Wednesday, August 17, 2005
No taxation debate without correct information
From the RoundTable blog
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Michael Renardy
Renardy lives in Blacksburg.
I was amused by Paul Zweifel's letter ("Attribute carefully famous quotations," July 21), in which he correctly criticizes former Gov. George Allen for misattributing the slogan "no taxation without representation" to Patrick Henry rather than James Otis.
In reference to Allen's original statement (which refers to getting permission to change the slogan to "no taxation without respiration"), I am tempted to add that neither the descendants of Otis nor those of Henry would have been able to inherit any copyright claims, either with or without payment of inheritance taxes on such claims.
But if we are going to be accurate about history, we might as well get serious about it. Zweifel states, without specifics or sources, that the rise of the Mafia in Sicily was linked to a concentration of land ownership resulting from the lack of inheritance taxes.
I tried to research this claim, and I did indeed find scholars making a connection between the rise of the Mafia and changes in land ownership. The nature of this connection, however, is almost opposite to Zweifel's claim.
Prior to 1812, Sicily was under a feudal system that concentrated land ownership in the hands of the aristocracy and the church. The abolition of feudalism in 1812 brought reforms that allowed land to be traded and thus made it available to a larger segment of society.
Far from a concentration of land ownership, the number of land owners increased substantially. For instance, Alexandra and Lee Benham ("Property Rights in Transition Economies: A Commentary on What Economists Know," books.nap.edu/html/transform/ch1.htm) state that the number of large land owners increased tenfold between 1812 and 1860.
The same article cites the opinion of University of Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta, who sees the Mafia rising as an alternative "protection" when conflicts arising from changes in land ownership met with ineffective government. Gambetta even argues that the Mafia acquired less influence in eastern Sicily, where the original owners tended to hold on to their land, than in western Sicily, where they did not.
I do not favor the abolition of inheritance taxes. But neither do I favor rewriting history in the service of arguing against their abolition. I have no intention of asking either Zweifel or his descendants for permission to paraphrase his letter.
I think it is futile to expect a person to have any knowledge of history if he thinks that "the masque style of entertainment [in 17th-century England] ... had died out with the restoration." (Program notes for Acis and Galatea, available from www.pzweifel.com).
It was the Puritans who closed the theaters, not the Royalists.
