4 ms·

While you are entitled to that opinion, I think it's really hard to say with any confidence what your attitude would be at a vastly different income level. It m

While you are entitled to that opinion, I think it's really hard to say with any confidence what your attitude would be at a vastly different income level. It may be useful to frame the idea in a different way: You sound as if you'd approve of a ~53% tax rate at an income level higher than your own, but not necessarily at your own level. For the sake of argument, if you were to work just as hard for every dollar at that level as you do now for every dollar, but simply worked that much more (so every dollar required the same amount of work), do you think you'd still be willing to only keep 47 cents of each dollar? Similarly, if you were earning 7 figures and wanted to help society / people in need, would the government really be your best choice in terms of bang for your buck?

harryh 11y ago
> if you were earning 7 figures and wanted to help society / people in need, would the government really be your best choice in terms of bang for your buck? Has anyone ever tried to make a serious attempt to analytically tackle this question? There are a lot of people that try to rank charities against each other in terms of effectiveness. Could the same be done with government? Or even some portion of government? I have absolutely no idea, but this seems like an interesting question.
- morgante 11y ago
  > Could the same be done with government? I don't think so, just because the goods it provides are so numerous and muddled. Take one example: the fact that if I sign a contract I will feel legally obligated to follow through on it. This provides tremendous social good (billions of dollars worth), but it's very hard to quantify exactly how much. Then you have to figure out how much it costs to provide that good. Should you include the total cost of government? No, probably not, because that includes lots of other goods. But the direct cost of say the courts isn't enough because they can only function thanks to the explicit backing of law enforcement and the implicit backing of the military. It might be useful to start with a comparative analysis for governments though. It's probably impossible to delineate and assess every good the government provides, but you can compare the cost of governance and standard of living between countries. In such an analysis, I highly doubt the US comes out well. Personally, I am 99% sure that my donations to the Against Malaria Foundation provide more total social good per dollar than my taxes.
  - harryh 11y ago
    I tend to agree with you about the challenges. Even so, I'm now curious to know if some clever researcher has ever made an attempt!
  - baddox 11y ago
    > Take one example: the fact that if I sign a contract I will feel legally obligated to follow through on it. This provides tremendous social good (billions of dollars worth), but it's very hard to quantify exactly how much. It's not so clear how much of a service the government is providing there. Do you eagerly sign contracts with people you suspect would cheat you if they thought they could get away with it?
    - morgante 11y ago
      > Do you eagerly sign contracts with people you suspect would cheat you if they thought they could get away with it? Yes, especially you include corporations as "people." Without the rule of law, I'm quite sure that corporations would find even more ways to generally break contracts and not honor their commitments.
      - baddox 11y ago
        Why would they do that, and why would any corporations deal with corporations with a history of cheating?
        ori_b 11y ago
        Because the likelyhood of cheating is low, largely because there is a legal recourse to recover the costs of cheating.
- baddox 11y ago
  I don't know if anyone has made a serious attempt to tackle that question, but I would also be surprised if many people genuinely believe that donating a dollar to the US federal government is better for society than donating it to any remotely competent charity. If you're donating to specific government programs, sure, some of those are pretty similar to charities (although you can probably find a more efficient charity in nearly any area of focus). But simply donating a dollar into the funding of the US government, and having it split the same way that all US government revenue gets spent, seems to me like an obviously poor choice.
pmorici 11y ago
"Similarly, if you were earning 7 figures and wanted to help society / people in need, would the government really be your best choice in terms of bang for your buck?" Under the current tax code, people already have the ability to donate up to 50% of their income to charity tax free. How many people do you know who donate 50% of their income to charity every year?
- muzz 11y ago
  What is the 50% limitation? In theory, aren't all charitable contributions a deduction? I.e., even up to 100%?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
malyk 11y ago
I make somewhere around ~150k and feel like people in my income bracket should pay more taxes. I absolutely have no sympathy for a household making $1M "only" keeping $0.47 of ever additional dollar. And yes. I could write a check to the IRS, but it isn't about my $2000, it's about the cumulative revenue from taxing everyone in and above my income more.

harryh 11y ago

> if you were earning 7 figures and wanted to help society / people in need, would the government really be your best choice in terms of bang for your buck? Has anyone ever tried to make a serious attempt to analytically tackle this question? There are a lot of people that try to rank charities against each other in terms of effectiveness. Could the same be done with government? Or even some portion of government? I have absolutely no idea, but this seems like an interesting question.

morgante 11y ago
> Could the same be done with government? I don't think so, just because the goods it provides are so numerous and muddled. Take one example: the fact that if I sign a contract I will feel legally obligated to follow through on it. This provides tremendous social good (billions of dollars worth), but it's very hard to quantify exactly how much. Then you have to figure out how much it costs to provide that good. Should you include the total cost of government? No, probably not, because that includes lots of other goods. But the direct cost of say the courts isn't enough because they can only function thanks to the explicit backing of law enforcement and the implicit backing of the military. It might be useful to start with a comparative analysis for governments though. It's probably impossible to delineate and assess every good the government provides, but you can compare the cost of governance and standard of living between countries. In such an analysis, I highly doubt the US comes out well. Personally, I am 99% sure that my donations to the Against Malaria Foundation provide more total social good per dollar than my taxes.
- harryh 11y ago
  I tend to agree with you about the challenges. Even so, I'm now curious to know if some clever researcher has ever made an attempt!
- baddox 11y ago
  > Take one example: the fact that if I sign a contract I will feel legally obligated to follow through on it. This provides tremendous social good (billions of dollars worth), but it's very hard to quantify exactly how much. It's not so clear how much of a service the government is providing there. Do you eagerly sign contracts with people you suspect would cheat you if they thought they could get away with it?
  - morgante 11y ago
    > Do you eagerly sign contracts with people you suspect would cheat you if they thought they could get away with it? Yes, especially you include corporations as "people." Without the rule of law, I'm quite sure that corporations would find even more ways to generally break contracts and not honor their commitments.
    - baddox 11y ago
      Why would they do that, and why would any corporations deal with corporations with a history of cheating?
      - ori_b 11y ago
        Because the likelyhood of cheating is low, largely because there is a legal recourse to recover the costs of cheating.
baddox 11y ago
I don't know if anyone has made a serious attempt to tackle that question, but I would also be surprised if many people genuinely believe that donating a dollar to the US federal government is better for society than donating it to any remotely competent charity. If you're donating to specific government programs, sure, some of those are pretty similar to charities (although you can probably find a more efficient charity in nearly any area of focus). But simply donating a dollar into the funding of the US government, and having it split the same way that all US government revenue gets spent, seems to me like an obviously poor choice.

pmorici 11y ago

"Similarly, if you were earning 7 figures and wanted to help society / people in need, would the government really be your best choice in terms of bang for your buck?" Under the current tax code, people already have the ability to donate up to 50% of their income to charity tax free. How many people do you know who donate 50% of their income to charity every year?

muzz 11y ago
What is the 50% limitation? In theory, aren't all charitable contributions a deduction? I.e., even up to 100%?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

malyk 11y ago

I make somewhere around ~150k and feel like people in my income bracket should pay more taxes. I absolutely have no sympathy for a household making $1M "only" keeping $0.47 of ever additional dollar. And yes. I could write a check to the IRS, but it isn't about my $2000, it's about the cumulative revenue from taxing everyone in and above my income more.