Let's go back to basics and look at the way the 'government' raised money in Anglo-Saxon and early Mediaeval times. Broadly speaking, it was accepted that land was held by 'The King' on behalf of 'The People'. So people (to the extent that they weren't serfs or slaves, of course) paid market rents for exclusive possession of the bit that they wanted to farm to the local squire, wealth trickled up through various feudal levels, all the way to The King etc.
There was very little in the way of 'taxes', in the sense of payment for nothing in return, and because having to pay market rent does not depress economic activity, everything hummed along smoothly (apart from the frequent invasions, of course):
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A grim document
6 minutes ago
5 comments:
Tithes?
That's tomorrow.
Far too simple, where'd I get me tax credits?
I reckon what we have today is 'new feudalism'. The State is the King. The banks are the lords of the manor. We are the serfs and the villeins. We are in thrall to the banks through debt which permits the employers to enslave us in work. Home owning limits our ability to move to abitrage our labour just as surely as the feudal laws tied us to the manorial lords. This all suits the State as it is then able to operate a confiscatory tax regime.
The method of enslavement is debt, rather than coercion, but it works just as well.
I don't think this is deliberate policy, it has just grown up through a series of individual moves.
Perhaps I can save you time with a precis from Richard Cobden during the debates on the Corn Laws:
"For a period of one hundred fifty years after the [Norman] Conquest, the whole of the revenue of the country was derived from the land. During the next one hundred and fifty years it yielded nineteen-twentieths of the revenue. For the next century down to the reign of Richard III it was nine-tenths. During the next seventy years to the time of Mary it fell to about three-fourths. From this time to the end of the Commonwealth, land appeared to have yielded one half of the revenue. Down to the reign of Anne it was one-fourth. In the reign of George III it was one-sixth. For the first thirty years of his reign the land yielded one-seventh of the revenue. From 1793 to 1816 (during the period of the land tax), land contributed one-ninth, from which time to the present [1845] one-twenty-fifth only has been derived from the land. ...Thus, the land which anciently paid the whole of taxation paid now only a fraction. ...The people had fared better under the despotic monarchs than when the power of the state had fallen into the hands of a landed oligarchy who had first exempted themselves from taxation, and next claimed compensation for themselves by a corn law for their heavy and peculiar burdens. "
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