The Myth of Ownership
Subtitle: Taxes and Justice
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: April 11, 2002
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9780195150162
First sentence: It has been recognized for a long time that tax policy must take account of political morality, or justice.
Description: Taking as a guiding principle the conventional nature of private property, Murphy and Nagel show how taxes can only be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or injustice in taxation, they argue, can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular regime. Taking up ethical issues about individual liberty, interpersonal obligation, and both collective and personal responsibility, Murphy and Nagel force us to reconsider how our tax policy shapes our system of property rights. [publisher web site].