Is wealth taxation a plausible reform?

Abstract: This paper cautions against rushing into the adoption of a wealth tax despite the pleas by some for such adoption on the basis of redistributing wealth. Based on judgment criteria, including administrative ease, certainty, revenue productivity, neutrality and even equity, the wealth tax, whether it he an annual tax or a one-time death tax, fails on all counts. Like the income tax which was initially imposed only on high incomes, the wealth tax would eventually be shifted to middle and lower income groups because they have fewer techniques by which to avoid the tax and that is also the only way the tax would pay for itself. The wealth tax has justifiably been labelled a “voluntary tax.” As with all taxes, Canada runs a risk in being different from close-by countries in that capital needed to develop the economy and provide employment may be driven out of the country. Before even considering a wealth tax, it might he instructive to look at why Canada abandoned inheritance taxes in the early 1970s and why Great Britain and Ireland abandoned annual wealth taxes after only a few years of imposition. Sommaire: Cette étude signale les dangers qu'il y aurait à opter trop rapidement pour I'impôt sur la fortune, même si certains réclament cette mesure au nom d'une redistribution de la richesse. Quand on examine les critères de jugement et, notamment, la facilité administrative, la certitude, la productivité de revenu, la neutralité et même I'équité., I'on constate que I'impôt sur la fortune est un échec sur toils les plans - qu'il s'agisse d'un impôt annuel ou d'un impôt unique faisant suite à un décès. De mμ que l'impôt siir le revenu, perçu à l'origine uniquement sur les hauts revenus, tin impôt sur la fortune arriverait éventuellement à frapper les contribuables à revenu moyen ou faihle. En effet, ceux-ci disposent de moins de moyens pour s'en protéger et c'est uniquement de cette façon que ce nouvel impôt ferait rentrer des fonds. L'on a qualifié, avec raison, I'impBt siir la fortune de «volontaire». De même qu'avec tous les autres impôts, le Canada court un risque en optant pour une voie différente de celle des pays avoisinants, car les capitaux nécessaires â I'essor de I'économie et à la création d'emplois pourraient alors sortir du pays. Mais, avant même d'envisager tin impôt sur la fortune, il serait peut-être hon dr comprendre pourquoi le Canada a ahandonné les impôts siir la succession ilu début des années soixante-dix et pourquoi la Grande-Bretagne et I'Irlande ont renoncé aux impôts annuels sur la fortune quelques années seulement après les avoir créé5.     

Environmental mediation: An alternative approach to policy stalemates

Environmental mediation is a new and innovative attempt to overcome the policy stalemates that frequently hinder effective environmental policymaking. It brings together environmentalists, business groups, government officials, and a neutral mediator in an attempt to negotiate a binding settlement to a specific controversy. This essay describes this approach, discusses its advantages over more traditional dispute resolution processes, and explains how it is able to produce acceptable agreements in such a difficult policy area.     

Capital mobility and the possibilities for international policy coordination

When capital is internationally mobile, small differences in macroeconomic policies generate massive payments imbalances that cannot be managed successfully with the policy tools used during the Bretton Woods era. Monetary and fiscal policy coordination is needed to stabilize the international economy, but is difficult to achieve. This article uses insights from the theoretical literature on international cooperation to account for characteristics of policy coordination in recent years. Examination of the strategic situation helps to explain why governments have rejected proposals for a rules-based regime (e.g., strict multilateral surveillance using quantitative indicators) yet have coordinated policy adjustments on an ad hoc basis in response to crises. A solution to the strategic problem — in which there is one mutually adverse outcome (no adjustment by any government) and a number of Pareto-optimal outcomes preferred by different governments — depends on the exercise of power. Consideration of theories about hegemony and cooperation suggests that the U.S. continues to act as a hegemon in this area, albeit of the coercive rather than benevolent sort. International theories of cooperation, however, neglect the domestic policy making practices and institutions that pose the central problems for international policy coordination.     

Voluntary purchase of public goods

This paper examines the application of Buchanan's ‘independent adjustment’ model of public good provision to individual donations to voluntary or non-profit organizations. An individual's donation function is a simple transformation of the Marshallian demand function; consequently donation functions ‘reveal,’ in principle, preferences for public goods. The existence of a tax-subsidy system sustaining a Pareto optimal level of provision is demonstrated, and the relationship to the existing subsidy scheme in the U.S. is examined. Finally, two implications of the model suggest that it is not appropriate as a representation of actual donor behavior.     

Why policy analysis and ethics are incompatible

Commentators in the field of policy analysis have argued persuasively for the inclusion of ethical evaluations in the analytic process, yet most practitioners in the policy field avoid analyzing moral issues. Standard explanations for this neglect of ethics tend to be inadequate; assertions that normative analysis is unnecessary, impractical, impossible, or undesirable are demonstrably weak. Political factors, on the other hand, provide a clearer understanding of the neglect of ethics. Ethical inquiry is shunned because it frequently threatens the professional and political interests of both analysts and policymakers. The administrator, the legislator, the bureaucracy, and the profession of policy analysis itself all resist the potential challenges of moral evaluation.     

Police stress: A conceptual overview

Over the past decade, a sizeable body of literature has developed that examines police stress from a variety of perspectives. The vast majority of the literature is anecdotal in nature and that which is based on research is often inconsistent. As used in the literature, the term stress has widely differing meanings and its measurement has ranged from the artful to the sublime. But of greater importance than the measurement issue is the necessary complexity of any model that attempts to deal with the interrelationships thought to exist between stress and other factors.The variety and complexity of individual differences and the interplay between environmental conditions and the person's unique perception of both objective and subjective situations obscures any simple relationships.The purpose of this note is to examine the nature of stress, its sources and consequences among police, and to identify gaps in the conceptual model within which police stress is normally viewed.