TO EACH HIS OWN

By José Antonio Artusi

The anarchists said "property is theft." The anarcho-capitalists say "taxes are theft." What should we progressive liberals say?

Thomas Paine, an English Republican who participated in the French Revolution and who ended up being one of the founding fathers of the United States, in his influential work "The Rights of Man," argued that private property should be guaranteed, and in turn linked to the general welfare of society. From this perspective, we could advocate the idea that private property, acquired through honest work, is in no way theft, but neither should it be a shield for unjust enrichment at the expense of others. In "Agrarian Justice" Paine recalls something that is obvious, at the beginning of civilization the land and natural resources belonged to everyone, and at some point the appropriation by some meant the dispossession of others. That is why he proposes to compensate that original expropriation through a universal pension system that today is recognized as one of the most important antecedents of the idea of citizen income or universal basic income.

For John Stuart Mill, the great English liberal thinker of the 19th century, we can focus on the notion of "harm to others" as a guiding principle. This means that while the importance of private property is recognized, individuals also have a responsibility not to harm others through their economic actions. Thus, taxes would not necessarily be "theft" but rather a fair contribution to finance public services that benefit society as a whole.

Henry George, forgotten American economist from the end of the 19th century, proposed eliminating all taxes except one, the only one that would not be a "theft", but a legitimate recovery by the State of the fruit of collective effort, the one that taxes the income of the unimproved soil and natural resources.

Let us remember in turn that the ultraliberal Milton Friedman considered that the tax proposed by Henry George was the "least bad" and proposed an ingenious idea such as the negative income tax, which could consist of one of the simplest ways to implement an income citizen.

Citizen income is a concept that advocates providing all citizens with a regular, universal, unconditional, individual and uniform income, regardless of their economic situation or employment. This is seen as a measure to ensure a basic level of well-being and alleviate poverty. Proponents argue that the UBI empowers people by giving them a financial safety net, allowing them to make more informed decisions about their work and life. It can also promote equality of opportunity by reducing initial economic inequalities. But the central concept is that it is not a gift or a subsidy, but simply giving "to each his own", the equal participation in the rent of common goods, retaking the idea of compensation for original dispossession outlined by Thomas Paine.

How to finance a citizen income? The responses have been multiple and do not rule out the savings that would be generated by dispensing with inefficient social programs that fall into the poverty trap, but in no case can a tax reform be dispensed with that combines mechanisms such as the one proposed by Milton Friedman with the concept of deduct income from work and capital investment as much as possible and tax rents from land and natural resources.

The idea behind the land value tax, regardless of improvements or construction, is to tax the appreciation that derives from natural factors and community actions instead of individual investment and effort. It is argued that it can promote more efficient land use and discourage land speculation, as landowners would pay higher taxes if they keep land unproductive or underutilized.

The complementarity between these instruments could be approached from several perspectives:

Reduction of Inequalities: The citizen income could provide a basic income to all citizens, while the land tax could help finance this program by taxing the value of the land that is generated by the collective effort. This could contribute to reducing economic inequalities.

Incentive for Efficient Land Use: The land tax could create an incentive for landowners to use their properties more productively, since they would pay relatively higher taxes for holding unproductive land. This could promote more sustainable and efficient urban development.

Affordability of land and housing: a citizen income that was not complemented by a land value tax could generate, by promoting demand, an increase in prices, and would ultimately end up being an indirect subsidy to land owners. This was already brilliantly observed by Winston Churchill in 1909.

Sustainable Financing: The land tax could provide a stable revenue source to finance citizen income, allowing the government to sustain the program without resorting to additional taxes on labor or capital.

Tax Justice: The combination of both tools could be seen as a form of tax justice, since it would redistribute income more equitably and tax common natural resources.

Ultimately, the complementarity of these two ideas could provide a balanced approach that seeks to address both the protection of individual rights and the promotion of social justice and economic efficiency. The interplay between these two concepts is a fascinating topic that deserves further discussion and exploration.-