In the good ole days, taxation consisted of the lord owning the land (the means of production) and taxing the peasents.
This is pretty much what happens when you're employed - someone else owns the means of production, and you are paid less than the value that you create (hopefully for the company, anyway). For me this is a form of taxation - The main difference is that insead of being paid the gross amount and being hit for x%, you get the net amount.
On a macro level, it's similar. The country IS the ultimate means of production, and you pay a tax to use it.
You've reinvented the core thesis of Marxism: that the difference between what the worker earns and the capitalist sells is a theft of value. The problem is that it assumes that labour is the true source of value -- this has turned out to be a troublesome assumption. In practice value is subjective.
That's not quite what I meant. I was referring to the value your employment adds to the company, not the sales value of the final product.
And yes, that's extremely difficult to evaluate, but it seems to me that on average everyone has to be paid less than their contribution, otherwise there would be no profit or funds to pay salaries for people not directly contributing to production.
Nor was I passing judgement, by the way, so I don't go along with the "theft" thing. I do however think it is a form of taxation.
Sorry if I gave the impression that you were passing judgement. I just find it interesting that smart people come up with the same ideas again and again.
"Taxation" is not the best way to put it. It is a market exchange. In exchange for a fixed portion of your value output (which will be variable), the company guarantees a certain payment upon a fixed input (usually hours-per-week).
Thus the company is essentially taking on the risk that you will produce enough value to cover the cost and leave some space for profit.
If you or the company disagree about the values involved, the employment relationship ends.
The concept that a capitalist's profits come from the risk he or she takes to earn them is the other half of what is missing from the Marxist theory of economics -- following almost inevitably from the adoption of the labour theory of value.
In the good ole days, taxation consisted of the lord owning the land (the means of production) and taxing the peasents.
This is pretty much what happens when you're employed - someone else owns the means of production, and you are paid less than the value that you create (hopefully for the company, anyway). For me this is a form of taxation - The main difference is that insead of being paid the gross amount and being hit for x%, you get the net amount.
On a macro level, it's similar. The country IS the ultimate means of production, and you pay a tax to use it.