At least we don’t have the window tax
I came across this the other day: a description of an archaic eighteenth/nineteenth century British substitute for the income tax, which was considered an invasion of privacy and intrusion on liberty. Still is, I’d wager.
The window tax was a supposedly easier way to create a progressive tax because the richer a person was, the more windows the house owned by that person tended to have. Some very rich people practiced a sort of flamboyant conspicuous consumption in which they purposely built houses filled with lots of windows to show how much money they had.
It’s not easy creating a tax that puts the proper burden (whatever that might be) on both rich and poor, and is simple to figure and administer. We don’t seem to succeed, but the window tax clearly (pun intended) didn’t, either.
Living in a cave has its advantages.
“At least we don’t have the window tax”
It may be coming, in some form, especially with the global warming agenda, and the “cost” to heat houses with more windows. Remember, “redistribution” is now acceptable political rhetoric. Jan. 20 will mark the official beginning of the American Cultural Revolution. Just finishing up the recent book on FDR and the depression, NEW DEAL OR RAW DEAL? by Burton, I was last nite reading about FDR’s campaign against “tax avoiders”. Obama lately blathers about his affinity for everything Lincoln, but in reality he looks, acts, walks, and talks like FDR. The similarities, both in their pre-presidential histories and politics are uncanny. Obi, you did everything possible to undermine the war in Iraq, you’re no Lincoln, Bush was a Lincoln…
I can only say I believe a consumption tax is the way to go. The liberals are always going on about the rich paying more (their fair share they would say and Biden would call it patriotic) and a consumption tax would do exactly that.
Think of the billions out there being spent by people with their money offshore or made in illegal ways that would generate tax dollars. And it would actually amount to everyone getting a raise because the embedded tax in goods and services would eventually disappear in a competitive marketplace.
But let’s face it there is more likely to be a “luxury tax” with a long list of things to be included. The reason the democrats (and many republicans) will never get on board with a consumption tax is because the IRS and the tax code is their “big club to wield” – and for them it is all about power.
Dear Neo,
This window tax thing reminds me of something which was generally accepted in New Orleans but I never knew if it was true. A large number of houses didn’t have closets, or if they had them they were obviously an afterthought. I lived in the Uptown section about 3 blocks from Tulane and the closet in my shotgun was obviously not on the original plans. People had what were called “chiffarobes,” which were like a closet and a dresser combined on some stubby Queen Anne legs.
Supposedly the reason for this was that the French taxed you on the number of rooms and closets were counted as rooms. Hence – the chiffarobe!
The funny thing about the chiffarobes is that they were either maple or walnut and nicely made. We used to pass them around like party favors. Now they’re 4 figures in the antique shops.
The modern equivalent will be the car mileage tax — to punish people who have the effrontery to buy fuel-efficient cars and thereby don’t pay enough in gasoline taxes.
We are no longer citizens. We are subjects.
I recall reading that in Amsterdam there was at one time a tax on window curtains and draperies and that even today, many Dutch do not use them. I guess taxes can help establish mores about things like staring in other people’s homes.
The problem with all these taxes is that they are too easy to avoid. Sure the rich have more windows than the poor, but once you enact a window tax of, say, $50,000 a pop, the rich may decide they are better off without them too. You end up with low tax revenue and a bunch of people living in the dark.
The same criticism can and is leveled at the income tax: when you make working expensive people will work less. Intuitively, I would guess that people are a good bit more insensitive to income taxes (since most people must still work some to survive) than they are to window taxes.
Ideally, it would be great to tax something that correlates well with income but that is unchangeable by the taxed party. Some have half-seriously proposed a tax on height (taller people make more money, and height cannot be easily altered) and a tax on being a man (ditto about income, and getting a sex change purely for tax evasion purposes seems unlikely).
Well, thank goodness no one is trying to institute a window tax here–we can see right through that idea. A window tax–what a pane.
When I was in Kosovo, courtesy Uncle Sam, they would tax the houses when they were completed. So you would see large occupied houses that had no window panes or perhaps a half completed upstairs.
Here in New Hampshire the tax wasn’t on the number of windows, but on the number of panes in each window. Back in the early days it was reasoned the wealthy would pay the money for elaborate windows with numerous panes of glass for their homes. The less well off wouldn’t.
