11 ms·

Gates says billionaires should pay 'significantly' more taxes

83 points by sharkweek 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tensor_rank_0 9y ago
that way it is harder for anyone to catch up to him
- codefined 9y ago
  I'm not sure if this post is sarcastic or not, you realise he's giving away something like 99% of his money?
  - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
    > giving away to a foundation which he controls. its how the ultra-wealthy preserve their wealth, its pretty standard issue.
    - throwaway1748 9y ago
      That's a ridiculous statement in Gates' case. The Gates Foundation is giving away tons and tons of money at a rapid pace: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Gran... They're not "preserving" his wealth in any way whatsoever
    - skellera 9y ago
      His foundation does more for the world than most countries. He's going to be dead. What are you trying to get at?
      - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
        people in those countries tend to be highly critical of the actual affect of his interventions. his children are in school, but his friend and fellow-billionaire-advocate-for-higher-taxes-on-billionaires, Warren Buffett, is doing the same thing. his children work for the foundations that will administer his wealth after he dies. its only logical, why would he or anyone else let some random person manage the foundation? you want someone who you can trust. you dont have to consider it a bad thing but please dont think "giving your money to a foundation that you set up" is anything like "giving it away". there are things the ultra-wealthy do in order to save their wealth from estate taxes and setting up a foundation is one of them.
        profunctor 9y ago
        The foundation must give away all of it's money within 50 years of their death. Sure their kids will have nice jobs but I do see that as altruistic.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > that way it is harder for anyone to catch up to him It's the opposite; it would be easier for people to catch up. By providing more funding for health, housing, and education, more people would have the opportunity to become wealthy themselves, and to do great things for society. How many potentially great developers are lost in awful educational systems, for example? The U.S. is supposed to be land of opportunity, where the belief is that anyone can thrive given liberty and opportunity, and that talent does not depend on the wealth of your parents. Right now, college education is determined, more than anything else, by parental wealth or income. If you mean that it's harder for other billionaires to catch him, it's kind to consider their welfare. But as Gates would pay more tax than the other billionaires, they would catch up to him.
  - KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
    >The U.S. is supposed to be land of opportunity, where the belief is that anyone can thrive given liberty and opportunity, and that talent does not depend on the wealth of your parent To offer an alternative interpretation, I’ve always seen the “American Dream” as opportunity to improve your position in life, rather than creating an entirely-level playing field for all. The latter experiment has been attempted many times in the 20th century in many nations, and the results have not been encouraging, to say the least. Besides wealth-of-money, many kids benefit from parents with wealth of character, intelligence, wisdom, and even love; the importance of these cannot be understated. I agree, of course, that wealth has never been more important in determining one’s ability to receive a good education, and that is a major problem. One solution could be to increase funding for public schools... but I am rapidly losing faith in the results they deliver. The most disadvantaged people are priced-out of the market for private schools, and the same can be said for many in the middle-class. There is also a fundamental problem at play: those not suited for academia, but have much value to offer society, are always going to slip through the cracks under the “must-be-college-educated” paradigm. I want plenty of low-skilled jobs with a reasonable wage available for those who just want an income, while they tinker away at their genius invention in the evening, for example.
    - rootusrootus 9y ago
headsoup 9y ago
"Why aren't we doing a better job for those people?" Because a) they're not 'those people' and b) the governments don't represent those people anymore either
forapurpose 9y ago
People talk about a 'flat tax', where everyone pays the same rate, as being fair. But is mathematical equality really fair? * If we want a truly flat tax, everyone would pay the exact same amount. In the U.S., that would be roughly $14,000 from each adult to cover all funding. Obviously, that's absurd. * Or we could use the 'flat tax' (or 'equal rate') described above, where everyone pays the same rate. In the U.S., that would be very roughly a 17% tax on all income, corporate or individual. But I don't think the 'equal rate' tax above is really equal. If you make $10,000 in a year, $1,700 is a much larger blow than $1.7 million is if you make $10 million. * What is fair, IMHO, is equal sacrifice. It's harder to quantify, but the taxes paid by people making $10 million, or $100,000 or $10,000 should cause roughly equivalent pain. It depends on the individual's situation and we'd never do it perfectly, but maybe there is an economic theory of utility or quality of life that could be used as a proxy; maybe we should subtract necessities and calculate it based on discretionary income.
- addicted 9y ago
