A lot of misinformation in the comments on this feed. I can't persuade their authors that their opinions are on the wrong side of history, but I can say that a

A lot of misinformation in the comments on this feed. I can't persuade their authors that their opinions are on the wrong side of history, but I can say that as I've become wealthier I've felt the desire to tip at least 20% and secretly donate to worthy causes. I’ve also felt troubled by this because it is charity. I'm voting with my dollars for the people and businesses that I believe contribute to my community. Take that to its logical conclusion and it means that the more money I have, the more influence I have in society. This is antithetical to my dream of a future where people are freed from fruitless labor and authoritarian control. We all live two lives - the one of our dreams and the one that happens while we’re making other plans. Right now the vast majority of us have been forced into a default life of making rent and reactionary decision making. Some of us have been lucky enough to find respite in yolo or living for others through our children. But fundamentally we’re still trapped in the rat race. I’ve come to the conclusion that money represents time that someone has sacrificed for someone else. So the quarter of my income I saved in my bank account last year represents one year of my life, and you can tell by that ratio roughly how much I make per year. Go down a few tens of thousands of dollars and the ratio falls to zero, or even negative. Go up a little the other direction and the ratio approaches 100% and then celebrity. About half of Americans have no savings, which means they aren’t being compensated for their lives, not really. So I’ve already stolen from them, by the fact that I have disposable income and they don’t. A handful of Americans make more money from their wealth than they would working, if they ever started (optional work is called a hobby). So they’ve already stolen from me, because I have to work and they don’t. Yet people make the argument time and again that people with the least amount of money (who have stolen the least) should pay higher taxes and the people who have “acquired” the most money should pay lower taxes as some kind of post-incentive. Riiight. So this old notion that taxation is theft doesn’t make sense because money itself is theft. Hoarding vast amounts of it from others so they have to work harder just leads to the vicious cycle of inequality we’re stuck in. No, the best way forward that I can see is to opt out of a high income and instead work every day towards a vision of the future where money isn’t needed anymore. Where people make bigger contributions doing what they want to do with their lives than they ever could by laboring under someone else’s thumb. This is going back to Jeffersonian ideas of trusting society as a whole to make governing decisions rather than leaving elites to pick winners and losers. I would rather take a median income to provide everyone else at least a basic income and watch our culture flourish than subscribe to a meritocratic ideal that crowns the fastest rat.