  The policy proposals mentioned above are quite controversial. They suggest, however, that the very concept of benefit and compensatory taxation is a rather complex idea, presupposing a baseline against which specific policies and institutional arrangements can be seen to benefit or harm persons. Several baselines can be invoked in making such comparisons, including what people would have had in a ‘state of nature,’ in a laissez-faire scheme, within an order in which people’s basic needs are met insofar as possible, and so on. Different baselines will yield different verdicts about these arrangements. And since none of the baselines is obviously more ‘natural’ or ‘neutral’ than others, moral reasons must be adduced for treating one or another of them as the appropriate benchmark for assessing the magnitudes of harm and benefit that a particular institutional order engenders. Whether we judge institutional arrangements to have harmed or benefited some agent — and therefore whether or not the taxes that these and other agents pay are redistributive — depends upon our substantive normative assessments regarding how these arrangements should be designed.