ABSTRACT
Nicholas Kaldor is remembered for his ideas in many fields, but there is one issue in economics that cannot properly be discussed without mentioning his name: the expenditure tax. With his book of less than three hundred pages published when he was forty-seven years old, he initiated a debate on taxes that is not yet over. (Seechapter note 6.1, American tax debates and the expenditure tax.) Before writing "The End" to his book, he stated his belief: "Taxation can be a powerful instrument of social progress but it cannot be made into an engine of social revolution. The noble experiment of gradually building a society that is both free and just through progressive taxation is bound to fail unless we recognize that fact." 1 While an adviser to Labour governments, Kaldor did not advocate an expenditure tax for the United Kingdom. 2 Yet Kaldor's tax proposals were by many English conservatives considered revolutionary, and Kaldor soon learned that proposals for progressive taxation can precipitate a riot in a developing country.
