The Justification of Taxation in the Public Finance Literature: An Unorthodox View

Abstract

Public finance is the sub-discipline of economics that deals with taxes, fiscal policy and government enterprise in general. In order to assess the case in behalf of taxation commonly made in this field, I shall analyze the public finance textbooks of ATKINSON and STIGLITZ (1980), DUE [1963], MUSGRAVE (1959) and SHOUP [1969]'. I have chosen textbooks because they are a distillation of knowledge, methodology and perspective of an entire profession; they are the amalgamation of what is considered correct and important. I have chosen these four because they are a representative sample, and highly respected amongst the practitioners of economic orthodoxy in this domain.