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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (155373)	1/30/2011 9:08:57 AM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542012

I've seen that assertion posted here before without any supporting argument Actually, Krugman also likes the idea, and he had a blog, complete with supporting paper, which we discussed here before and which you said you knew about: Message 27024374 Message 27024424 Here is what Krugman said in his blog, to remind you: "More generally, it does seem that countries with strong welfare states have less progressive tax systems than those with weak safety nets; see this, from the Luxembourg Income Study (pdf). And there’s a substantial literature suggesting that this is no accident: that in the United States, because we don’t have a national sales tax, politics ends up being about tax brackets, which in the end can’t do much to reduce inequality, while in Europe you have broad-based taxes, and politics ends up being about who gets helped, which matters much more, especially for the less fortunate. There’s even argument that American exceptionalism, our uniquely weak welfare state, reflects not so much culture and racial division as the happenstance that we don’t have national consumption taxes. All of which says that if I can trade a somewhat regressive VAT for guarantees of decent retirement and universal health care, I’ll take it."

To: JohnM who wrote (155373)	1/30/2011 1:55:56 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542012

>>I've seen that assertion posted here before without any supporting argument. I have no idea whether it's true but, just a guess, if so, it's only a part of it. The more important part would be a long tradition of a more positive attitude toward government, a longer and deeper conception of the common good, buttressed by something like a VAT.<< My first wife, who is swedish, and my current girlfriend, a Canadian, both spoke about that safety net, and the taxes that pay for it, as a part of the social contract, which pretty much everyone in those countries accepts and believes to be fair. Individuals are happy to pay for it, knowing that if they ever need it, it will be there. If they never need it, they count themselves as being lucky. Seems eminently reasonable to me.