Definitely its a tax increase, the idea is that it is only on the people too rich too care about it, or at least that their votes/voice isn’t loud enough to overcome the rest of the people who don’t care about “other people” getting taxed more.

I would like to see more information supporting this assertion. Perhaps it is one of the earlier section, which I’ve not read. I am very familiar with common assertion that something like the top 5% paying close to 50% of the taxes, but I have not heard that put in context of income taxes versus social insurance taxes.

Everyone pays a flat social insurance tax on income up to $100K, I think its 15.2%. So if you have someone with a $100K income pays the same as someone making $500K. However the person making $100K is in a lower tax bracket than the person making $500K and therefore pays less taxes. I would need to see more information before I believe that the majority of incomes taxes are not paid by the wealthiest 2-3%.

It also strikes me that abolishing the current Social Security/Medicare flat tax system in favor of “progressive” tax that would apply to all levels of income, would result in a massive tax increase. Forgive me if I don’t jump on board that bandwagon.

I’ll admit to being no tax expert or an economist, so much of the discussion about taxation may be lost on me. But when I read eliminating the income cap for Social Security/Medicare tax and making it “progressive” I read tax increase, and money being pulled out of the economy. What am I misunderstanding?

I’ve often been dismayed at the drift we are seeing in our national life. Both parties are moving toward a corporate/state economic model that is leaving the rest of us, who aren’t a Wall Street bank, far behind. And though the prospects for changing our economic model is slim, we should try anyway and start by supporting truly local businesses.

My only criticism is to change the name from Distributism to Democratic Capitalism. The former is clunky sounding and isn’t very self defining.

I also don’t follow that the “rich” only “claim” to pay the majority of the income tax. If there weren’t the upper cap on the social security tax, they’d be paying more than what they do now. I originally thought your claim about leaving taxes to their descendants interesting, but then again, it’s not like they leave their descendants with less money than before the rich guy died. (unless you count people spending the new money and getting into bad habits that they can’t afford on an on-going basis).

“We cannot use the “starve the beast” strategy that has characterized Republican Party policy” – I’ve gathered from folks that “even” the Republican party doesn’t really believe in starving the beast, which is probably what you are referring to. How about a “starve the beast” campaign, along with no deficits allowed, and make folks go through the budget to get rid of the excess. It is probably a hard problem, with people getting mad all over the place, since they’ll have to lose the “pork” everywhere. Moving from NH to PA with the corresponding increase in taxes and waste, it is easy to see how different governments can spend money differently. We need to get the federal government to take a look at NH and fix the federal spending.

Thought provoking. How does one go about buying your book?

Americans do not recognize that slavery can be an economic term, and that it was the dominant economic engine for much of human history.

Our slavery, like everything we do, was a beacon to the rest of the world; therefore slavery *is* racial bondage/exploitation.

I suppose it is why Belloc often defaulted to Servile, since it captures the essence of the thought without the baggage.

Is recapturing the term “slavery” really an important distributist project?

If so, more work is needed to (re-)define slavery in this context.

MZ, Mercantilism is about neither protectionism nor free trade; it is about enriching the merchants, whose wealth is then supposed to trickle down to the hoi polloi. When they need protection, it is protectionist, and when they have established a dominant position in manufacturing, they are for free trade. It really isn’t an economic theory about goods and money, but a political theory about power. It has but one principle, “The house always wins.”

Of course, land values will vary with population and demand. I take the example you give in the opposite way, that the land value is a proxy for wealth.

Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions. I think the line about slavery is important, because it is a real possibility. It may not look like slavery, and it may be a very comfortable slavery, but it would be slavery nevertheless.

The new age Freeman may be free in many ways but as ole Ed Abbey asserted….”We may be the most pampered and indulged slaves in all history but we are slaves nonetheless”…or words to that effect.

Not to revisit the Georgist discussion we have several moons ago, but it seems industrialism has rendered land a poor proxy for taxing wealth. When GM occupied its factory in Janesville, WI, the value of that land and the land around it was significantly higher than today where manufacturing has ceased. The value of the enterprise simply had no intrinsic relationship to the land. If it were to have such a relationship, we would expect there to be stability in price. My conclusion would be that a VAT has the best and most equitable capture of this value at this point. I do happen to be a proponent of land taxes though.

I just recently began devouring FPR looking for insight on a move toward an ownership mentality in America. I’m tired of playing Damocles, and though we’ve been at it so long we’ve stopped caring about the sword dangling overhead, the events of recent are long in arriving but hopefully many more are ready to move forward with real change.

Also, I second Zac’s proposed edit of your penultimate line, however, I would not eliminate it. Prehaps, edit it to reflect the cohesion that distributism brings to the questions of labor, land and wealth contrary to the disperate positioning of wealth and labor as servile/slavery, which capitalism and socialism have resulted in.

Thank you for this fine work.

Though, you might want to ditch that second-to-last sentence…

But, to be sure, your work will likely remain in the realm of the theoretical because the Trickle Down Bailout of the current regime is thoroughly skewed toward maintaining the current system until such time as it sputters itself out because it has abandoned gravity as a fact of life. Governments are generally prone to self destruction but powerful governments are prone to powerful self-destruction.

We are obviously enjoying a double header of the classic Bait and Switch genre. Starting with the dark comedy of Compassionate Conservatism, we then enjoy the farce of “Change”…..as in spare change because the other “change”…you know, where something transforms or is “made different” is AWOL.

When the green shoots one is straining to see are mold, then mold will be recast as beneficial.