In regards to a ‘luxury’ tax, it’s been tried before and didn’t work. All it did was bankrupt a number of manufacturers of luxury items and put a number of people on the unemployment lines. The amount of tax collected was minuscule. It is a perfect example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Going off slightly on a tangent, I recall Sebastian Junger’s prose in “A Perfect Storm” describing the Crow’s Nest saloon as “boasting the largest windows, in a town where saloon windows are purposely made small so customers don’t get thrown through them.”
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They’ve been doing it for years in Europe, dane: it’s called the VAT, and like so many other things European, it’s obcene.
I particularly enjoyed your observation about b..b..billions in offshore accounts and money made in illegal ways which a consumption tax would hit. Gave me a good laugh!
I know that the width of the front of houses used to be taxed in Ohio, which casued people to react, naturally, by building tall and narrow houses. Taxes truly do change behavior along with their cousin, the subsidy.
“puts the proper burden”?
ya need to read more as to what the nature of the state is and so what the natuer of tax is, and that “puts the proper burden” is communism, and social justice.
sigh.
MIA: Marxists: Marx & Engels: Library: 1848: Manifesto of the Communist Party: Chapter 2: [German Original]
http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
we are so far down the road to serfdom its not funny.
In the middle ages, the archetypal British village owned one common field for grazing cattle. Every villager shared the common and was allowed to graze as many cattle on it as he wanted. The result was that the common was often overgrazed until it could support only a few cattle. Had each villager been encouraged to exercise a little restraint, the common would have supported far more cattle.
This “tragedy of the commons” has been repeated again and again throughout history of human affairs. … … the lack of single ownership of the commons of the fishery means that everybody shares equally in the costs of overgrazing and over fishing. But the individual who grazes one to many cows or the fisherman who catches one too many netfuls still gets the whole of the reward of that cow or netful. So he reaps the benefits privately and shares the costs publicly. It is a one way ticket to riches for the individual and a one way ticket to poverty for the village. — The Red Queen — Sex and the Evolution of human Nature — by Matt Ridley
The point here is that communism, and the transformation it brings creates the tragedy of the commons in EVERYTHING. it then bankrupts the people to subsistence, and so we are then back in the middle ages with feudal lords that own all the property in community through a leader, a few top lords, and a system of downward levels. All highly controlled, and every advance happens only through the patron system. the system is converted into a modern business structured form making it bureaucratic feudalism, but no different than the feudalism of the past where the children of the lords are lords who did not actually earn their position, but have their position through connection over merit.
we get the same inane solutions that kings and appointees came up with, with the same methods to make progress, the two casts, the one party, the heavy taxes of the peons, the different rules for the rulers, the inability of the people to make any changes, the extermination of undersireables. What part of old royal dynastic feudalism do we not get? Most of our literature makes us fantasize of being the ruling class, but the truth is that most of us are slowly being deintellectualized to the same muddy useless masses that were pets and slaves of a small ruling class. The ruse of socialism is the mechanism for transforming the state BACK to one where one person can once again actually control everything (which means they own everything).
in case no one has noticed, china just informed us its staying totalitarian, Russia just arbitrarily changed its laws back to create the same old repression of the stalin era that they now think heroically back, and the US has the most communist leader with people that don’t even know they are discussing variations of communism as parts of freedom, and a economy collapsing crisis in which the same (ie world communism) political system can be implemented under a temporary emergency act, to which we are completely and totally open to as a quiet coupe of ideology (not specific people).
Excellent posts Art, thanks for the hard work!
There are still houses in various British cities from that period with the windows clearly bricked up. People were much more likely to do that than build in extra windows, however much they wanted to show off. Paying taxes has never been a popular phenomenon. And yes, income tax is still an unwarrantable intrusion into one’s private life.
The consumption tax sounds better in theory than in fact. I have three problems with it.
1. It is a hidden tax. Much mischief can come of a tax that people do not know they are paying. It is an easier tax to increase (politically). The same problem arises with income taxes because of withholding. I am self employed and pay quarterly estimated taxes. I think everyone should do this – that way you really know what you are paying. Having some money deducted from your paycheck every week is one thing, but the amount you are paying really hits home when you have to send a check to the IRS every few months for the amount that would otherwise have been withheld.
2. It discourages consumption. Discouraging consumption reduces the flow of money through the economy and will cause more of an emphasis on saving. That may sound like a good thing, but it is not. Decreasing economic activity will slow down growth of the economy and discourage activities that cause employers to create jobs.
