Tax Policy as Social Control and the Fallacy of Finite Wealth....

Too often tax policy is sold to people as, “a means to benevolent social control.” So called “sin-taxes,” are said to be deigned to limit people’s exposure to harmful vices, like smoking, excessive drinking, even sweet snacks.

Others are designed to do things like “make driving more expensive and inconvenient,” so people pollute less.

All of those ideas are too simple-minded because they (1) misunderstand the problems they intend to try to solve and (2) don’t take into account nearly enough variables.

Some even argue that “tax breaks” and “tax abatements” are “social programs” in the form of “pay offs that benefit the well-connected” and that they actually harm others who don’t get them.

That’s as short-sighted and simplistic as the idea that “there is only so much wealth to go around, so a wealthy individual creates many poor people by hoarding so much of that finite resource for themselves.” THAT could ONLY be true IF an economy was static, with a fixed amount of wealth within a closed system. BUT no economy is a closed system, every economy is an open, dynamic system, in which the more wealth one accrues, the more wealth is produced, thereby expanding the economy AND the amount of wealth available to all.

Of course tax breaks are neither social benefits (legalized bribes) nor “social programs” UNLESS government or “the people” have a right to all the proceeds produced in their communities.

They DO NOT.

There is no such “chicken or egg” argument when it comes to commerce and government.

Commerce is not only the sole purpose government came into being, but the sole purpose language was developed, as humans sought a way to communicate in order to make exchanges. Likewise, math, in fact numbers themselves were developed solely as a medium of exchange.

Governments arose out of the necessity to protect commerce from both foreign invasion and domestic strife. Certainly well-off merchants COULD provide their own security/protection, but that often led to armed conflicts over business locations and prime trading routes. Governments arose out of the desire to make commerce more orderly and less violent.

Moreover, WHAT are taxes on businesses other than de fact sales taxes?

That is indeed what they are.

Every levy heaped upon business raises the costs of production and thus the price consumers pay for those goods.

Business PAYS NO TAXES, they simply pass along ALL their costs onto their consumers, as they MUST and as they SHOULD. So, in the end, piling on taxes on businesses amounts to taxing ourselves!