Customer Reviews

The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice

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Nagel and Murphy have missed an important point in not recognizing that although property rights are conventional, Nozick gives a very convinving ontology of property rights that is compatible with the Lockean tradition. In other words, though property rights as they exist are conventional, they arise from the state of nature in a manner such that government enforcement is not an inherent quality of them. Hence, in arguing that individuals do not wholly own the fruits of their labor due to the fact that the possession of such fruits is enabled by government enforcement of property rights, Nagel and Murphy are clearly missing why Nozick comes to hold the entitlement view of property.

With all of this said, this is a pretty good book overall. It is one thing to disagree with the authors and their argument, it's another to outrightly discredit each of them as individuals. Previous reviewers that oversimplify what Murphy and Nagel are doing here seemingly either do not understand the complexities of these issues, or do not have the intellectual honesty and/or curiosity to consider something that is prima facie opposed to their opinion. To question the academic credibility of the authors is simply ignorant, as both are highly reputable and regarded, and to assert that the authors "seem unaware of the Lockean tradition" is dubious, since Locke is clearly mentioned and farily represented in the book.

The main thrust of Murphy & Nagel's claim is that pre-tax income cannot be a moral base for the measurement of the fairness of taxation. Their claim is that the ultimate social justice of the entire economic system is the only proper end, of which taxation is a part, thus taxation and the equity thereof cannot be measured in a vaccum, rather only against the resulting end.

It would seem however that Murphy & Nagel make their claim too strong in that they claim that pre-tax income (and vertical equity) cannot be utilized as even a factor in the measurement. Unfortunately for their theory, pre-tax income is a fact of the market economy and the positive law surrounding such economy. Thus, if we are to ignore everyone's pre-tax income, the only possible result is that all after-tax income must come out equal. To claim any other result must come through the application of a judgment as to vertical equity.

It would seem that their claim would be far more sound if it were limited to saying that vertical equity may only be utilized as a means to achievement of the end of social justice. Murphy & Nagel, however, want to make their claim stronger so as to be able to discount the tax equity argument entirely. Ultimately such an argument must fail due to the reality of pre-tax income, but it is still a very interesting and well written book.

Nagel thinks that private property and incomes proceed from a system of justice necessarily supported by taxes, and as such justice is prior to private property. That argument would make sense if a coherent system of justice could be devised to match it. As it stands, Nagel only has moral theories, and everybody has one of those.

Nagel tells us we cannot appeal to private property in order to justify the current distribution within society, because it is private property itself is that which needs distributing. Basically Nagel is opting for a collectivist (moralist) starting point in which every person must justify their holdings to Nagel's morality. The obvious alternative, Lockean rights theory, is dismissed on the grounds that "there are no property rights antecedent to the tax structure."

Of course Nagel can define property rights how he wishes, but there have been plenty of instances of property rights (as most people understand them) in the absence of tax structures.

The short version of this dopey book is this: Without Uncle Sam to protect your stuff you'd probably get mugged without hope of getting it back. Therefore you dont actually own it. I think most mafia dons think along these lines.
In another context, the money sitting in your banks safe doesn't actually belong to you. It belongs to the security guard who keeps it from getting stolen.
John Locke is spinning in his grave. The Sophists are laughing their butts off.

I was very disappointed and wrote to the authors without reply (to date). They seem unaware of the Lockean tradition and its handling by writers such as Henry George (who wrote far more clearly than they over 100 years ago).

The entitlements approach to justice is more in tune with the common law and history than the idea of collectivist "creation" of "rights", "offences" or "social mortgages".

As Pitt the Elder observed, taxation and the common law are strangers (which is why taxation statutes reeived a strict construction against the Crown).

I could go on but why? If this sort of stuff gets published I should have a go myself!

...I would have.

The basic idea in this book is that you and I don't own the fruits of our work. Because the Gvt provides us with the infrastructure needed to perform our work (laws), they really own whatever we produce. In short, we should be thankful that they only tax us so little because they could just as well take everything - they own it.

Well....

Most of the taxes we pay do *not* provide for the enforcement of laws, national defense, etc. Instead, they are served to pay others, less productive or more needy. Apart from whether this is fair / just, it's very clear to me that the benefit the tax payers get from having their money redistributed to other parts of the population is about nill.

In addition, even when the money is indeed used to pay for services that tax payers benefit from, those services are typically of appealling level of quality. See how much better public education, USPS, and Amtrak has become as taxes were raised for the last 50 years as an example. Every economist knows that public services always perform worse than the private sector, that is: payers pay more, and get less.

In short, I can only see 2 goals for the authors of this book. One, they actually believe in what they write, and that makes them a pretty good fit for the technical definition of socialist. Two, they don't actually believe in what they write, but they couldn't get the attention they need as academics by pure good work. They had to write something controversial to attract attention. Pityful.