Re Schliesser and Braun, Bentham on diminishing marginal utility certainly
undergirded the case for progressive taxation. This was standard canon until
Mussolini's friend Pareto persuaded many economists, more willing than
reluctant to be led, they must not make interpersonal comparisons. Smith's
French mentors like Turgot, Quesnay, and various Physiocrats sought to
remove the corvee, and many excise taxes, and shift taxes to exempt
landowners. Walras and Wicksell, among others, were like-minded. I am
surprised that Braun would doubt it. To think of Mill as an "exception" is
hard to accept, since his Principles was the major textbook for years around
the midcentury. Pitt's income taxes hardly touched common labor, since Pitt
knew there was no surplus there to tax. Smith attributed the decline of
Spain to its sales taxes - the cientos and the alcabala - while favoring a
tax on mansions as a mere "display of riches". I think that C.R. Braun is
wrong about the classical economists. A recent book on the point is Donald
Stabile, A Living Wage.

Mason Gaffney

-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Eric Schliesser
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 10:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Progressive taxation

Adam Smith supported mildly progressive taxation. Rothbard is quite critical
of Smith over this. 
I wrote about this in my PhD thesis (easily available online), where I show
that Smith can be construed as even more progressive than Rothbard thought.

Sent from Iphone
Eric Schliesser
Bof Research Professor
Philosophy and moral Sciences,
Ghent university 
Ghent, 9000, Belgium
Tel: (31)-(0)6-15005958

On 3 jun 2010, at 17:49, CARLOS RODRIGUEZ BRAUN <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Among the old fallacies that have enjoyed a renaissance with the current
economic crisis is the supposedly impeccable idea of taxing "the rich". I
think that classical economists favoured in general indirect against direct
taxes, and did not support a permanent income tax, and even less a
progressive one. Can J.S.Mill stand as an exception? Was there an economist
who supported progressive taxation in the classical period, or perhaps
before?
 
Carlos Rodríguez Braun