Helmut P. Gaisbauer

Ethical obligations of wealthy people: Progressive taxation and the financial crisis

The Financial Crisis in Europe puts pressure on welfare states and its tax systems as well as on considerations of social justice. In this paper, we would like to explore the status of the idea of progressive taxation and its justification (especially the ‘ability-to-pay’ principle) in times of a financial crisis. We will discuss it within a social justice framework following David Miller—using the principles of (i) need, (ii) merit, and (iii) equality. We will conclude that progressive taxation can be justified in the light of these three principles, even more so in the situation of a financial crisis that undermines decent living conditions for millions. The principle of need has to be given priority even if this move violates the principles of equality and desert.

Evolving patterns of internal security cooperation: lessons from the Schengen and Prüm laboratories

Abstract This article discusses evolving patterns of internal security cooperation that start in the realm of international public law and end up more or less entirely in the treaty framework of the European Union. By applying the theory of clubs (Buchanan) it shows the fertility as well as limitations of a public goods approach to analyse and explain such instances of differentiated integration and to assess their effectiveness. By way of the comparative analysis of the Schengen regime and the Prüm Treaty it analyses five main stages of an internal security clubs life circle from the causing obstacle (blocking of a certain policy) to the final incorporation endgame. Both clubs under investigation produced so-called network goods with negative rivalry logic, i.e. the more members participate and ‘consume’ the good the higher the benefit for all. However, it is also shown that club formation and expansion could not only be understood as a strategically rational process, and that various contextual costs inhibited the formation and eventual expansion of the clubs. The article concludes that incorporation efforts necessarily lead to pick-and-choose situations that preclude full uniformity; consequently, outside treaty clubs tend to create á la carte fragmentation to a certain degree.

Differentiating Views of Inheritance: The Free Association Task as a Method to Assess Social Representations of Wealth, Inherit, and Bequeath

Inheritance and in particular inheritance taxes have emerged as topics of steadily increasing interest in public as well as scientific discourse and debate. The present study investigates laypeople’s differentiated social representations of inheritance with the aim of shedding light on distinct concepts of wealth, inherit, and bequeath. Furthermore, it comparatively discusses experts’ scientific discourse on inheritance and laypeople’s social representations of inheritance, with the aim to contribute to a clearer understanding of the roots of the conflictual dispute on inheritance tax. Overall, 75 Austrian taxpayers completed a free association task. Participants were asked to indicate their spontaneous associations with the stimuli wealth, inherit, and bequeath, and to evaluate their associations as positive, neutral, or negative. Polarity and neutrality indices were calculated to capture participants’ attitudes towards the stimuli. Lexicographical analyses as well as correspondence analyses were performed to map the social representations of the stimuli. The results show that the evaluations of the stimuli differ significantly. Furthermore, the semantic content of the social representations differs. Moreover, the comparative discussion of experts’ representations of inheritance, as revealed in the analyses of their scientific discourse, and laypeople’s social representations of inheritance shows that the core issues of the social representations of laypeople and the representations of experts differ not only in respect to their level of abstractness but also in their point of reference and in their content. Interestingly, taxation is a core issue for laypeople as well as experts. Hence, this study indicates that a differentiated use of the term inheritance is necessary in regard to reforms of legal regulations of inheritance and inheritance taxes as well as in research referring to inheritance.

Euro-scepticism revisited: Poland after EU accession

Abstract The results of the elections to the European Parliament in June 2004 in Poland have given rise to speculation as to whether the Polish constituency is, to a large extent, turning Euro-sceptic. This is because of two reasons. First was the very low turnout rate of less than 21%. Second was the fact that three out of four successful parties were considered more or less Euro-sceptic. This contribution examines to what extent party-based Euro-scepticism in Poland is based on ideology or is more a function of party competition and, therefore, tactical. The findings suggest that most of the Euro-sceptical positions are tactical and can thus be expected to at least partially be replaced by a pragmatic approach to European politics. It will be interesting to see if this also holds true for the single Euro-rejectionist party League of Polish Families, LPR, whose Europhobic attitude is part of its party ideology.

Outlining the Field of Tax Justice

Taxation is one of the most fundamental and influential institutions in all modern societies. This importance of taxation gives rise to crucial normative, ethical, and moral questions—and assumptions about what is just and morally right are closely tied to the discussion, design and implementation of taxation and certain taxes. For that reason a normative examination of taxation, focusing on issues of justice, is of utmost importance. Tax justice is located in the interstices between the traditional tax disciplines of tax law, public finance, and microeconomics and it is connected to approaches from philosophy and some social sciences. It is clearly an inherently interdisciplinary topic. In order to arrive at a sufficiently coherent and defensible set of concepts within the field of tax justice, we propose to clarify at least four key concepts: (i) state, (ii) citizenship, (iii) property, and (iv) social justice.