3. It does not tax ability to pay. A consumption tax will disproportionatly harm young people, who are buying houses, cars and college educations. People who already own their own houses and have all of their appliances and furniture need not purchase anything, but these are precisely the people who tend to have higher incomes. Under our current system, people over the age of 55 are the wealthiest age group – and yet, they get prescription drug benefits, etc. (because they vote). I have a problem with this because it makes it very difficult for young people to get ahead.
I think we should have a tax system that encourages economic activity and gives people a chance to begin accumulating wealth at a younger age, while at the same time tapping into some of the accumulated wealth that is sitting in investment funds and large properties. In any event, no tax system should deprive a person of more than about 20-25% of individual income. I currently pay closer to 45% when you consider federal, state and local taxes, and I think it is an outrage.
taxing wealth…
i guess you didnt get the different tricks in which the self appointed elected proletariat will move wealth away from everyone and into the state.
in a way, the contrived evolution they are stepping us through is more true to marx than the soviets were. but read the trajedy post and think of how punitive the state becomes in its efforts to supporess the free market, make a commons, and then become a police state as it attempts to make sure no one dips into the commons too much.
in effect, this halts the economic engine of progress completely and shifts it into the hands of people like the ones that run your local DMV, and who are appointed and dont care.
read this and find see a good example of how we are forced to move to an appointment system with no use of skills measures since using such creates a sorting by race (and other groups). so rather than be happy with the progress we make, like marx up there said, make it happen.
so the laws are interpreted in such a way that forces appointments… so you get people who cant do their jobs as the norm… we are all equal, right, and so we will be equally incompetent.
if you read the marx post you might get where they decided to invert everything.
the kicker is that marx was not that smart. he is a true believer, not a person who saw the validity of the argument (you can read that in one of the paragraphs were the last sentence in the paragraph is a blind assertion of accelerating progress (if one first can define what that is since existence is a treadmill operation from nowhere into nowhere)).
it was very smart sociopaths and power hungry people that realized that such a religious gripping story of utopia could replace religion, and create a moonie cult following out of enough people in the world to take ownership of it all (like great men in the past throughout history – the game never stops).
in other words, they could work out that it was invalid, and where it would lead, and so realized that it was a facilitator to return the norm of the world to the norm prior to this experiment which forces everyone to be with everone and no way to be special (rich and apart), where they are self sufficient and do not really need the state/rulers… invert it, and you then get us going back to ruling classes over masses replacing american classless mobile society in which the proletariat rules the rulers, where the rulers are subordinate to the masses. (sounds like they are promising what we had, no? thats the fun part of inversion!!! paint exit on the entrances, start a fire, and eveyrone runs to their death. a lot easier than convincing them to imolate themselves at your command no? but if you give the project a happy name, we wont think its the same thing. just as we dont think the soft eugenics of abortion is eugenics despite the shocking history of it!)
Art,
Presumably we agree that government is necessary. There are certain functions that can and must be performed by government and cannot be performed by the private sector. Government must be funded, so on some level, we all have to pay our “fair share.” The question, then, is how best to organize a tax system.
Let me say at the outset that I am no big government type. I think government is doing far more than it can or should do. The tax burden has become outrageous. As I mentioned before, I do not think total tax burden should exceed 20-25% of a person’s income.
I also think that the total tax burden should not fall on those who are working. The wealthiest segment of our population is those age 55 and up. As far as I am concerned, more of the tax burden should fall on them, and less should fall on those who are young, working and raising families.
If you wish to call this a wealth tax, so be it. I call it sensible. Why? Because our current tax system discourages productivity and makes it very difficult for anyone to get ahead. Those who have most need of their income are punished when they work harder to earn more. I think the system should encourage people to work harder by actually allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Again, I am not advocating confiscation of wealth. I am, however, advocating a system whereby accumulated wealth is taken into consideration in some way in determining the amount of taxation a person should pay. That is why, for example, I do not get too upset about real estate property taxes. Trapped wealth does not benefit the economy, and placing too much burden on income earners is unfair.
