Enslaving the Beachcomber: Some Thoughts on the Liberty Objections to Endowment Taxation

Conventional wisdom among contemporary liberal egalitarians is that taxing individuals according to their “endowment” or “earnings capacity” would constitute an unacceptable intrusion on basic human liberties. In effect, the argument goes, such a scheme would result in a type of slavery - in order to pay the tax, people would be forced to accept jobs commensurate with their identified levels of endowment. The most succinct formulation of this argument comes from John Rawls, who argued that an endowment tax “would force the more able into those occupations in which earnings were high enough for them to pay off the tax; it would interfere with their liberty to conduct their life within the scope of the principles of justice…”This Article examines the Rawlsian objection to endowment taxes and considers whether it can be distinguished from the libertarian claim, advanced most famously by Robert Nozick, that taxation of earnings is unjust because it is “on a par with forced labor.” The Article’s principal claim is that unless one assigns greater moral value to non-market activities than to market activities (a position arguably in tension with the liberal principle of neutrality as between alternative visions of the good life), there is no difference in kind or in degree between the interference with liberty occasioned by the two types of taxes. It follows from this analysis that if one accepts Rawls’s argument regarding endowment taxes, one must also accept Nozick's argument regarding wage taxes. If correct, this conclusion presents the liberal egalitarian with a dilemma: she must either (1) embrace endowment taxes as a moral ideal, rejecting the liberty concerns expressed by Rawls and others, or (2) join Nozick in renouncing the ordinary taxation of earnings, a move that would substantially weaken her commitment to egalitarian outcomes.The purpose of the Article is not to offer any particular resolution of this dilemma, but rather to expose some of the tensions inherent in the liberal egalitarian framework and to suggest that consideration of these tensions is necessary to the development of a more satisfactory liberal egalitarian position on questions of taxation and distributive justice. Toward that end, an alternative framework is suggested for assessing the liberty cost of taxation. It is contended that all taxes-whether on income, consumption, wealth, endowment or other tax bases-interfere with individuals’ pursuit of the good life. For any given level of revenue to be raised through taxation, the recognition and protection of a liberty interest in one type of activity will simply increase the liberty costs associated with unprotected activities. The liberal instinct to shield non-market activity from taxation does not reduce the liberty cost of taxation, but rather shifts it to those whose conceptions of the good life involve the use of markets. This is not to suggest that a concern for personal autonomy should not inform our choice of tax institutions, but rather that the question may ultimately be one of distribution. That is, in fashioning a tax system, how best can we allocate the benefit of being free from taxation's inevitable interference with personal autonomy?

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Keynes, Rawls, Uncertainty, and the Liberal Theory of the State

Economics and Philosophy ◽

10.1017/s0266267100001061 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 221-241 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Edward McKenna ◽

Maurice Wade ◽

Diane Zannoni

Keyword(s):

John Rawls ◽

The State ◽

Liberal Theory ◽

Robert Nozick ◽

Role Of Government ◽

Principles Of Justice ◽

The Government

What role, if any, should the government perform in a society? Two very different answers to this question have been provided by John Rawls and Robert Nozick. For Rawls, the government plays an important role in ensuring that the principles of justice are realized in the workings of society. For Nozick (1974), the role of government is limited to that of providing protection. The debate over these two views has led to the questioning of the entire liberal doctrine, a questioning that has taken place not only within intellectual circles, but also within the society at large.

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Part I, 3 Liberal Perspectives

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199606474.003.0003 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Ahdar Rex ◽

Leigh Ian

Keyword(s):

John Rawls ◽

Liberal Democracy ◽

Public Reason ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

Good Life ◽

Faith Communities ◽

The Good Life ◽

Faith Based ◽

State Neutrality ◽

Litmus Test

This chapter discusses liberal political thought and its understanding and treatment of religion. Section II begins by briefly outlining the nature and character of liberalism. The premise is that liberalism is the principal philosophical foundation for law in modern liberal democracy. Our contemporary notions of ‘religious freedom’ are ones that have been indubitably shaped by liberal attitudes to religion, faith communities, and the call of conscience. The chapter then turns to the liberal claim of neutrality between competing conceptions of the good life. Is liberalism as impartial as it purports to be? What does state neutrality towards religion in practice actually require? This chapter also examines the privatization of religious (and other) beliefs in a liberal polity, and considers a leading liberal litmus test for public policy — John Rawls' concept of ‘public reason’. Section III analyses the principal secular liberal justifications for religious freedom. It argues that unless we know why religious liberty is worth protecting, our ability to deal with new and increasingly insistent faith-based claims for legal recognition and protection will be hampered.

