4 ms·

>Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut. The "cut" society received is the benefit it gained that made it pay the person enough to m

>Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut. The "cut" society received is the benefit it gained that made it pay the person enough to make them wealthy. >Progressive taxation is also a recognition that most of anybody's income is enabled by living in a modern, safe, resourceful, co-operative and free society. Without a modern society and without the benefit of all that have come before us, we'd all be subsistence farmers. Are the citizens of Singapore, with it's 20% top tax bracket, subsistence farmers? Are all the people in the countries listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_flat_tax_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_f... subsistence farmers? There may be moral arguments for progressive taxation but they aren't economic ones; non-progressive taxation is perfectly capable of funding a modern society. >It's true that most of those who receive the money taken from you in taxes will not have 'earned' it either. Most of those that built the society that you're benefiting from are dead -- the scientists that enabled modern technology, the industrialists who built the economy, the soldiers and politicians who gave us our free society -- the most important work was done by those who came before us. These who came before us chose to do whatever they did. Someone being born didn't choose to be born, so it's not fair to suggest they have some kind of obligation to the previous generation. A contract to which one party did not consent is not a valid contract.

notahacker 11y ago
Given that Singapore is a medium-sized city providing financial services for an entire continent, it's probably not a model of fiscal sustainability the rest of the world can readily follow And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe. I didn't contract with the government to accept their jurisdiction over territory (though every tax I've ever paid has been due to a free and fair decision to do business and make purchases on their terms), but then I didn't contract with wealthy people to agree to their ownership of assets they claim rights to stop me using or charge me for using either... Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist.
- logicchains 11y ago
  >And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe. There's a big gap between "significantly poorer" and subsistence farmers. As in, an order of magnitude of GDP in many cases from that list (e.g. Russia). >Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist. The difference is that government necessarily involves force, due to requiring involuntary taxation (an entity funded by voluntary donations isn't generally considered a government, it's considered a charity), while it's possible for a group of people to agree to trade together and respect some notion of property (be it the strong capitalist notion of property or the weak anarchist notion of "possessions") without requiring force.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    Russia certainly isn't a subsistence state, but I'd hesitate to call it a "modern society" too. It's also a petro-state that enjoys the luxury of deriving around a third of government revenues from oil and gas. Most of Western Europe has to make up that gap with additional taxes even before it starts to provide its citizens with more support. You can have a perfectly harmonious society where everyone within it voluntarily respects each others' possessions, but you're still going to need force (or the implied threat of force) to prevent outsiders who aren't part of that particular social contract and don't particularly want to be from making use of that property. The possibility that someone might not voluntarily accept a social contract over the ownership of property is an existential threat to property rights which can only be resolved through [implied] force. Hence de jure and de facto the basis of all property and trade is the coercion that enforces its rules, whether that's by a government institution or a group of friends with big guns.

notahacker 11y ago

Given that Singapore is a medium-sized city providing financial services for an entire continent, it's probably not a model of fiscal sustainability the rest of the world can readily follow And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe. I didn't contract with the government to accept their jurisdiction over territory (though every tax I've ever paid has been due to a free and fair decision to do business and make purchases on their terms), but then I didn't contract with wealthy people to agree to their ownership of assets they claim rights to stop me using or charge me for using either... Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist.

logicchains 11y ago
>And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe. There's a big gap between "significantly poorer" and subsistence farmers. As in, an order of magnitude of GDP in many cases from that list (e.g. Russia). >Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist. The difference is that government necessarily involves force, due to requiring involuntary taxation (an entity funded by voluntary donations isn't generally considered a government, it's considered a charity), while it's possible for a group of people to agree to trade together and respect some notion of property (be it the strong capitalist notion of property or the weak anarchist notion of "possessions") without requiring force.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Russia certainly isn't a subsistence state, but I'd hesitate to call it a "modern society" too. It's also a petro-state that enjoys the luxury of deriving around a third of government revenues from oil and gas. Most of Western Europe has to make up that gap with additional taxes even before it starts to provide its citizens with more support. You can have a perfectly harmonious society where everyone within it voluntarily respects each others' possessions, but you're still going to need force (or the implied threat of force) to prevent outsiders who aren't part of that particular social contract and don't particularly want to be from making use of that property. The possibility that someone might not voluntarily accept a social contract over the ownership of property is an existential threat to property rights which can only be resolved through [implied] force. Hence de jure and de facto the basis of all property and trade is the coercion that enforces its rules, whether that's by a government institution or a group of friends with big guns.