Abstract
As a former expert on China, I know that the rectification of terms is a central preoccupation of Confucian scholars. Therefore, I believe the best way to begin this chapter is with a brief discussion of the meaning of both tax reform and rent seeking. I repeat my earlier definition of rent seeking: the use of resources for the purpose of obtaining rents for people where the rents themselves come from something that has negative social value.
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Notes
A distant relative of mine who was a scientist specializing in brewing techniques once spent a great deal of time and energy developing something that tasted like wine but technically was beer. The advantage was, of course, in the tax.
If the money is spent on genuine public goods, the result of the whole package may be to increase such incentives.
The Egg Board is self-supporting, but the amounts that it now charges the egg producers could be retained for some other purpose while the board itself is terminated.
This citation is now lost. For anyone who wants to try to find it, I do remember that it was on the first page.
Journal of Political Economy,Vol. LXVII (Dec. 1959), pp. 571–579.
With James Buchanan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962).
The figures are reproduced in my Economics of Income Redistribution (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983), p. 94.
Stanley Lebergott, The American Economy ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976 ), p. 57.
Professor Dales’ tradeable pollution rights on the whole have less susceptibility to rent-seeking activity than pollution taxes.
Currently, a variant of this is in use in the Senate. Proposals for additional expenditure must be accompanied either by a proposed tax or a proposed expenditure cut somewhere else.
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© 1989 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Tullock, G. (1989). Rent Seeking and Tax Reform. In: The Economics of Special Privilege and Rent Seeking. Studies in Public Choice, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7813-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7813-4_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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