Austrians and Progressive Taxation

[Straive]

Hello, I was reading “The Austrian School of Economics” by Eugen-Maria Schulak today and saw that Bohm-Bawerk was a proponent of a progressive tax code along with other early Austrian economists. I am just wondering what the current consensus among Austrians is on a progressive tax code.

Thanks

[EmptySkin]

EDIT: i found this:

Böhm-Bawerk’s attempts to return to a professorship in Vienna, and to be the successor of either Lorenz von Stein or Lujo Brentano were in vain. He finally took a post in the Finance Ministry, which at that time managed with a staff of just civil servants and sixty-seven supporting staff.One of his first tasks was to revive the abandoned preparations for a comprehensive tax reform. Böhm-Bawerk remained a civil servant up until; three times he was Finance Minister and in  he was awarded a life-long membership of the Herrenhaus. Apart from working on the tax reform of , in the course of which a progressive income tax of no more than five percent was introduced ,2 he also succeeded in reducing the government’s interest burden by converting public debt. A balanced budget was of particular importance to Böhm-Bawerk because he believed it was the only thing that would secure the stability of monetary value. He did not shy away from using all the tricks of an experienced bureaucrat to block status-seeking, politically-motivated projects that lacked secure funding such as a shipping canal network for the whole of the monarchy. His maxim was that a finance minister should always be prepared to resign, but at the same time, should always behave as if his desire was never to resign. He resigned from the post permanently in  when excessive demands from the military finally threatened to strain the budget. (P. 47)

As an expert on finance, whose teaching qualification was extended in  to include political economy, Robert Meyer lectured at the University of Vienna and at other Viennese educational institutions. In his Habilitation treatise, the subjectivist value theoretician justified progressive taxation, which he, as a senior civil servant and along with Böhm-Bawerk, was actually able to implement during the reform of direct personal taxation. From  onward, he served as co-publisher of the journal Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft, Socialpolitik und Verwaltung (“Journal of Economics, Social Policy, and Administration”). He was a champion of full-blown statism on social and economic policy matters. (P.54)

i took out references cause there were many many of those symbols in there

[cobracarg]

I love to tell this story:

So the first Mont Pelerin meeting had economists such as Milton Friedman, FA Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler, and a few others, talking about distribution of wealth and whether a progressive income tax was justififed. Some of those ecoonomists were claiming that there might be a justification for a progressive income tax. Mises stood up and said," You all are a bunch of socialists," and walked out the door.

So generally speaking, Austrians do not like the progressive tax system. ( maybe it is better to say that liberal minded Austrians do not like the progressive tax system.)