Ilan Benshalom (Hebrew University Faculty of Law), The Democratic-Homogeneity Case for Wealth Taxation:

While economic inequality in most liberal democracies surges, the debate over the morally just distributive policies is far from being resolved. In light of this ongoing debate, this article offers an alternative normative consideration that should guide governmental policies that address inequality in democratic countries. It points out to empirical research which suggests that extreme economic inequality negatively impacts different aspects of social cooperation that a well-functioning democracy requires. It then argues that redistributive policies are homogeneity-inducing measures necessary to balance overall heterogeneity-supportive core-democratic policies, which make cooperation more difficult. This “democratic-cooperation” argument in favor of reducing extreme inequality, supplements rather than replaces the existing (more traditional) distributive justice political philosophy debate.

The article concludes by demonstrating how integrating this new theoretical approach will have concrete implications on the design of important redistributive policies by focusing on the contemporary debate over capital taxation. It explains why the redistributive objective prescribed by the democratic-cooperation approach requires that democracies adopt a non-realization progressive wealth tax to deal with high-end inequality.