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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: free trade
Message-ID: <1702@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 19:42:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1702
Posted: Mon Oct  7 19:42:24 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Oct-85 20:17:26 EDT
References: <2518@watcgl.UUCP> <13@ubc-cs.UUCP> <2530@watcgl.UUCP> <19@ubc-cs.UUCP> <2559@watcgl.UUCP> <227@uthub.UUCP>
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 27
Summary: 


>John Chapman (jchapman@watcgl) asserts:
>
>>Of course in order to
>>fairly assess the burden of tax one would also have to consider what
>>is recieved in return by society in general.
>
>This is the utter nonsense.  'received by the taxpayer', yes, but
>certainly not 'received by society in general'.
>-- 
>                    Brian Thomson,          CSRI Univ. of Toronto

It for sure isn't utter nonsense.  It may be a little subtle for some
folks (see net.politics.theory for examples), but "society" is more than
a disconnected set of taxpayers.  There are different possibilities
of benefit for society and for taxpayers (even including those who
pay zero tax among the set of "taxpayers").  Society includes organization,
and the health of society usually, but not necessarily, reflects in
the welfare of its members (much as the health of a biological body
reflects usually but not necessarily in the welfare of its constituent
parts).

-- 

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
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