fiscalism

fiscal +‎ -ism

fiscalism (uncountable)

1. The idea that taxation should form a central part of a government's economic policy.
   • 1895, Max Simon Nordau, The conventional lies of our civilization, page 164:

     Fiscalism is a necessary consequence of the historical development of the system of taxation.

   • 1971, Ronald Edward Robinson, Developing the Third World: The Experience of the Nineteen-Sixties, →ISBN:

     What is more, the advantage of this sort of fiscalism is that government is enabled to divert the wealth of the rich from private luxury consumption to the benefit of the commonwealth and at the same time to re-distribute it more evenly.

   • 1994, Donald Quataert, Manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, 1500-1950, →ISBN, page 61:

     Among the institutions established according to fiscalism during the eighteenth century, we need to mention the life-term tax farming system (malikane sistemi), which had an impact on the entire economy, including industry.

   • 2010, Gilles Campagnolo, Criticisms of Classical Political Economy, page 99:

     Fiscalism was a first attempt at rationalizing a system of tax levying that would display more efficiency than it used to.

2. (by extension) Excessive, oppressive taxation.
3. (economics) The belief that fiscal policy should function as the primary macroeconomic stabiliser (e.g. for controlling inflation), often associated with the IS–LM model.
   • 1987, Bernhard Felderer & Stefan Homburg, Macroeconomics and New Macroeconomics, Springer-Verlag (2nd ed., 1992), pages 135 & 136.

     Hereby it will become clear how Keynesianism, a doctrine appealing to the monetary theorist JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, soon converted into fiscalism, a position ascribing stronger effects to fiscal than monetary policy – and, in the extreme, denying the latter all real and nominal effects.

   • 1993, D. M. Mithani, Dynamics of Monetary-Fiscal Policy: An Indian Perspective, Himalaya Publishing House, page 28.

     The doctrine of fiscalism, in essence, implies that money doesn not matter so much as the monetarists make it out. The fiscalists hold that monetary policy is important, but its potency is weakened by the institutional forces. To them, fiscal policy is, by and large, a more effective and powerful economic stabilisation device.

   • 1997, Brian Snowdon & Howard R. Vane, "The development of modern macroeconomics: A rough guide", in Brian Snowdon & Howard R. Vane (eds.), A Macroeconomics Reader, Routledge (2003 ed.).

     With a relatively inelastic IS curve and a relatively elastic LM curve Keynesianism became synonymous with 'fiscalism' and policies to fine tune the macroeconomy.

   • 2014, Jim Tomlinson, British Macroeconomic Policy since 1940, Routledge Revivals.

     Despite this view of the importance (or lack of it) of fiscal policy for full employment it is also important to note that 'fiscalism' did become deeply entrenched in Britain in this period. Budgetary policy became the centre piece of macro-economic policy to an extent to which no other country can compare (Dow 1964, p.178).

   • 2017, Chris Jefferis, The Dialectics of Liquidity Crisis, →ISBN, page 41:

     Minsky's work factored in the transformation away from fiscalism that characterised the “long 1970s” and contributed to the development of "Post-Keynesian" economics, an intellectual program dedicated to revolutionising macro-economics in a way that was true to the spirit of Keynes eschewing the Neo-clasical synthesis inherent to the IS/LM models that formed the basis of fiscalism.

• fiscalist