Medieval Keynesianism

[Retrolives]

I’m currently reading “For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilisation” by Charles Adams and I came across a fascinating description of tax theory during the time of Louis 16th in France. I quote:

Economists in the ancien régime believed that the best medicine to cure poverty was heavy taxation. Indeed, the poorer a region was the heavier it should be taxed. Increased taxation, said these experts, would increase productivity and benefit everyone; consequently, taxes were the appropriate tool to combat poverty.

The poor were like grass– the more they were cut down, the stronger they would become.

Adams is definitely not a libertarian but here he lays out the retarded philosophy that has plagued man since time immemorial, that taxes are a good thing.

Incidentally, the only way to avoid taxes was to become a nobleman by issue of the King or work for the State. Noblemen despised work, as all good aristocrats do. I find this outlook on life compelling when one considers the lens from which Marx, the wealthy landed aristocrat, looked at the world and how much he despised and refused to work for a living, thinking it was beneath him. As has been pointed out before, the intellectuals of today have a lot in common with the aristocracy of 300 years ago: they love the State for the privileges it grants them but they also despise work.




I’ll revisit this in another post once I’ve finished the book but Adams demonstrates how the feudal system resulted from the savage taxation from Emperor Commodus to the collapse of Rome in which farmers preferred to become chattel slaves to the local biggest landowner (who was normally exempt from tax and was granted his land as a political favour) than actually pay the taxes and starve. Parents used to sell their children as slaves just to pay the tax collectors.

Cross posted at the Irish Liberty Forum:
Medieval Keynesianism Irish Liberty Forum

[cactusflower]

I find this outlook on life compelling when one considers the lens from which Marx, the wealthy landed aristocrat, looked at the world and how much he despised and refused to work for a living

This is such codology that I can't be bothered to read the rest of your post.

[liamfoley]

Did clergy pay taxes at that time in France?

[Retrolives]

This is such codology that I can't be bothered to read the rest of your post.

Profound, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings.

Did clergy pay taxes at that time in France?

Hi Liam, no the Clergy didn't pay taxes. In fact, it was very rarely that the State religion anywhere ever paid taxes. The rulers needed to have these public figures to act as "intellectual bodyguards of the State" so that the pitiful masses would not revolt. Even in ancient Egypt the priests didn't pay taxes and they were the largest landowner after the Pharaoh.

[Monkey-Magic]

I think it's important to point out that libertarians like the OP are complete and utter charlatans. Everywhere their ideology has been implemented has been a catastrophic failure just like Chile under Pinochet or Bolivia only a few years ago. They want a world where everything is privatised whether it be schools, prisons or the police force. This is so they can create new business opportunities for their pals in big business and ensure zero taxes on themselves. They want to abolish all welfare payments and force the poor, needy and unemployed to beg for everything. Their ideology is always accompanied by huge unemployment and poverty wages for the working class while industrialists, landlords and speculators become millionaires. Libertarians are the real parasites. They want to create a society where the working class is impoverished while all the wealth they create goes to line the pockets of of capitalists, investors and speculators who never work nor pay any tax.

[cactusflower]

I always wonder how they would make a sewerage system work.

[liamfoley]

Profound.



Hi Liam, no the Clergy didn't pay taxes. In fact, it was very rarely that the State religion anywhere ever paid taxes. The rulers needed to have these public figures to act as "intellectual bodyguards of the State" so that the pitiful masses would not revolt. Even in ancient Egypt the priests didn't pay taxes and they were the largest landowner after the Pharaoh.

there was also the case that the 'higher' clergy, bishops and those who held larger churches were aristocrats, the curates were poor, never had much income to start

[cactusflower]

Profound, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings.
.

Not to worry. Evidence based stuff obviously doesn't interest you.

[Retrolives]

Hi monkey. Your straw man of Chile and Bolivia are disingenuous. The libertarian is fond of the United States from 1776 to 1913 and nowhere else in the world, because everywhere else involved "socialisation of the means of production" in one form or another. Libertarians want liberty for everyone, not equality of oppression.

Interestingly, liberty is a term taken from the ancient Greeks where a free man was one who did not pay tax while a slave was one who did. If your concept of freedom is paying tax you are Orwellian in your tongue.

[flamez911]

Keynesianism, in a sentence, is the economic philosophy that in a recession, taxes should be cut and spending risen, while in times of growth taxes should be risen and spending cut- this has the effect of reducing the effect of recessions while slowing economic growth at boom times, basically making the economy "flatter" as opposed to a cycle of huge booms followed by deep depressions. Governments who have subscribed to it have often failed to implement Keynesian policy during times of boom (which would be high taxes and low government spending, resulting in large surpluses), resulting in high inflation- as we saw in the 1970s.

This is not a failure of Keynesianism as much as it was a failure of governments to implement the correct policy.

It certainly is not socialism, or social-democracy, or an endorsement of high taxes as a way of making people's lives better. Of course low taxes are nice, but government services are needed. If medieval governments had taxed their poor AND their wealthy and distributed some of their wealthy's income to the poor as welfare, then the poor would have been far better off than had the government let them farm their tiny patch of land without any taxes.