• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Volume 21 · Number 2 · March 2020 economic econsoc.mpifg.de sociology _the european electronic newsletter 21.2 Note from the editor Content Taxing inequality and 1 Note from the editor Taxing inequality and fiscal sociology fiscal sociology by Akos Rona-Tas Akos Rona-Tas 3 Can the invisible welfare state redistribute? by Isaac William Martin 12 On the sociological approach to public finance by Sarah Quinn 15 Switzerland as a laboratory for fiscal federalism and global fiscal governance n recent years, fiscal sociology fiction. Redistribution does not by Gisela Huerlimann has grown to become one of the displace market forces but provides most vibrant subfields in eco- necessary infrastructure that en- 26 The politics of subnational taxation Inomic sociology. For a long time, ables markets to function. He dis- in comparative perspective its core topic – public finance – tinguishes between redistribution by Josh Pacewicz was considered to lie beyond the as a process and as an outcome, discipline of sociology, despite the making the important point that 36 OpEd contributions of Rudolph Gold- redistribution can be achieved in by Monica Prasad scheid, Fritz Karl Mann, and Jo- many different ways, including by seph Schumpeter, the founders the imposition of price controls or 39 Book reviews of fiscal sociology over a century regulations, without necessarily ago, who established that there is deploying policies aimed directly at Editor an essential connection between altering the distribution of in- Akos Rona-Tas, University of California, state finances and the wider social comes, as taxation does. It is even San Diego order. New fiscal sociology is re- more absurd to assume that redis- Book reviews editor claiming this connection at a time tribution necessarily increases Lisa Suckert, Max Planck Institute when the role of the state in the equality. It can cut both ways. To for the Study of Societies economy is becoming increasingly evaluate the extent and the effects Editorial board pronounced and visible. of redistribution, then, one must Patrik Aspers, University of St. Gallen; Jens Isaac Martin’s article estab- create a baseline that acts as a coun- Beckert, Max Planck Institute for the Study lishes the inseparability of the mar- terfactual basis for comparison. of Societies, Cologne; Johan Heilbron, ket and the state. He argues that the This can be constructed in many Centre de sociologie européenne, Paris; stateless, taxless market economy different ways and as such it is sub- Richard Swedberg, Cornell University, Ithaca has only ever existed as a fanciful ject to social contestation. economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter Volume 21 · Number 2 · March 2020 Note from the editor: Taxing inequality and fiscal sociology by Akos Rona-Tas 2 Sarah Quinn offers an example of how the like tax cuts, but only if they believe they will not re- state can redistribute among citizens without using sult in corresponding cuts in spending or in shifting tax policy. Her research highlights the federal credit the tax burden onto states and localities. Republicans, programs deployed as powerful tools by the US gov- by making the costs of tax cuts invisible, managed to ernment to mold the econ- omy and change financial Akos Rona-Tas is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, founding faculty outcomes. Mortgage credit of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute and Past President of the Society for the Advancement of in particular has played a Socio-Economics. He is the author of the books Plastic Money, Constructing Markets for Credit Cards central role in building the in Eight Postcommunist Countries (with Alya Guseva), and Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: American middle class, while Demise of Communism and Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary. He published articles in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, Social Science also having an enormous Research, East European Politics and Societies, Socio-Economic Review, Journal of Comparative impact on financial markets Economics, Sociological Research and Methods and in various edited volumes. His general areas of and the housing industry. interest include economic sociology, risk and uncertainty, rational choice theory, and statistical and This form of redistribution survey methodology. Currently, he is working on credit card markets and consumer credit in was politically more palat- emerging economies, risk analysis in food safety regulation, and algorithmic and human predic- able than taxes and govern- tions of the future. [email protected] ment spending. If Martin and Quinn take the nation-state as build a political platform that served them well for a their unit of inquiry, Gisela Huerlimann’s article re- while but not anymore. Now that the electoral appeal minds us that taxation has also been a global phe- of tax cuts has faded, Republicans must rely on rank nomenon. Her study of Switzerland demonstrates that racism and divisive social issues like abortion. Prasad public finance in one state is often strongly influenced suggests that Republicans must make peace with the by that of another. Huerlimann tells us how Switzer- idea of a state actively involved in the economy and land became one of the world’s principal tax havens offers them three policies that, in her view, could be and how its status evolved as a result of political pres- attractive to them because they are all aimed at sup- sures from other states that were losing income to the porting the market: investment in vocational educa- Swiss. This global aspect of taxation and public finance tion, parental leave, and a safety net for workers that is key to understanding the growing inequality in the makes moving between jobs easier. world and the escalating difficulties of nation-states in The challenges of economic inequality and the their efforts to collect revenue. growing realization that the market itself is unable to Finally, Josh Pacewicz takes us to the subnation- allocate incomes in a way that keeps capitalist econ- al levels of public finance. His article calls attention to omies humming along, that technological change taxation by municipalities and cities all over the world. displaces many workers, and that periodic economic He argues convincingly that many inequalities are meltdowns call for the state as the savior of last resort, created predominantly at this level and illustrates his are all forcing us to think hard about taxes, redistri- point with the example of the city of Chicago. Then he bution, public finance, and the role of politics in the makes the case for a comparative approach to local tax economy, be it on the subnational, national, or global regimes as developed in different countries. stage. In her OpEd, Monica Prasad explodes the myth that the American public abhors redistribution. People economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter Volume 21 · Number 2 · March 2020 3 dies are “invisible” in the sense that they often escape notice does not make them less real. Can the To call an aggregate of tax privileges an invisible welfare state, however, also seems to imply that it in- volves economic redistribution of some kind. Here, invisible some scholars have balked. Can a tax privilege redis- tribute? I shall argue that tax privileges can indeed re- distribute. To defend this view, however, it will be nec- welfare state essary to clarify the meaning of “redistribution,” and the results will prove unsettling, not only to our usual assumptions about tax policy, but also to some of our conventional scholarly assumptions about public poli- redistribute? cy, the welfare state, and economic inequality in gen- eral. When redistribution is understood properly, it refers to something fundamentally unobservable: the Isaac William Martin difference between an observed distribution of re- sources and another, counterfactual distribution of re- sources that would obtain in a different state of the world. In this sense, every welfare state is an invisible welfare state. Where more than one counterfactual distribution is possible, more than one true answer is possible to the question of precisely how much the n the past three decades, scholars of welfare policy in welfare state redistributes. The invisible welfare state, the United States have come to recognize tax privileg- then, like other such invisible abstractions as states, es as an important part of the US social policy re- classes, political parties, power, and culture, may have Igime. A tax privilege is a provision of law or customary big effects, but the precise magnitudes of those effects practice that grants favorable treatment to particular ac- are fundamentally uncertain. tivities or categories of persons by excusing them from specified tax obligations to which they would normally be subject.1 Scholars have documented a great number and Can an invisible welfare state variety of formal and informal tax privileges provided by federal, state, and local governments. They have attempt- redistribute? ed to quantify the revenue lost because of these privileges. And they have invoked the metaphors of “insurance” “The welfare state” entered the English language (Anderson 2006), “social security for the rich” (Kopczuk during the Second World War as a slogan meant to 2003), the “divided welfare state” (Hacker 2002), the “sub- distinguish the post-war social insurance proposals of merged state” (Mettler 2011), the “shadow welfare state” the British government from

Load more

  42

Copy Link