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Perpetual Struggle

Hypatia ◽

10.1111/hypa.12452 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 6-19

Author(s):

Kathryn J. Norlock

Keyword(s):

John Rawls ◽

Good Life ◽

Moral Motivation ◽

The Good Life ◽

Aldo Leopold ◽

Human Beings ◽

Human History ◽

Feminist Ethic

What if it doesn't get better? Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such heavy knowledge could include resisting evils, improving the lives of victims, and even enjoying ourselves. Better conceptions of the objects of hope, and the good life, inform a praxis‐centered, nonideal, feminist ethic, supportive of sustained moral motivation, resilience, and even cheer. I connect elements of stoic and pessimistic philosophy in order to outline some normative recommendations for living with evils. A praxis‐centered ethic would helpfully adjust our expectations from changing an uncontrollable future to developing better skills for living in a world that exceeds our control. As Aldo Leopold once said, “That the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”

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Moral pluralism

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-l058-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel M. Weinstock

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Political Philosophy ◽

Practical Reason ◽

Good Life ◽

Moral Dilemmas ◽

Moral Values ◽

The Good Life ◽

Moral Pluralism ◽

Moral Value ◽

Wide Range

Moral pluralism is the view that moral values, norms, ideals, duties and virtues are irreducibly diverse: morality serves many purposes relating to a wide range of human interests, and it is therefore unlikely that a theory unified around a single moral consideration will account for all the resulting values. Unlike relativism, however, moral pluralism holds that there are rational constraints on what can count as a moral value. One possible, though not necessary, implication of moral pluralism is the existence of real moral dilemmas. Some philosophers have deemed these to be inconceivable; in fact, however, they do not constitute a serious threat to practical reason. Another possible implication of moral pluralism is the existence within a society of radically different but equally permissible moralities. This poses a challenge for political philosophy, and might justify a liberal view that particular conceptions of the good life ought not to be invoked in the formulation of public policy.

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The Perfectionisms of John Rawls

Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence ◽

10.1017/s0841820900002058 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 383-415 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Steve Sheppard

Keyword(s):

John Rawls ◽

Good Life ◽

The Good Life ◽

Original Design ◽

Liberal State ◽

Liberal Neutrality ◽

Practical Effect ◽

The Government ◽

Good And Evil

The acts of even the godsHave ends beyond their intent.John Rawls stands in a small pantheon of writers whose ideas have shaped the vocabularies of their age. Like a classical deity, his work has been invoked by disciple and dissenter alike as the essential totem of the modern liberal state. But his Promethean creation has grown independent from its original design, attaining significance not only for its initial merits but also for the competition it offers to the plan of its creator. So from the stage of Rawlsian liberal neutrality stalks the idea of legal perfectionism.Legal perfectionism is the doctrine according to which officials may adopt and enforce laws according to the officials’ understanding of a good life, with the intended practical effect that people governed by such laws will lead better lives. In other words, legal perfectionism broadly enshrines the notion, sometime unpopular among Western theorists, that the government has, or should have, the power to reflect ideas of good and evil—the content of the good life or of good projects or of excellence—in framing the laws. While related both to older ideas of human perfection and perfectibility and to perennial concepts of virtue and morality, legal perfectionism has developed a distinct, modern meaning.

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Libertarian Justice

Civitas. Studia z filozofii polityki ◽

10.35757/civ.2009.11.10 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

pp. 201-219

Author(s):

Justyna Miklaszewska ◽

Paweł Janowski

Keyword(s):

John Rawls ◽

Robert Nozick ◽

Constitutional Democracy ◽

Liberal State ◽

Theory Of Justice ◽

Theories Of Justice ◽

Principles Of Justice ◽

American Society ◽

The One ◽

The Ideal

An article describes liberal theories of justice presented by John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Both of these competing liberal theories, Rawls’s and Nozick’s, share a similar rationalist approach. Both philosophers start out with assumptions about human nature and from there proceed to deduce a theory of justice upon which they in turn base their vision of the perfect liberal State. For Rawls, this is a welfare State, whereas in Nozick’s theory it is a State which does not interfere in economics. On the one hand, a Platonic influence with a utopian mindset can certainly be detected here. On the other hand, contemporary American society is a point of reference for both theories. However, Rawls attempts to bring this perfect, universal model of the State closer to reality and to embody it in a liberal constitutional democracy in which human rights are protected (especially in his later works), whereas Nozick adheres to the general utopian formula. An examination of his theory shows that justice cannot be reconciled with the ideal of a minimal State and that attempts to apply the principles of justice actually reveal the defects of his theoretical approach.

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