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I think this argument is presuming that when someone is looking at an income of $1 billion per year, they will simply accept that fate and write a check to the

I think this argument is presuming that when someone is looking at an income of $1 billion per year, they will simply accept that fate and write a check to the US government. This sounds astoundingly unlikely, in my opinion. This person who's making $1 billion will simply put their money someplace else, they will figure out a way so that they need not claim it as income. They may push some of this money back into their company, perhaps raising the wages of some (or all) of their employees. They may form a new company to shelter this income and this new company may do something fabulously exciting and, thus, generate another shockingly large sum for this individual. Both of these sound okay to me.

pc86 11y ago
> They may push some of this money back into their company, perhaps raising the wages of some (or all) of their employees. This is a good point that I've never seen brought up before. How much of increasing inequality (whatever your definition of that) can be attributed to stagnating wages at the bottom 4 quintiles, because the tax climate isn't sufficiently incentivizing reinvestment? On the whole my first instinct is to oppose new or increased taxes if only on philosophical grounds, but this may be cause for a second look.
squozzer 11y ago
This seems like a good spot to go meta - what exactly does someone who has achieved a level of financial success owe the rest of us? The Christian church has a well-known - at least among churchgoers - figure, which is 10% or a tithe. Ask someone who favors government and they will probably say something like "as much as we need." Ask someone who does not and they will probably say something like "as little as possible." It's a long shot but it might help if we had some consensus of what constitutes an equitable "contribution."
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's why Effective Altruism movement settled on the 10% of income as a default "good enough" contribution. As Scott Alexander explained in [0], "It’s ten percent because that is the standard decreed by Giving What We Can and the effective altruist community. Why should we believe their standard? I think we should believe it because if we reject it in favor of “No, you are a bad person unless you give all of it,” then everyone will just sit around feeling very guilty and doing nothing. But if we very clearly say “You have discharged your moral duty if you give ten percent or more,” then many people will give ten percent or more. The most important thing is having a Schelling point, and ten percent is nice, round, divinely ordained, and – crucially – the Schelling point upon which we have already settled. It is an active Schelling point." It's still better to get a suboptimal outcome than to not get any outcome at all. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-every...
ryandrake 11y ago
Those are all problems that can be solved with sufficient political will. Shocking that politicians who are owned by the wealthy do not have the will to write loophole-free tax policy.

pc86 11y ago

> They may push some of this money back into their company, perhaps raising the wages of some (or all) of their employees. This is a good point that I've never seen brought up before. How much of increasing inequality (whatever your definition of that) can be attributed to stagnating wages at the bottom 4 quintiles, because the tax climate isn't sufficiently incentivizing reinvestment? On the whole my first instinct is to oppose new or increased taxes if only on philosophical grounds, but this may be cause for a second look.

squozzer 11y ago

This seems like a good spot to go meta - what exactly does someone who has achieved a level of financial success owe the rest of us? The Christian church has a well-known - at least among churchgoers - figure, which is 10% or a tithe. Ask someone who favors government and they will probably say something like "as much as we need." Ask someone who does not and they will probably say something like "as little as possible." It's a long shot but it might help if we had some consensus of what constitutes an equitable "contribution."

TeMPOraL 11y ago
That's why Effective Altruism movement settled on the 10% of income as a default "good enough" contribution. As Scott Alexander explained in [0], "It’s ten percent because that is the standard decreed by Giving What We Can and the effective altruist community. Why should we believe their standard? I think we should believe it because if we reject it in favor of “No, you are a bad person unless you give all of it,” then everyone will just sit around feeling very guilty and doing nothing. But if we very clearly say “You have discharged your moral duty if you give ten percent or more,” then many people will give ten percent or more. The most important thing is having a Schelling point, and ten percent is nice, round, divinely ordained, and – crucially – the Schelling point upon which we have already settled. It is an active Schelling point." It's still better to get a suboptimal outcome than to not get any outcome at all. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-every...

ryandrake 11y ago

Those are all problems that can be solved with sufficient political will. Shocking that politicians who are owned by the wealthy do not have the will to write loophole-free tax policy.