personal and societal implications for businesses, IRS agents, CPAs, and attorneys, as well as other nations wishing to reform their tax structures while assessing the tradeoff between equity and tax revenue generation. (shrink)

Building on a model of the biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers of luxury consumption, this article explores when and why luxury consumers consider ethics in their luxury consumption practices, to identify differences in their ethical and ethical luxury consumption. The variables proposed to explain these differences derive from biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers, namely, consumers’ (1) age, (2) ethicality, (3) human values, (4) motivations, and (5) assumptive world. A cluster analysis of a sample of 706 U.S. (...) adult luxury consumers reveals five segments of luxury consumers, each reflecting a specific persona, that engage in both ethical and ethical luxury consumption to varying extents. The five segments differ in the extent to which they exhibit features related to four discriminant functions (immorality, ego-orientation, and strain; altruistic-orientation; conservation, in control, and positivity; and youth and luxury savvy), which vary across the biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers. The findings thus indicate which segments of luxury consumers are most relevant for luxury firms pursuing a long-term sustainability agenda and suggest practical actions to reach those goals. (shrink)

Morality, in the context of luxury counterfeit goods, has been widely discussed in existing literature as having a strong association with decreased purchase intention. However, drawing on moral disengagement theory, we argue that individuals are motivated to justify their immoral behaviors through guilt avoidance, thus increasing counterfeit purchase intention. This research demonstrates that consumers’ desire to purchase counterfeit luxuries hinges on two types of moral reasoning strategies: moral rationalization and moral decoupling. The empirical results show that each strategy increases (...) purchase intention, but respectively through moral judgment and perceived benefit. Implications for researchers and managers are discussed. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical analysis of the use of the idea of distance in philosophical anthropology. Distance is generally presented in works of philosophical anthropology as the ideal coping strategy, which rests in turn on the thesis of the instinct deficiency of the human species. Some of the features of species life, such as its sophisticated use of symbolic forms, come to be seen as necessary parts of this general coping strategy, rather than a merely expressive outlet, incidental to (...) the ultimate goal of life preservation. The paper analyses the arguments used in support of the thesis of instinct deficiency in Hans Blumenberg and considers their implications for the status of symbolic expression in species life. It contrasts the approach this thesis involves with one that proceeds by presenting and arguing from biological evolutionary evidence. The contrast is used to examine the questions: in what sense instinct deficiency is specifically anthropological, and in what precise sense philosophical anthropology is ‘philosophical’. (shrink)

Under conditions of high capital mobility, states are pressurised into various forms of tax competition to attract or retain capital and investors. When this occurs, the capacity of domestic institutions autonomously to generate fiscal policies is constrained. What exactly, if anything, is unjust about this phenomenon? This paper argues that tax competition puts particular pressure on internationalists, who must acknowledge that its occurrence makes our obligations of global justice more demanding, and that such obligations require supranational institutions in order to (...) be discharged. However, to the extent that tax competition is unjust from an internationalist point of view, this is due to the specific harm it does to states. Thus, the paper makes three contributions to the literature: it shows that tax competition has an impact on the demandingness of internationalist obligations of justice; discharging such obligations commits internationalists to accept a higher level of supranational institutionalization than is currently acknowledged; yet both the specific content of such obligations, and the kind of supranational regulation that is needed to discharge them, differ from those which cosmopolitans support. In sum, there are some cosmopolitan bullets which internationalists must bite, and others which they should continue to resist. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the continued potency of veillance theories to traverse beyond the taxonomies of surveillance inside liberal democracies. It provides a commentary on the ability of sousveillance to destabilise and disrupt suer/violence by shifting its focus from the centre to the periphery, where Big Data surveillance is tantamount to sur/violence. In these peripheral political spaces, surveillance is not framed by concerns over privacy, democracy and civil society; rather, it is a matter of life and death, a technique of (...) both biopolitical and thanatopolitical power. I argue that the universalist, and universalizing, debates over surveillance cannot be mapped through the anxieties of privileged middle classes as they would neither transcend nor make possible alternative ways of tackling the intersection of surveillance and violence so long as they are couched in the liberal concerns for democracy. I call this phenomenon “liberal luxury,” whereby debates over surveillance have over-emphasised liberal proclivities at the expense of disengaging those peripheral populations most severely affected by sur/violence. (shrink)