In short, I believe that we need a significant, across the board reduction in taxes, as well as a shift in the tax burden so that an equitable portion falls on wage earners and an equitable portion falls on property owners. It is a matter of government reducing its spending appetites (for example by eliminating or greatly reducing transfer payments) and all citizens paying an equitable share for necessary government services.
not much argyment from me ben..
we agree on the principals, but not the terms.
fair share, is the same amount from everyone if you take from people at all (originally income tax was like what you were hinting at, it was a tax on owners of companies that employed other people, not a tax on the people themselves)
now i am not pushing ron paul. i dont know enough about him or such… never claimed to on him.
but if everyone paid 10% from the poorest person, to the richest, with no exceptions games, etc… (and we didnt have sales tax, and other “revenue streams”), and then the state took what they needed for the tasks the state does (not socialism and public works), there would be enough for returns, and the returns would be equally divided too.
of course most are math illiterate, which is why the progressive tax and others are not such a hard sell.. but they are beuracratic nightmares that use up the resources wastefully before we get them back.
so the bottom makes say 1 dollar a year… even a poor person can come up with a dime…
middle say makes 40,000… so they pay 4000 a year.
a person that made 10 million would pay 100,000
now remember this is tax on people, and if you look at where money goes, most tax does not actually come from peoples incomes. corporations are another issue, and beyond the quick answer here.
[i hope i am doing ok on this. its fast and i dont really have time to lay it out better. so please forgive me ben, your post was worth a better reply than this, but i dont have the time today… sigh]
well, in my example, if you look at the math what would happen is that the big guys would get (to them) tiny returns… the middle would be untouched if they were in the mean, and the poor would get a boost…. but would still have to work..
you would get the return of the middle class… the engine of this progress, and the force that together can make slaves of rulers, rather than let the rulers make slaves of us!!! (so when they talk of free and all that stuff, they are talking about themsselves, not us… its inverted).
the middle class would be free to keep all their money… as they grew, they would get less back, but that wouldnt matter would it?
and if they got poorer… they would get a tiny boost back…
all the forces in the right place… low legal… low administration… no room for games… the poor would be lifted a bit, and the middle would be left alone.. and the wealthy would pay the most…
but no one would have to argue as to what the values were… there would be no way to pay or get all kinds of abatements and shelters and rules and such.
progressive tax hides and normalizes all this beuracracy, at the expense of our freedoms and the point of actually trying every value that they pretend would work OTHER than what would work
set it to 30%… the state cant take more than half of that… end of story.. state wants more, then state has to make everyone wealthier…
no other way… it would penalize the state for rules that hurt production… and so much more..
ah… but with marx progressive tax… we get this huge monstrosity… we get a beast so hard, we have to hire people nad have created an artificial non productive industry!!!!! (tax accountants)…
the whole thing is a waste… busy work that just inflates numbers and removes their meaning.
ah… ben…
we would have a better talk in person…
it would be interesting..
the wealth and elderly thing is wrong…but the way i detailed above does what you want, without targeting anyone…
not for you, but for others.. think carefully on the meaning of these next words.
those that make more should pay more…
but percentage wise, they do… 10% of 10 is 1, and 10% of 100 is 10..
something is wrong isnt it? there is a word missing that is implied and accepted but not included!!!
those that make more should disproportionatly more pay more…
that reflects what they mean, and is that now fair?
you are advocating wealth because your going after a pile of money someone earned and owns and has already paid taxes while earning it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
they paid there dues on that money just like the youngins coming up… not fair to go after that.
even worse, it would disproportionally favor the young politically rather than the older and more experienced… the old would be shuttled faster into the grave. after all, your going to hit their weatlh at the same time their medical costs go up!!!
[you see, my way, they are not so rich, because they dont get public till, so they NEED the wealth that they make over the years]
there is no way to create an equitable portion other than a neutral percentage… ANY attempt would get bogged down on the OTHER thing that oscialism and socialists dont understand.
VALUE….
valuation is something that is conditional… so what you think is the right amount, others wont..
in essence, the whole side thing is divisive, and thats part of its purpose…
once you say i am going to take a bit more from someone, than someone else. your going to set them at odds to each other.. the reciever will attempt to get more, the giver will attempt to hold… resources will be wasted in making a determination that could never hold still.
so these false ways of seeing equality born of socialism, that we have taken in, are destructive.
your describing at the end, each according to their abilities and each according to their needs…
the poor need more, so the rich give more..
your not going to get anything out of such a system except for eventual despotism…
its not fair to all… it makes fair seem unfair, and unfair seem fair…
inversion again.
got to go…
sorry this is all over..
wife keeps calling me to do things..
we all work in the honey do patch sometimes 🙂