Re:Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app t...
by bostik on Sunday August 23, 2020 @08:15AM
(#24251337)
In a way we associate tithes only with churches, but as the first sentence of that Wikipedia page states: "[...] paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government."
However, I think you bring up a much more important point, which deserves highlighting - the confiscation of surplus. The feudal lords at least understood that a starving peasant is not going to produce much surplus. Whereas we live in our respective modern societies and see concepts such as "working poor" as perfectly normal.
IMO the world is seriously bent when people who work their arses off still have to rely on charities to sustain themselves at all. Something is being confiscated but it sure isn't surplus.
> 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe
Since tithes are paid to the church and not the state, this immediately implies the peasants were paying more than that.
Historical tax rates are low, and so is historical productivity. For example, you can read old instructions to tax collectors saying "take everything they don't need to survive -- but no more than that".
So this becomes a question of whether today we're measuring up from the tax rate, or down from the rate of confiscation of surplus.