  A flat tax makes no sense. To be clear, there may be additional policies associated with a flat tax that may make a lot of sense. I'm talking purely about the "flat percentage" bit. The only advantage it provides is a slightly less complicated calculation. But it simplifies a calculation that can be represented in a few lines of code and a single excel formula. As a trade off, it completely ignores the idea that the marginal value of money changes depending on the base. If you earn $50k another $10k has a lot more marginal value than if you're earning $500k. It sounds good but it's terrible policy.
  - sebleon 9y ago
    What makes it terrible?
- Latty 9y ago
  I'd be stronger and say flat taxes are nonsense. All the people that go on about incentive and the open market amaze me when they claim that it's a disincentive for people to work when you lose say, 50% over some high amount. Once you have a ton of wealth, it just becomes relatively worthless to you. People with a ton of wealth don't add (significant) value except by providing that wealth to others, which then nets them even more. We should be trying to limit the ability to just continually accrue wealth. At some point it stops serving society for an individual to have more. The incentive is gone - no one is not going to try because if they are so successful they earn over $10m say, they will not get any more.
monkeypizza 9y ago
Not distinguishing between additive and multiplicative "more" makes this an unclear message. People constantly mix up rates (*) with absolutes (+), and reinterpret statements made referring to one as referring to the other. "More people use the internet in China than in the US" - whether that's true depends on the interpretation of "more". This is intolerable and everyone with a mathematical background should strive to be clear on which "more" they are using.
- Latty 9y ago
  In this case, I'd argue both.
- gt_ 9y ago
  If you’re not joking, this one: > He is arguing for a relative more, the starting point at which is specified as the current state.
  - monkeypizza 9y ago
    I don't feel that he has guaranteed that all readers of the article will come to the conclusion you have reached. Here is how I could interpret his brief quote: 1. more in absolute terms (which they already pay due to higher income) 2. more in relative terms (progressive taxes) 3. more than now (what you claim). I don't that it's clear what he means in in the story, though. It could easily be taken to mean "yes, we pay more, and we should pay more (than others) so I don't support the republican plan!". Your interpretation is also valid - "the rich should pay more (than we do now)".
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Here's the original: https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/18/politics/bill-gates-taxes-cnntv/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/18/politics/bill-gates-taxes-cnn... "I need to pay higher taxes," Gates, who is worth over $90 billion, said in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday. "I've paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes," he said. That first sentence sort of simplifies the interpretation.
KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
At the risk of sounding glib, I can offer Mr. Gates >220 trillion reasons why increased taxes won’t necessarily improve the fiscal solvency of the United States, in and of itself. Debt and un-funded liabilities are staggering, and it’s politically unviable to implement plans to reduce that (although lip-service is paid), IMO. I’d like to hear more about how those taxes would be spent.
- RobLach 9y ago
  I personally feel that taxation shouldn't even be that debatable in the legislature. How it should be is just covering the cost of a moving-average window for the previous x amount of years of spending mapping according to a integration across income. It's nonsensically inefficient to debate on taxation without consideration of spending, and vice versa.
  - KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
    >covering the cost of a moving-average window for the previous x amount of years of spending In principle, I like the concept of anchoring taxation to spending, because it could mitigate the political viability of spending what we don't have by making the pain immediate. How would you integrate welfare, tax-credits, healthcare, and other federally-funded entitlements into this solution? How can we avoid a large (well, larger) schism between these groups, in the short-term, keeping in mind that we obviously want to increase mobility from that group into the tax-paying group?
    - toast0 9y ago
      In the proposed system, I would imagine Social Security and Medicare should generally operate separately from income taxes, but if the revenue from their specific taxes isn't enough for their spending, taxes would be adjusted up by default. Congressional action could adjust benefits down or transfer money from the general fund. Welfare, tax credits, and healthcare (outside of Medicare) is all spending, paid for by the general fund. The proposal is to automatically adjust taxes to match.
AckSyn 9y ago
His statement, like many others, regarding the December passage of the tax reform fall flat. Looking at the source provided by CNN: http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/new-2018-tax-brackets/index.html?iid=EL http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/new-2018-tax-brackets/... you can clearly see that taxes go down and benefit individuals and married couples. In fact, now that the personal exemption has been removed and the state & local deduction have a cap, people are paying more of "their fare share" in regards to this specific aspect of taxes. The child tax credit was DOUBLED per child to $2000 annually for married couples who make up to $400k! Classroom supplies, medical care, and and the NEW student loan deductions are still safe to deduct. The list of these benefits goes on. Some exemptions were removed (because frankly many of them shouldn't have been there), and others were extended which overall ends up helping more than hurting. His claim that it benefits the rich is absurd and the spin that's put on the reform is equally so.