Jennifer Bird-Pollan has recently argued that Nozickians are wrong to oppose the estate tax. Promising to argue from within the Nozickian framework, she presses the fundamental point that the estate tax does not violate anyone’s rights: neither the deceased nor their would-be heirs can claim a right to any holdings subject to the estate tax. This paper shows that Bird-Pollan’s discussion fails on three fronts. First, she frequently misinterprets Nozick, and thus does not defend the estate tax from a Nozickian (...) perspective. Second, even if Bird-Pollan is correct in denying that the deceased and their potential heirs have a right to the holdings in question, it does not follow that the estate tax is licit, because Nozickians can oppose it on other grounds. For example, Nozickians may hold that the enforcement of the estate tax will violate other rights people have. The government’s preemptive claims to holdings subject to estate taxes, along with the force required to enforce those claims, are unjustified. The crucial premise motivating these conclusions is the Nozickian denial that our current state possesses the authority to enforce the estate tax. This is the third front on which Bird-Pollan’s argument fails: she must show that Nozickians ought to believe government has the moral authority to enforce the estate tax, yet she makes no effort to do so. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge's Global Resources Dividend relies on a flat tax on the use of natural resources to fund the eradication of world poverty. Hillel Steiner's Global Fund taxes the full rental value of owned natural resources and distributes the proceeds equally. The paper compares the Dividend and the Fund and defends the Global Share, a novel proposal that taxes either use or ownership, does so (when possible) progressively, and distributes the revenue according to a prioritarian rather than a sufficientarian or (...) egalitarian principle. (shrink)

The techniques that some large multinational corporations use to reduce their tax liability have come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, alongside governmental investigations and international commitments aimed at curbing opportunities for tax avoidance. Although discussion of tax avoidance activities, and their regulatory responses, is often conducted with reference to moral concepts, philosophical analysis of the ethics of multinational tax avoidance remains limited. In particular, the virtue ethics tradition that emphasises the agent and the performance of specific roles has (...) not been considered in detail. This paper examines how the contemporary virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre can be applied to the issue of multinational tax avoidance, and considers the role that accountants play in these activities. It argues, firstly, that MacIntyre’s approach provides a more useful philosophical analysis of the issue and, secondly, that the main parties involved are likely to agree with the main tenets of this approach. The paper also contributes by reconceptualising, using MacIntyre’s scheme, the issue of tax avoidance in relation to Donald Cressey’s ‘fraud triangle’. (shrink)

From his close analysis of the works of the era's great philosophers, Dykstal argues that the dialogue as a literary form helped to develop, and subsequently transform, the public sphere in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England."--BOOK JACKET.

Luxury consumption has grown exponentially across the globe. This growth was fuelled more by the emerging non-Western countries such as India. Consumers in this country are more tech savvy and are a new set of individuals who are totally different from the old, conventional consumers of the Western countries. These new individuals consume luxury to develop their digital self. Unfortunately, this area is not researched in the literature. This article fills this lacuna in extant literature. To address this (...) issue, we comprehensively reviewed the current research from the area of luxury consumption, digital usage, digital self and subsequently developed a conceptual framework. This framework has three stages: individual that has interpersonal, power, symbolic and emotional needs; social dimension that is formulated and develops from the reference groups. Further, individuals develop the ‘we approach’ along with social groups. This approach is associated with strong ties, fortified nods, positive interactions and exclusivity. These elements lead to the development of digital self that provides happiness and pleasure to the individuals in terms of luxury consumption. (shrink)