Asking the haves and have mores to pay their fair share is not a new idea. Indeed it has the well established force of a common law found in among other places the Lord's Prayer.
"Give us this day our daily bread" is a demand that if you want to play god and lord it over the common folk you need to pay for the privilege; and if the people exercise their right to organize and to peaceably assemble and complain and then collectively bargain for their bread and you say let them eat cake and there is no cake and no bread for them either then its off with your head. Them's the rules.
We can look back to the origins of Feudalism in the idea of service in return for sustenance. Once hunter gathering and nomadic pastoralism gave way to agriculture way back in the chalcolithic or age of copper if a patriarch were to give lands to his sons for their sustenance he would reasonably expect them to dig whatever ditches were necessary to bring the waters of the innundation to the lands where the crops were to be grown.
Certainly organizing a workforce to do things which benefit and sustains everyone is a valuable service and worth a service from everyone in return, but is there a difference between the creation of the infrastructure necessary to govern, to include social security, education, healthcare and some economic stability, and the creation of wealth just for its own sake?
Since it was first established that he who controlled the water controlled the land we have had feudalism as a political system regardless of what else we called it.
"It is said, that when the king makes a voyage "royal into Scotland to subdue the Scots, he which holdeth by the service "of one knight's fee ought to be with the king forty days, well and conveniently arrayed for the war; and he which holdeth his land by the moiety "of a knight's fee, ought to be with the king twenty days; and he which holdeth his land by the fourth part of a knight's fee, ought to be with the king "ten days: and so he that hath more, more; and he that hath less, less.
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
Gradually it became established that the cornage (ratio of sustenance to service) or in medieval times the carnage owed by a vassal to a lord gave men's lives the value of rent, the time of service was made equivalent to a sum of money.
And after such voyage royal into Scotland, it is commonly said, that by "authority of parliament, the escuage shall be assessed and put in certain, that "is, a certain fum of money, how much every one which holdeth by a whole knight's fee, who was neither by himself nor by any other with the king, "shall pay to his lord of whom he holds his land by escuage. As put the "cafe that it was ordained by parliament, that every one which holdeth by a "whole knight's fee, who was not with the king, shall pay to his lord 40 s; then he which holdeth by the moiety of a knight's fee, shall pay to his lord "but 20 s, and he which holdeth by the fourth part of a knight's fee, shall "pay ioi; and he which hath more, morei and he which hath less, less." Lilt. sect. 95. 97.
The issue of the landed gentry having both a larger share of the decision making process and paying a relatively smaller share of the taxes and tithes has to take into account the relation of church and state, both being essentially parasitical on the ordinary working man. In 1086 The Domesday Book lists about 13,000 towns, villages and tiny hamlets.
The kingdom of Medieval England had a round table of 1 king, 1 prince and ten Dukes representing about 40,000 knights fees of land of which probably 1/4th was arable and the rest forest, pasture, or occupied by various structures including bleacharies, tannaries and other industrial processes which despoiled the land for farming.
The King was ruler of a kingdom, his Prince or heir the ruler of a principality and his Dukes, the ruler of their duchy's. Very roughly speaking and ignoring the niceties of titles reserved to other nobility at the time of the Magna Carta for each Duke there were two Earls and for each Earl two Barons each ruling a county or shire; or in some cases such as with London a city as Lord mayor or mayor. Each baron then had about 1,000 knights and Knight's fees of land and 325 towns villages or hamlets most of which would have been barely larger than a single extended family with some social stratification such as plowman, forester, weaver, shoemaker, smith, from which to provide as his service to the king.
With a population of around 5 million landfolk and another couple of million seapeople, fishermen and mariners at the time of the signing of the Magna Carta, each Baron probably represented a clan of about 250 households or tenants each with about twenty people farming 10 of 40 acres each.
The idea that the wealthiest should owe more service or pay more represents a very old principle. Forty days service includes all the overhead of seeing to the needs of the citizenry to include organizing commerce and appointing councils of burgers in the towns to oversee the trades, the provision of sherriffs and tax collectors and soldiers to keep the peace and maintaining the roads and bridges and mills to grind the grain for bread and beer.
There hath been great diversity of opinions concerning the value of a Knight's Fee, that is, how much land was deemed sufficient for the maintenance of a knight. Sir Edward Coke says, "Some hold, that a knight's '* fee consisted of 8 hides, and every hide contained 100 acres; and so a "knight's fee should contain 800 acres: others fay that a knight's fee contained 680 acres.
What's a fair rate of taxation depends to some degree on what the value of the grant of sustenance is. To farm 800 acres requires either a lot of sons or a lot of serfs and each of them expects their own sustenance in return.
But I hold," fays he, "that a knight's fee doth not con"tain any certain number of acres, but is properly to be estimated according "to the quality, and not according to the quantity of the land, that is to fay, "by the value, and not by the number of acres." (1 Inch. 69.) Nevertheless, in these northern parts, it appears from an entry made in the Register of the priory of Wetheral, that the knight's fee was estimated, not according to the quality, but quantity of the land. And this seems to account for the large measure of an acre before mentioned, in order to compensate for the deficiency in goodness. There we find explicitly, that ten acres make one ferndell, four ferndeils one virgate (which is half a carucate), four virgates one hide, and four hides one knight's fee *.
So that the knight's fee in this cafe will amount to 640 acres. The value of these appears to have been ascertained at the time of Magna Charta; which fixes the relief to be paid for a knight's fee at 5 ; and as the relief in all the cafes there specified was after the rate of one fourth part of the yearly value of the fee, it follows that a knight's fee was then estimated at 20 a year.