3 ms·

Rich people contribute more to society, so the second order effects of benefiting rich people end up benefiting the larger population as well.

plesner 10y ago
[citation needed]
- Hondor 10y ago
  "top 3,000 earners pay more tax than bottom 9 million" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11233686/How-top-3000-earners-pay-more-tax-than-bottom-9-million.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11233... There's also the basic observation that many big companies that provide valuable products and services pay rich people lots of money to run them or compensate them for their financial help. Would there be an Uber at all without anyone getting rich off it? Another observation - when we need a doctor or a lawyer, we find their contributions to us to be worth so much we'll pay them more than we pay a cleaner. After all, we could do the cleaning ourselves if we had to but the barrier to start operating on ourselves or writing our own contracts is higher and those rich people have invested work in overcoming that barrier so they could provide those services to people who can't.
  - plesner 10y ago
    Isn't that basically what you'd expect with a progressive tax system? Paying taxes is not the only way to contribute to society -- almost all the money people earn do to some extent, through taxes, and consumption, and investments, etc. Which contributes more I don't know. That's why I was hoping for a citation. To your second point, there is evidence that CEO performance is negatively related to their pay: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085. Measuring competence is difficult, wealth is a appealing proxy but maybe not that reliable.
    - hughw 10y ago
      If all non- or low-taxpayers removed themselves from society, you'd quickly find out who is contributing and who isn't.
gajjanag 10y ago
> Rich people contribute more to society Maybe in the sense of economic contributions, but this is far from clear for contribution defined in a general sense.

plesner 10y ago

[citation needed]

Hondor 10y ago
"top 3,000 earners pay more tax than bottom 9 million" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11233686/How-top-3000-earners-pay-more-tax-than-bottom-9-million.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11233... There's also the basic observation that many big companies that provide valuable products and services pay rich people lots of money to run them or compensate them for their financial help. Would there be an Uber at all without anyone getting rich off it? Another observation - when we need a doctor or a lawyer, we find their contributions to us to be worth so much we'll pay them more than we pay a cleaner. After all, we could do the cleaning ourselves if we had to but the barrier to start operating on ourselves or writing our own contracts is higher and those rich people have invested work in overcoming that barrier so they could provide those services to people who can't.
- plesner 10y ago
  Isn't that basically what you'd expect with a progressive tax system? Paying taxes is not the only way to contribute to society -- almost all the money people earn do to some extent, through taxes, and consumption, and investments, etc. Which contributes more I don't know. That's why I was hoping for a citation. To your second point, there is evidence that CEO performance is negatively related to their pay: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085. Measuring competence is difficult, wealth is a appealing proxy but maybe not that reliable.
  - hughw 10y ago
    If all non- or low-taxpayers removed themselves from society, you'd quickly find out who is contributing and who isn't.

gajjanag 10y ago

> Rich people contribute more to society Maybe in the sense of economic contributions, but this is far from clear for contribution defined in a general sense.