# Regressive Taxation

> Regressive Taxation is mapped as the allocation: it decides how wealth, work, ownership, risk, care, and public goods are distributed and governed.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:political-economy:regressive-taxation` |
| Family | Political Economy & Distribution |
| Domain | Political Economy |
| Kind | mechanism |
| Archetypal function | The Allocation |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Regressive Taxation belongs to the **Political Economy & Distribution** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Regressive Taxation decides how wealth, work, ownership, risk, care, and public goods are distributed and governed, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Regressive Taxation, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Allocation.** Regressive Taxation is mapped as the allocation: it decides how wealth, work, ownership, risk, care, and public goods are distributed and governed.

## Gift

reveals material stakes beneath symbolic conflict; through Regressive Taxation, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

reduces people to incentives or treats one distribution as natural; Regressive Taxation can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Regressive Taxation to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Allocation enters through Regressive Taxation. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Regressive Taxation becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**constraint.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Regressive Taxation; another player names a countermove. Initiative 2.

## Relationships

- **institutionalizes — Progressive Taxation:** Progressive Taxation institutionalizes Regressive Taxation by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **counteracts — Redistribution:** Regressive Taxation counteracts Redistribution by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **mobilizes — People versus Elite:** People versus Elite mobilizes Regressive Taxation by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **enables — Organizer Training:** Regressive Taxation enables Organizer Training by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Regressive Taxation from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Regressive Taxation is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Regressive Taxation: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [Introduction to Political Science](https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-political-science) — OpenStax, 2022. Comparative institutions, political behavior, and public policy foundations.
- [Preventing Policy Capture](https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/preventing-policy-capture_9789264065239-en.html) — OECD, 2017. Mechanisms and safeguards concerning capture of public decision-making.
- [National Labor Relations Act](https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/national-labor-relations-act) — National Labor Relations Board, 1935. U.S. collective-bargaining and protected concerted-activity framework.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
