Econ 309 Introduction to Public Finance

Link to slides

For interest:

• Notes on today's lecture

• Historical Philosophical roots of Public Finance (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume, Smith)

• When has government gone too far? Banning outdoor smoking and margarine? (Slate, Sept. 19, 2009)

• The need to collect taxes created a strong push for people to have last names and formal addresses (Cato, Sept. 8, 2010)

• The dangers of a really strong state - Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom in cartoon form.