4 ms·

In a capitalist system, you become wealthy by creating value for people in mutually beneficial and consensual transactions. Tax discourages that kind of value c

In a capitalist system, you become wealthy by creating value for people in mutually beneficial and consensual transactions. Tax discourages that kind of value creation. You can try to hide this effect by using really large numbers (they'll still have $500M!) but that's deceptive because, even if their motivation wouldn't have been affected (which I disagree with), these uber-wealthy people are the exception, not the norm. You can't base a tax system on taxing them alone.

geofft 11y ago
I think the case for their motivation being affected makes sense in a physical-goods economy. If a woodworker sells $500M of chairs, sure, there's suddenly much less motivation to spend the same amount of parts and labor on the next chair for 1% of the profit. But for other kinds of revenue that makes less sense. The 5 millionth copy of Windows does as much good for that particular customer as every previous one, at essentially zero marginal cost. Does knowing that, in advance, discourage you from making Windows as good as it is? Anyway, my point was that this is something we can have a reasoned discussion about, without either side needing to poison the well by making analogies to immorality. You can have a perfectly moral society that's either biased or not biased against the hyper-rich. If you believe one of these is wrong as policy, that's fine. If you believe the hyper-rich don't matter to the fairness of a society, that's a perfectly reasonable argument. But if you believe one of these is so wrong as to be equivalent to racism, it seems very difficult to justify that claim, and if you can't, it seems highly counterproductive to discourse.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  Analogies aside, there is a moral component here. Everyone has a moral claim to the fruits of their labor, however rich or poor they are. You need some amount of tax to pay for our collective defense, police, courts, and mandatory education, but much more than that is immoral. Remember what taxation ultimately is: the police coming to your door and picking your pocket at gunpoint. It rarely comes to that, but that's fundamentally what separates it from voluntary charity. The "soak the rich" approach is immoral in my book. Any discourse that doesn't consider the moral angle to these issues is incomplete.
  - x0x0 11y ago
    You appear to find it inconceivable that people don't share your morals.
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      Not at all. On some objective universalist level, moral relativism is right. Where it's dead wrong is that we should stop defending our way of life and our moral codes. We all have our own moralities and seek to shape the world according to it. As an side, capitalism is more effective at achieving socialism's moral ends than socialism is. It's something people should get behind even if they don't place moral value on private property. You might disagree, but we can argue about that on the level of facts.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    FDR saved American capitalism with the New Deal. By instituting government welfare programs, not even actual socialism but the beginnings of a social safety net, he prevented the same sort of civil disorder and revolution that happened to Europe in failing, unequal societies. Cultivating a happy citizenry is collective defense. When the electorate is well-fed, well-clothed, healthy, educated, and with career prospects, then there will be no bloody revolutions and disorder in the streets. Better our taxes pay for UHC or free university tuition, than even more militarized police forces, drone fleets, and a larger surveillance state to maintain order.
  - ubernostrum 11y ago
    The "soak the rich" approach is immoral in my book. Any discourse that doesn't consider the moral angle to these issues is incomplete. You should probably read the history of US inheritance laws. They were deliberately designed from the start to "soak the rich", for the express purpose of avoiding a European-style hereditary aristocracy where massive wealth (and the corresponding societal influence/power) would be passed from father to son for multiple generations.
  - geofft 11y ago
    At the risk of this turning into the low-quality discourse that followed Obama's "You didn't build that" soundbite a while ago, I'll point out that there is validity to that soundbite. The fruits of your labor only exist within an organized society. There's a reason that entrepreneurs prefer not just certain countries but certain places in certain countries for building companies: where you work, who you're near, what infrastructure is around, what customers are around, what regulatory frameworks are in place and what laws are interpreted in what ways, etc. all contribute to a more or less successful company. And those things can in large part be traced to good or bad governance. What would a fair rent in Galt's Gulch be? What should John Galt have charged the other strikers for not only collective defense like the distortion field, but for the community existing? For the opportunity to live in such a society? If the US government collapse didn't happen, the number of people Galt would have wanted to live there would have been fairly high, and their willingness to pay, once they knew what he was up to, would also have been high. And he had a genuinely good product, and every right to eject people from Galt's Gulch at gunpoint. Taxes up to that point are certainly fair. Whether governments as currently implemented are the right entities to collect those taxes is a question (though, by no means interpret me as advocating a Randian anarcho-capitalism just because I used Galt's Gulch as an example!), but your labor is fruitful within a society, and that society certainly has the right to charge you for it, or demand, at gunpoint if necessary, that you stop taking advantage of what they provide for free. (You always have the right to opt out of taxes if you opt out of the taxing society, as Roger Ver did.) For a less fictional valley: how much does the government fund Bay Area universities in the form of research grants? And how much did the tech industry gain from that, and what would a fair price for access to that have been? Imagine a parallel universe where Stanford and Berkeley never got a penny of government funds. How much should a VC or founder in this parallel universe pay for transportation to ours? Denying people the fruit of their labor is immoral. But society collectively also labors to build a better society.
devdas 11y ago
However, if your mutually beneficial transaction has negative externalities, those need to be corrected. Taxation is one way of achieving that correction.