pvaldes 9y ago
I wonder the opposite question; why there is not a legal limit to the number of "milk" that the government can suck from one human. Is a mystery to me. Maybe people that had paid many billions in taxes, supposedly in benefit of the entire country, should be thanked, granted an "untaxable status" from now on, and left alone to live the rest of their lives. If somebody could pay in advance the taxes for the next ten years in just one take, this could help the government to attract extra money in scarce times, when they need it most. And of course the first country doing such bold movement would attract lots of rich people.
- DoveBrown 9y ago
  I'd personally prefer if we ameliorated your paid tax so that the rate applied over your entire lifetime earnings. That way you could use the same progressive rate but windfall years aren't a special case and lean years are an example of failing to optimise your taxes. You could even have the government refund tax if the windfall event was a once off. Extra bonus you can get rid of many loophole taxes (like Capital Gains and Inheritance taxes) since these feel unfair to take on a single year basis.
- imtringued 9y ago
  It would also make them "sticky" and less likely to move away.
- Can_Not 9y ago
  Taxes are what keep the society you were raised in running. You didn't have to pay a comical amount of tolls for roads and bridges, they existed and were maintained. You likely went to free 12 years of education. Some countries do free college. There were police officers to stop the streets from being a war zone. Fire fighters and fire safety laws prevented a single fire in your neighborhood from being the whole neighborhood on fire. You probably don't have a crippling disease from lead toys in your childhood (or at least your children didn't/won't, depending on your age). You probably weren't kidnapped from your home to work in a child slave army or diamond mines. I get that a government shouldn't have infinite capacity to "milk" someone for free. But why should anyone be given infinite capacity to milk society? When you make 1000x more than you would ever need to live a fulfilling life while multitudes are impoverished, you need to pay taxes so society can build the next successful generation of people. When you stumble upon the ladder to the top, leave the ladder so others can follow, don't pull it up with you.
telesilla 9y ago
I'd like to see a change in society* where we talk about remuneration in terms of buying power and fair comparisons rather than focusing on what we now perceive as being taken. If I earn minimum wage at say $10 an hour, that's $500 a week ($26k salary) at 40 hours a week. If I pay 10% tax, I get $450 a week in the hand. If I earn $50 an hour ($100k salary) and am taxed at 30% I get $1400 a week in the hand. So the minimum wage worker as 70% less buying power than me: making it fair that I contribute more. We look at taxes of our salary like "you can't take 30% of my pay! I work hard!" instead of "I'm going to make a contribution to the society I live in by a fair percentage". If we saw our tax bills and payslips this way, and talked about it to our kids and in the media like this, we'd all feel a lot kinder towards what we would consider as giving. Maybe technology will allow future transparent societies to be governed with full transparency and this will come to pass. * (This presumes a fair society without corruption, which I'm aware many of us do not live in)
- andrewmcwatters 9y ago
  You could simply state what you're describing: a true flat rate income tax.[1] Which a lot of people do not agree with. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Flat tax is the opposite of what he's suggesting.
    - telesilla 9y ago
      She.. and thanks for clarifying the comment! Appreciated.
- ric2b 9y ago
  > So the minimum wage worker as 70% less buying power than me: making it fair that I contribute more. I don't think you can assume that it's fair based only on the income. Maybe their job is useless or even harmful to society while yours is useful and helpful. > we'd all feel a lot kinder towards what we would consider as giving. Giving implies that it's voluntary. It's not.
mathiasben 9y ago
Income in excess of 5 million a year taxed at 90%.
dlwdlw 9y ago
This would pretty much be disastrous in the US because so much if the identities are based around a heroes journey. Unlike many Asian countries that more easily accept socialist narratives, the fundamental driving force in the US is that we are NOT equal and NOT the same. It is about equal opportunity and a certain type of freedom yes. But all this is to serve the purpose of individuals proving to the world, others, and themselves that they are better and so deserve more. The pursuit of happiness is the freedom to be better. And better cannot exist when all is equal. Heroes require villains. Light creates dark. The self actualization narrative then is too tightly bound to the domination narrative. And domination always requires domination of humans. Attempts to humanize it by dominating instead some aspect of the world fail because we can do easily dehumanize others. It's not that this narrative is good or bad, it just is. And it is also losing resonance with the wider world. It only works when the self-actualized has some sort of moral high ground or other advantage. The taxes described here attack the resulting pattern of a run amock narrative but don't actually weaken it. It may actually strengthen it as it provokes a reflex response.

