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Economic Sociology: The Recursive Economic System of J. S. Mill

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Amos Witztum
Amos Witztum
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Business and International Finance, London Metropolitan University, 31 Jewry Street, London EC3N 2EY, UK.
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Extract

In a recent paper, R. Ekelund and D. Walker (1996) argue that, “[i]ncentives, utilitarian principles, and the diffusion of property rights are the key to understanding Mill on the statics and dynamics of ‘equity and justice’”(p. 576). Their paper, which deals with John Stuart Mill's views on taxation, reads very much like a modern defense of popular capitalism. From the static point of view, it is imperative not to interfere with the internal relationship between economic variables and thus, distort incentives (proportional income tax). From the dynamic point of view, “inheritance taxes [are] the essential mechanism of an evolutionary change towards an efficiently functioning capitalism” (p. 578, italics added).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 2005 , pp. 251 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2005

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