>"If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and
>branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the
>whole amount of taxes which goes into them.
I beg to differ Karl, with all due respect it needs to be pointed out that this is only so to the extent that the tax revenue is wasted. Tax revenue which goes to provide socially necessary services, such as pensions, health care and the like must reduce the costs which workers would otherwise need to have higher wages to pay for. Given that such services may be provided more efficiently than if they were provided by the market, it may be that some tax cuts might actually force in even higher real wages.
Obviously funds given to one section of the capitalist class is not socially necessary, so this doesn't apply here. It is just a gift to one section of the capitalist class by the capitalist class as a whole. Not to put too fine a point on it, extortion.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
>Either the employers' profit
>would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more
>than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place.
>Our argument is that although some taxes are paid by the working class,
>the burden of taxation rests on the capitalists and has to be paid out
>of the profit accruing to them in the form of rent, interest and profit,
>the basis of which is the unpaid labour." ("Criticism and Critical
>Morality", Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 6).
>
>
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