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Saturday, December 09, 2006

A pro-Pigouvian anarchist!

It seems even anarchists accept that Pigouvian taxes are superior. Or at least hard-core libertarians can accept this, as Kitchen Linker is not certain that Degrees of Freedom is an anarchist, though the probability is high given DoF linkage. After a list of moralistic reasons taxes in general are bad, DoF says:
If a tax on gasoline could be implemented as a dollar-for-dollar replacement for the tax on capital gains, even I would be in favor of that.
DoF doesn't think a tax shift is possible because politicians like to spend, but then no tax reduction would be possible ever, and obviously taxes have been cut at various times. The important thing though is that a NoPigou type has admitted that Pigouvian taxes are superior!

Should other anarchists reconsider? And if anarchists, the only group that can logically oppose Pigouvian taxes, then everyone else should join the Pigou Club, pronto!

6 comments:

Francis St-Pierre said...

Nice selective quoting. The article is about arguments against pigovian taxes...

Although I have to agree it makes for a good headline. :)

Kitchen Linker said...

Hardly, the article was against taxes, and inserted pigovian in a few places.

The quote Kitchen Linker excerpted was the only interesting one (in other worlds, the only one that could not be extracted from any anti-taxation article) -- the admission that pigovian taxes are less bad -- that is preferable to -- other taxes.

James said...

I also think that indecent assault is less bad than rape and would consider it favorable if every rape were replaced with a mere indecent assault. Would you claim that this makes me pro-indecent assault?

Kitchen Linker said...

James, you are pro-indecent assault -- relative to rape.

Let's say in some locality there are 100 rapes a year. Some policy change can ensure that those rapes do not occur, but 100 indecent assaults will occur. You have three options:

a) status quo, 100 rapes

b) no rapes, 100 indecent assaults

c) status quo, 100 rapes, but let it be known that James opposes rape and indecent assault!

Which do you choose?

James said...

Your list of choices is incomplete. Which do you prefer:

a) Fallacies of neglected alternatives.

b) All of the above.

Kitchen Linker said...

james, which alternative(s) did kitchen linker miss?