Hemerick

"I like to believe that history is smarter than I am." (Hemerijck, December 10, 2010)

really?!? I think path dependency is part of the answer why history errs in this case. Before individual (let alone electronic) checking and savings accounts, only an income tax was feasible to achieve some degree of progression. Individual Haig-Simons accounts were simply not available for a large share of the population. In addition, the income tax was, at that point, a powerful tool to get at the supramarginal returns of a capital-owning class. Today, the income tax, or some defunct version of it lingers on for reasons of path dependency. A PCT, indeed, cannot easily co-exist with an income tax.

"You can redistribute on the spending side. People may understand that more readily." (Hemerijck, December 10, 2010)

Redistribution on the spending side is under great fiscal constraints. Redistribution on the spending side risks causing higher structural unemployment or working poverty. Redistribution on the spending side is one, specific (minimal!) understanding of what the Welfare State should do (reduce poverty). If redistribution on the spending side is, in fact, the only thing we can do, for whichever reason (power resources, tax competition, etc.), the polity is substantially constrained in the redistributive policies it can pursue. That needs explaining. We should not naturalize it.