The victories that followed the American civil war and the 1960s civil rights era are once again under attack, echoing earlier efforts to roll back equality and redefine democracy, says JOE SIMS
A POPULAR view is that we all benefit, and there’s some truth in that.
As long as we live in an economy dominated by the market, then taxation (of wages, profits, or capital) will be an essential element in the process of delivering the “social wage” — education and health services, public infrastructure as well as more dubious and contested elements of public expenditure such as “defence.”
At a more subtle level, it can be maintained that to the extent that (as Marx argued) wages under capitalism always tend to fall to the minimum level required for the social and biological reproduction of labour, then the “costs” of taxation in the last analysis fall on the capitalist rather than on the working class.
CAROL WILCOX argues for the proper implementation of the land value tax, which could see unused plots sold off and landlords priced out of landlordism, potentially resolving the housing and planning crises
While claiming to target fraud, Labour’s snooping Bill strips benefit recipients of privacy rights and presumption of innocence, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning that algorithms with up to 25 per cent error rates could wrongfully investigate and harass millions of vulnerable people



