why tax?

I am interested in going back to first principles.

Tax is a way of redistributing the income generated in society. But why do we need to do this?
Is it a function of complexity? Or the size of the social group?

Take education as an example

If enough people want to send their children to school - rather than educate them ourselves or pay individually for a tutor - society must find a way of paying for the school - capital expenditure and running costs.e. salaries, heating ,etc. In Europe the first schools were faith schools and it was only later than responsibility for education shifted to government. this was enshrined n legislation and in the developed world there has been talk of the 'right to universal education'. But ideology plays a part when it comes to delineating the boundaries of this right. For instance, does this right extend to higher education? In the UK I grew up benefiting from a grant systems - so my tuition fees and some living costs were covered by my local council. My children though had to take out loans to pay for university education - these are underwritten by central government - and there is now some doubt about how much government saves as many loans will never be paid off.

I think that governments use the argument - as the UK governments did in the last 10 years with tuition fees - about affordability. This is a fig leaf - a pretence of non-ideological reasoning - when policy alternatives always involve preferences which is another word for ideology.

So what does this mean for overall tax policies? Firstly, how big should government be? Scandinavian countries believe in a larger size than the UK which is bigger than US. These are expressions of the balance of the individual versus the social. Secondly, what are the priorities within the overall government budget? US absolutely and relatively spend more on defence than European governments even if the size of the government - relative to GDP - is smaller. Thirdly, what are the sources of the revenue needed to fund government programmes - again this reflects choices - individual vs corporate taxes;direct vs indirect taxes.

At the end of the day tax is an expression of choices - ideological preferences  about the role of government.

Next time - tax and technologies.