83 points by sharkweek 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tensor_rank_0 9y ago

that way it is harder for anyone to catch up to him

codefined 9y ago
I'm not sure if this post is sarcastic or not, you realise he's giving away something like 99% of his money?
- tensor_rank_0 9y ago
  > giving away to a foundation which he controls. its how the ultra-wealthy preserve their wealth, its pretty standard issue.
  - throwaway1748 9y ago
    That's a ridiculous statement in Gates' case. The Gates Foundation is giving away tons and tons of money at a rapid pace: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Gran... They're not "preserving" his wealth in any way whatsoever
  - skellera 9y ago
    His foundation does more for the world than most countries. He's going to be dead. What are you trying to get at?
    - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
      people in those countries tend to be highly critical of the actual affect of his interventions. his children are in school, but his friend and fellow-billionaire-advocate-for-higher-taxes-on-billionaires, Warren Buffett, is doing the same thing. his children work for the foundations that will administer his wealth after he dies. its only logical, why would he or anyone else let some random person manage the foundation? you want someone who you can trust. you dont have to consider it a bad thing but please dont think "giving your money to a foundation that you set up" is anything like "giving it away". there are things the ultra-wealthy do in order to save their wealth from estate taxes and setting up a foundation is one of them.
      - profunctor 9y ago
        The foundation must give away all of it's money within 50 years of their death. Sure their kids will have nice jobs but I do see that as altruistic.
forapurpose 9y ago
> that way it is harder for anyone to catch up to him It's the opposite; it would be easier for people to catch up. By providing more funding for health, housing, and education, more people would have the opportunity to become wealthy themselves, and to do great things for society. How many potentially great developers are lost in awful educational systems, for example? The U.S. is supposed to be land of opportunity, where the belief is that anyone can thrive given liberty and opportunity, and that talent does not depend on the wealth of your parents. Right now, college education is determined, more than anything else, by parental wealth or income. If you mean that it's harder for other billionaires to catch him, it's kind to consider their welfare. But as Gates would pay more tax than the other billionaires, they would catch up to him.
- KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
  >The U.S. is supposed to be land of opportunity, where the belief is that anyone can thrive given liberty and opportunity, and that talent does not depend on the wealth of your parent To offer an alternative interpretation, I’ve always seen the “American Dream” as opportunity to improve your position in life, rather than creating an entirely-level playing field for all. The latter experiment has been attempted many times in the 20th century in many nations, and the results have not been encouraging, to say the least. Besides wealth-of-money, many kids benefit from parents with wealth of character, intelligence, wisdom, and even love; the importance of these cannot be understated. I agree, of course, that wealth has never been more important in determining one’s ability to receive a good education, and that is a major problem. One solution could be to increase funding for public schools... but I am rapidly losing faith in the results they deliver. The most disadvantaged people are priced-out of the market for private schools, and the same can be said for many in the middle-class. There is also a fundamental problem at play: those not suited for academia, but have much value to offer society, are always going to slip through the cracks under the “must-be-college-educated” paradigm. I want plenty of low-skilled jobs with a reasonable wage available for those who just want an income, while they tinker away at their genius invention in the evening, for example.
  - rootusrootus 9y ago

headsoup 9y ago

"Why aren't we doing a better job for those people?" Because a) they're not 'those people' and b) the governments don't represent those people anymore either

forapurpose 9y ago

People talk about a 'flat tax', where everyone pays the same rate, as being fair. But is mathematical equality really fair? * If we want a truly flat tax, everyone would pay the exact same amount. In the U.S., that would be roughly $14,000 from each adult to cover all funding. Obviously, that's absurd. * Or we could use the 'flat tax' (or 'equal rate') described above, where everyone pays the same rate. In the U.S., that would be very roughly a 17% tax on all income, corporate or individual. But I don't think the 'equal rate' tax above is really equal. If you make $10,000 in a year, $1,700 is a much larger blow than $1.7 million is if you make $10 million. * What is fair, IMHO, is equal sacrifice. It's harder to quantify, but the taxes paid by people making $10 million, or $100,000 or $10,000 should cause roughly equivalent pain. It depends on the individual's situation and we'd never do it perfectly, but maybe there is an economic theory of utility or quality of life that could be used as a proxy; maybe we should subtract necessities and calculate it based on discretionary income.