Fiscal Justice and Justified Trust

In the following essay we are particularly interested in the relationship between formal (legal, political) frameworks and informal networks. There seems to be a culture of suspicion vis-a-vis the former and a culture of trust regarding the latter. This asymmetry in the readiness to trust leads to a way of thinking that supports the idea: “the lower the tax burden, the better”. On the other hand, the idea of a fiscal contract is based on an idea of mutual trust (tax authorities trusting the tax payers, i.e. through limited controls, tax payers trust the tax authorities in terms of tax fairness and the appropriate use of the fiscal income). The thesis we will develop here has three elements: (1) Formal frameworks (F) and informal networks (N) are interdependent and mutually linked; trust in F implies trust in N and vice versa. Social networks operate within structural frameworks and need “institutional framework trust” or “trust in systems” in order to be able to flourish. (2) The generation of income and wealth is based on trust—people need social capital and networks as well as legal and political frameworks and public infrastructure in order to generate incomes, in other words: non-communal money or capital independent of structure does not exist. (3) On the basis of this culture of trust as the centre of wealth-generation and common-good tax justice, justified trust can be linked via an “ability to trust” principle and a “responsibility to trust” principle.

Erbschaftssteuer im Fokus. Zur Einleitung

Kaum jemand wird die Notwedigkeit von Steuern bestreiten, sind sie doch die wichtigste Einkommensquelle moderner Staaten, ohne welche diese ihre Ausgaben nicht finanzieren konnten (Blankart 2008; Andersson/Oxelheim/Eberhartinger 2010). Ohne Steuern ist ein Funktionieren des kulturellen, wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und politischen Lebens in einer modernen Gesellschaft nicht denkbar (Schmid 2006).

Suffering Within, Suffering Without: Paradoxes of Poverties in Welfare States

One major rationale of welfare states is poverty alleviation. Poverty that is in fact (more or less effectively) encountered by social policy measures can be termed included poverty. Included poverty is heuristically captured by concepts of relative poverty and reflected in social statistics. Since poverty in affluent societies is highly stigmatized and poses an enormous threat to their social identity poor people in general try to hide their neediness at all costs. Consequently included poverty reflects a state of paradoxical visibility: welfare state poverty is visible to (or in) social statistics and policy but invisible socially. One could term this the paradox of relative poverty. Quite the opposite seems to be true for forms of poverty in European welfare states that are not yet (or still not) integrated into the welfare state poverty paradigm, forms like spreading homelessness, irregular migrants without papers, begging migrants or street children: such poverty is mostly invisible for social statistics and policy but immensely visible socially – the paradox of neglected or absolutely excluded poverty. Both paradoxes bring different hardships for the affected poor and both pose distinctive challenges to poverty research and poverty alleviation that must be thoroughly reflected upon and analyzed.

Ethical Issues in Poverty Alleviation

In today’s world, national borders seem irrelevant when it comes to international crime and terrorism. Likewise, human rights, poverty, inequality, democracy, development, trade, bioethics, hunger, war and peace are all issues of global rather than national justice. The fact that mass demonstrations are organized whenever the world’s governments and politicians gather to discuss such major international issues is testimony to a widespread appeal for justice around the world. Discussions of global justice are not limited to the fields of political philosophy and political theory. In fact, research concerning global justice quite often requires an interdisciplinary approach. It involves aspects of ethics, law, human rights, international relations, sociology, economics, public health, and ecology. Studies in Global Justice takes up that interdisciplinary perspective. The series brings together outstanding monographs and anthologies that deal with both basic normative theorizing and its institutional applications. The volumes in the series discuss such aspects of global justice as the scope of social justice, the moral significance of borders, global inequality and poverty, the justification and content of human rights, the aims and methods of development, global environmental justice, global bioethics, the global institutional order and the justice of intervention and war. Volumes in this series will prove of great relevance to researchers, educators and students, as well as politicians, policymakers and government officials.

Ethical Issues in Poverty Alleviation: Agents, Institutions and Policies

In this chapter we introduce the topics of this volume. We start by distinguishing and discussing three issues that are of importance for an ethical reflection on poverty alleviation: the definitions of poverty and poverty alleviation, the normative background theories of poverty alleviation and the identification of the agents and institutions of poverty alleviation. After discussing these we will go on to present a brief overview of the chapters in this volume.