Thomas Nagel, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Pre-tax property rights are not natural; the legal and tax framework is constitutive of property.1 The "myth of ownership" is the everyday-libertarian assumption that one's pre-tax income is one's natural property and that taxation is a taking from that pre-existing property.2 The assumption is mistaken: there is no pre-political "natural" baseline of ownership against which tax can be measured as a deduction.
Property rights themselves — what is owned, by whom, with what powers and protections — are constituted by the legal and political structure. Tax is part of that structure, not a deduction from a prior natural baseline. The Murphy-Nagel argument has direct implications for the rhetoric of taxation: the question is not whether the state is "taking" a portion of "your" income, but what the just structure of property and tax is, given that there is no pre-political baseline.3
Combined with the hybrid view of practical reason from Equality and Partiality (1991), the position supports a liberal egalitarianism that takes both impartial-egalitarian reasons and partial-personal reasons seriously. Pure egalitarianism (which would override personal partiality entirely) and pure libertarianism (which would deny impartial-egalitarian reasons entirely) both fail because both kinds of reasons are real.45
Property rights are not, on this view, in any sense natural or preinstitutionally inherent in the individual: rather, they are the consequence of laws, rules, and conventions designed to promote other values, such as prosperity and secure expectations.The Myth of Ownership, pp. 44–45
Instead, we have to evaluate the legitimacy of after-tax income by reference to the legitimacy of the political and economic system that generates it, including the taxes which are an essential part of that system. The logical order of priority between taxes and property rights is the reverse of that assumed by libertarianism.The Myth of Ownership, pp. 33–34
Since that is so, the idea of a politically neutral market world that can serve as the baseline required by the sacrifice approach to taxation is a fantasy. Any pretax distribution—real or imaginary—is already shaped in part by judgments of political morality, and it is impossible to address questions of tax fairness without evaluating those judgments.The Myth of Ownership, pp. 34–35
Bush has often said of the federal budget surplus: "The surplus doesn't belong to the government, it belongs to the people." have produced advantages that are not deserved. The natural idea that people deserve to be rewarded for thrift and industry slides into the much broader notion that all of pretax income can be regarded as a reward for those virtues.The Myth of Ownership, p. 36
Even though programs like Social Security and Medicare are now unassailable in the political mainstream of American society, the extent and financing of such provision is very much under debate. Recognizably philosophical questions about our responsibilities for ourselves and for one another are central to the political conflicts here.The Myth of Ownership, pp. 175–176
Equality and Partiality (1991) and The Myth of Ownership (2002, with Murphy) are Nagel's contributions to liberal egalitarian political philosophy. Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) is the major sympathetic ally and the framework within which Nagel's hybrid theory works; Nagel was Rawls's student and the influence is structural. Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) is the central libertarian opponent; the Murphy-Nagel argument is directed at the everyday- libertarianism Nozick gave its most sophisticated philosophical expression. Dworkin's resource egalitarianism is closer to my view than Cohen's Marxist-egalitarian framework. The position remains live in contemporary political philosophy.