Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Contributors
- 1 Public choice in perspective
- Part I The need for and forms of cooperation
- Part II Voting rules and preference aggregation
- Part III Electoral politics
- Part IV Individual behavior and collective action
- Part V Public choice in action
- 20 Modern bureaucratic theory
- 21 The positive theory of public bureaucracy
- 22 The political economy of taxation
- 23 Rent seeking
- 24 Endogenous protection: The empirical evidence
- 25 Why does government's share of national income grow? An assessment of the recent literature on the U.S. experience
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
25 - Why does government's share of national income grow? An assessment of the recent literature on the U.S. experience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Contributors
- 1 Public choice in perspective
- Part I The need for and forms of cooperation
- Part II Voting rules and preference aggregation
- Part III Electoral politics
- Part IV Individual behavior and collective action
- Part V Public choice in action
- 20 Modern bureaucratic theory
- 21 The positive theory of public bureaucracy
- 22 The political economy of taxation
- 23 Rent seeking
- 24 Endogenous protection: The empirical evidence
- 25 Why does government's share of national income grow? An assessment of the recent literature on the U.S. experience
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Compania de Tobaco v. Collector (1904)In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens to give to the other.
Voltaire, “Money,” Philosophical Dictionary (1764)… read my lips: No New Taxes!
George H. W. Bush, Acceptance Speech, Republican National Convention (1988)The twentieth century has witnessed a fundamental and systemic change in politicoeconomic systems. Turn of the century mature, market-based economies with government spending to national income ratios of onetwelfth to one-sixth have been transformed into mixed economies that place greater and greater emphasis on collective decision making. Nowhere is this phenomenon more obvious than in the case of the richest of the industrialized economies where government expenditures now frequently comprise 40 percent and more of current gross national product.
It is not surprising that a change of this magnitude has attracted enormous attention in the literature. Predictably, much of the focus of this research has been on modeling and explaining government growth. Since such growth implies a dramatic shift from private to public allocation, additional concerns have arisen: (1) Is increased government size simply a natural consequence of modern industrial society, or does it indicate instead that rent-seeking groups have become increasingly powerful and more capable of manipulating government expenditures toward their own ends? (2) Does increased government expenditure represent investment in capital and social infrastructure, or does it hamper economic development, leading to slower GNP growth rates?
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- Information
- Perspectives on Public ChoiceA Handbook, pp. 562 - 590Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
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