addicted 9y ago
A flat tax makes no sense. To be clear, there may be additional policies associated with a flat tax that may make a lot of sense. I'm talking purely about the "flat percentage" bit. The only advantage it provides is a slightly less complicated calculation. But it simplifies a calculation that can be represented in a few lines of code and a single excel formula. As a trade off, it completely ignores the idea that the marginal value of money changes depending on the base. If you earn $50k another $10k has a lot more marginal value than if you're earning $500k. It sounds good but it's terrible policy.
- sebleon 9y ago
  What makes it terrible?
Latty 9y ago
I'd be stronger and say flat taxes are nonsense. All the people that go on about incentive and the open market amaze me when they claim that it's a disincentive for people to work when you lose say, 50% over some high amount. Once you have a ton of wealth, it just becomes relatively worthless to you. People with a ton of wealth don't add (significant) value except by providing that wealth to others, which then nets them even more. We should be trying to limit the ability to just continually accrue wealth. At some point it stops serving society for an individual to have more. The incentive is gone - no one is not going to try because if they are so successful they earn over $10m say, they will not get any more.

monkeypizza 9y ago

Not distinguishing between additive and multiplicative "more" makes this an unclear message. People constantly mix up rates (*) with absolutes (+), and reinterpret statements made referring to one as referring to the other. "More people use the internet in China than in the US" - whether that's true depends on the interpretation of "more". This is intolerable and everyone with a mathematical background should strive to be clear on which "more" they are using.

Latty 9y ago
In this case, I'd argue both.
gt_ 9y ago
If you’re not joking, this one: > He is arguing for a relative more, the starting point at which is specified as the current state.
- monkeypizza 9y ago
  I don't feel that he has guaranteed that all readers of the article will come to the conclusion you have reached. Here is how I could interpret his brief quote: 1. more in absolute terms (which they already pay due to higher income) 2. more in relative terms (progressive taxes) 3. more than now (what you claim). I don't that it's clear what he means in in the story, though. It could easily be taken to mean "yes, we pay more, and we should pay more (than others) so I don't support the republican plan!". Your interpretation is also valid - "the rich should pay more (than we do now)".
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Here's the original: https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/18/politics/bill-gates-taxes-cnntv/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/18/politics/bill-gates-taxes-cnn... "I need to pay higher taxes," Gates, who is worth over $90 billion, said in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday. "I've paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes," he said. That first sentence sort of simplifies the interpretation.

KhanMahGretsch 9y ago

At the risk of sounding glib, I can offer Mr. Gates >220 trillion reasons why increased taxes won’t necessarily improve the fiscal solvency of the United States, in and of itself. Debt and un-funded liabilities are staggering, and it’s politically unviable to implement plans to reduce that (although lip-service is paid), IMO. I’d like to hear more about how those taxes would be spent.

RobLach 9y ago
I personally feel that taxation shouldn't even be that debatable in the legislature. How it should be is just covering the cost of a moving-average window for the previous x amount of years of spending mapping according to a integration across income. It's nonsensically inefficient to debate on taxation without consideration of spending, and vice versa.
- KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
  >covering the cost of a moving-average window for the previous x amount of years of spending In principle, I like the concept of anchoring taxation to spending, because it could mitigate the political viability of spending what we don't have by making the pain immediate. How would you integrate welfare, tax-credits, healthcare, and other federally-funded entitlements into this solution? How can we avoid a large (well, larger) schism between these groups, in the short-term, keeping in mind that we obviously want to increase mobility from that group into the tax-paying group?
  - toast0 9y ago
    In the proposed system, I would imagine Social Security and Medicare should generally operate separately from income taxes, but if the revenue from their specific taxes isn't enough for their spending, taxes would be adjusted up by default. Congressional action could adjust benefits down or transfer money from the general fund. Welfare, tax credits, and healthcare (outside of Medicare) is all spending, paid for by the general fund. The proposal is to automatically adjust taxes to match.