geofft 11y ago

I think the case for their motivation being affected makes sense in a physical-goods economy. If a woodworker sells $500M of chairs, sure, there's suddenly much less motivation to spend the same amount of parts and labor on the next chair for 1% of the profit. But for other kinds of revenue that makes less sense. The 5 millionth copy of Windows does as much good for that particular customer as every previous one, at essentially zero marginal cost. Does knowing that, in advance, discourage you from making Windows as good as it is? Anyway, my point was that this is something we can have a reasoned discussion about, without either side needing to poison the well by making analogies to immorality. You can have a perfectly moral society that's either biased or not biased against the hyper-rich. If you believe one of these is wrong as policy, that's fine. If you believe the hyper-rich don't matter to the fairness of a society, that's a perfectly reasonable argument. But if you believe one of these is so wrong as to be equivalent to racism, it seems very difficult to justify that claim, and if you can't, it seems highly counterproductive to discourse.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
marcoperaza 11y ago
Analogies aside, there is a moral component here. Everyone has a moral claim to the fruits of their labor, however rich or poor they are. You need some amount of tax to pay for our collective defense, police, courts, and mandatory education, but much more than that is immoral. Remember what taxation ultimately is: the police coming to your door and picking your pocket at gunpoint. It rarely comes to that, but that's fundamentally what separates it from voluntary charity. The "soak the rich" approach is immoral in my book. Any discourse that doesn't consider the moral angle to these issues is incomplete.
- x0x0 11y ago
  You appear to find it inconceivable that people don't share your morals.
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    Not at all. On some objective universalist level, moral relativism is right. Where it's dead wrong is that we should stop defending our way of life and our moral codes. We all have our own moralities and seek to shape the world according to it. As an side, capitalism is more effective at achieving socialism's moral ends than socialism is. It's something people should get behind even if they don't place moral value on private property. You might disagree, but we can argue about that on the level of facts.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  FDR saved American capitalism with the New Deal. By instituting government welfare programs, not even actual socialism but the beginnings of a social safety net, he prevented the same sort of civil disorder and revolution that happened to Europe in failing, unequal societies. Cultivating a happy citizenry is collective defense. When the electorate is well-fed, well-clothed, healthy, educated, and with career prospects, then there will be no bloody revolutions and disorder in the streets. Better our taxes pay for UHC or free university tuition, than even more militarized police forces, drone fleets, and a larger surveillance state to maintain order.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  The "soak the rich" approach is immoral in my book. Any discourse that doesn't consider the moral angle to these issues is incomplete. You should probably read the history of US inheritance laws. They were deliberately designed from the start to "soak the rich", for the express purpose of avoiding a European-style hereditary aristocracy where massive wealth (and the corresponding societal influence/power) would be passed from father to son for multiple generations.
- geofft 11y ago
  At the risk of this turning into the low-quality discourse that followed Obama's "You didn't build that" soundbite a while ago, I'll point out that there is validity to that soundbite. The fruits of your labor only exist within an organized society. There's a reason that entrepreneurs prefer not just certain countries but certain places in certain countries for building companies: where you work, who you're near, what infrastructure is around, what customers are around, what regulatory frameworks are in place and what laws are interpreted in what ways, etc. all contribute to a more or less successful company. And those things can in large part be traced to good or bad governance. What would a fair rent in Galt's Gulch be? What should John Galt have charged the other strikers for not only collective defense like the distortion field, but for the community existing? For the opportunity to live in such a society? If the US government collapse didn't happen, the number of people Galt would have wanted to live there would have been fairly high, and their willingness to pay, once they knew what he was up to, would also have been high. And he had a genuinely good product, and every right to eject people from Galt's Gulch at gunpoint. Taxes up to that point are certainly fair. Whether governments as currently implemented are the right entities to collect those taxes is a question (though, by no means interpret me as advocating a Randian anarcho-capitalism just because I used Galt's Gulch as an example!), but your labor is fruitful within a society, and that society certainly has the right to charge you for it, or demand, at gunpoint if necessary, that you stop taking advantage of what they provide for free. (You always have the right to opt out of taxes if you opt out of the taxing society, as Roger Ver did.) For a less fictional valley: how much does the government fund Bay Area universities in the form of research grants? And how much did the tech industry gain from that, and what would a fair price for access to that have been? Imagine a parallel universe where Stanford and Berkeley never got a penny of government funds. How much should a VC or founder in this parallel universe pay for transportation to ours? Denying people the fruit of their labor is immoral. But society collectively also labors to build a better society.

devdas 11y ago

However, if your mutually beneficial transaction has negative externalities, those need to be corrected. Taxation is one way of achieving that correction.