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While the verdicts of ‘the market’ can present themselves as ‘just’ – in the sense of objective – having come about sine ira ac studio according to universal, non-particularistic, impersonal rules, political intervention in the ‘free play of market forces’ tends to be perceived as exploitation of the general public by powerful special interests.

[...] Until now, of course, longer-term growth rates have been falling together with peak tax rates, and so has the average tax take of rich democracies. Worse still, in parallel with the declining taxability of firms, their claims for national and regional infrastructure have become more demanding…

the premise that growth of the ‘economy’, and with it of state revenue, can be obtained only by tax concessions big enough to attract investment: more taxes through lower taxes – the Laffer illusion as the last hope of economic policy

[...] Buying Time treats state debt as a phenomenon of political economy: not merely one of democracy but also one of capitalism. Capitalism is about the expansion of expandable capital in the form of private property; this entails the danger of a withdrawal of cooperation by those who are needed…

Instead of reifying this process as an expression of eternal standard-economic laws, I treat it as the outcome of distributional conflict between classes.