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Fri Mar 31 17:19:01 2006 |
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----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
Michael Perelman wrote:
>As the author of a book on imperialism, Tony surely knows how the
introduction of the small tax sufficed to drive large numbers of people
into the labor markets in certain colonies.
There is considerable evidence on this in African history. Demand that taxes be
paid in colonial currency created a need on the part of African peoples who had
means of production and therefore were not otherwise compelled to engage in wage
labor or grow cash crops to do so. Case after case after case, taxation was key
to monetization, wage labor, cash crop production, marketization. Of course,
other methods were also used (brutal coercion, de facto slave labor, etc.), but
taxation and declaration of public receivability were key, and this has received
much less attention than it is probably due. Recent work by Wray (_Understanding
Modern Money_, e.g.) and others have revived Knapp's chartalism, which Keynes
and Lerner recognized was key to understanding State money.
Mat Forstater
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