A reassessment of Schumpeter on fiscal policy from a dynamic tax: incidence perspective

Resumo

With the approach of a new millenium there is a natural temptation to engage in speculation as to what the next century may hold. The choice of ‘Capitalism and Democracy in the 21st Century' as the theme of the 1998 conference of the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society is clearly an invitation to reconsider the relevance of the ideas Schumpeter propounded in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Schumpeter, 1943) in the context of the approaching millenium. Does the fact that Schumpeter's great prediction that the very success of capitalism would lead to its collapse and the emergence of socialism has so far not been borne out by the experience of the liberal representative democracies suggest that Schumpeter's vision should now be relegated to the dustbin of history? The answer we wish to suggest in this paper is no, it should not.