AckSyn 9y ago

His statement, like many others, regarding the December passage of the tax reform fall flat. Looking at the source provided by CNN: http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/new-2018-tax-brackets/index.html?iid=EL http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/new-2018-tax-brackets/... you can clearly see that taxes go down and benefit individuals and married couples. In fact, now that the personal exemption has been removed and the state & local deduction have a cap, people are paying more of "their fare share" in regards to this specific aspect of taxes. The child tax credit was DOUBLED per child to $2000 annually for married couples who make up to $400k! Classroom supplies, medical care, and and the NEW student loan deductions are still safe to deduct. The list of these benefits goes on. Some exemptions were removed (because frankly many of them shouldn't have been there), and others were extended which overall ends up helping more than hurting. His claim that it benefits the rich is absurd and the spin that's put on the reform is equally so.

pvaldes 9y ago

I wonder the opposite question; why there is not a legal limit to the number of "milk" that the government can suck from one human. Is a mystery to me. Maybe people that had paid many billions in taxes, supposedly in benefit of the entire country, should be thanked, granted an "untaxable status" from now on, and left alone to live the rest of their lives. If somebody could pay in advance the taxes for the next ten years in just one take, this could help the government to attract extra money in scarce times, when they need it most. And of course the first country doing such bold movement would attract lots of rich people.

DoveBrown 9y ago
I'd personally prefer if we ameliorated your paid tax so that the rate applied over your entire lifetime earnings. That way you could use the same progressive rate but windfall years aren't a special case and lean years are an example of failing to optimise your taxes. You could even have the government refund tax if the windfall event was a once off. Extra bonus you can get rid of many loophole taxes (like Capital Gains and Inheritance taxes) since these feel unfair to take on a single year basis.
imtringued 9y ago
It would also make them "sticky" and less likely to move away.
Can_Not 9y ago
Taxes are what keep the society you were raised in running. You didn't have to pay a comical amount of tolls for roads and bridges, they existed and were maintained. You likely went to free 12 years of education. Some countries do free college. There were police officers to stop the streets from being a war zone. Fire fighters and fire safety laws prevented a single fire in your neighborhood from being the whole neighborhood on fire. You probably don't have a crippling disease from lead toys in your childhood (or at least your children didn't/won't, depending on your age). You probably weren't kidnapped from your home to work in a child slave army or diamond mines. I get that a government shouldn't have infinite capacity to "milk" someone for free. But why should anyone be given infinite capacity to milk society? When you make 1000x more than you would ever need to live a fulfilling life while multitudes are impoverished, you need to pay taxes so society can build the next successful generation of people. When you stumble upon the ladder to the top, leave the ladder so others can follow, don't pull it up with you.

telesilla 9y ago

I'd like to see a change in society* where we talk about remuneration in terms of buying power and fair comparisons rather than focusing on what we now perceive as being taken. If I earn minimum wage at say $10 an hour, that's $500 a week ($26k salary) at 40 hours a week. If I pay 10% tax, I get $450 a week in the hand. If I earn $50 an hour ($100k salary) and am taxed at 30% I get $1400 a week in the hand. So the minimum wage worker as 70% less buying power than me: making it fair that I contribute more. We look at taxes of our salary like "you can't take 30% of my pay! I work hard!" instead of "I'm going to make a contribution to the society I live in by a fair percentage". If we saw our tax bills and payslips this way, and talked about it to our kids and in the media like this, we'd all feel a lot kinder towards what we would consider as giving. Maybe technology will allow future transparent societies to be governed with full transparency and this will come to pass. * (This presumes a fair society without corruption, which I'm aware many of us do not live in)

andrewmcwatters 9y ago
You could simply state what you're describing: a true flat rate income tax.[1] Which a lot of people do not agree with. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax
- r00fus 9y ago
  Flat tax is the opposite of what he's suggesting.
  - telesilla 9y ago
    She.. and thanks for clarifying the comment! Appreciated.
ric2b 9y ago
> So the minimum wage worker as 70% less buying power than me: making it fair that I contribute more. I don't think you can assume that it's fair based only on the income. Maybe their job is useless or even harmful to society while yours is useful and helpful. > we'd all feel a lot kinder towards what we would consider as giving. Giving implies that it's voluntary. It's not.

mathiasben 9y ago

Income in excess of 5 million a year taxed at 90%.

dlwdlw 9y ago

This would pretty much be disastrous in the US because so much if the identities are based around a heroes journey. Unlike many Asian countries that more easily accept socialist narratives, the fundamental driving force in the US is that we are NOT equal and NOT the same. It is about equal opportunity and a certain type of freedom yes. But all this is to serve the purpose of individuals proving to the world, others, and themselves that they are better and so deserve more. The pursuit of happiness is the freedom to be better. And better cannot exist when all is equal. Heroes require villains. Light creates dark. The self actualization narrative then is too tightly bound to the domination narrative. And domination always requires domination of humans. Attempts to humanize it by dominating instead some aspect of the world fail because we can do easily dehumanize others. It's not that this narrative is good or bad, it just is. And it is also losing resonance with the wider world. It only works when the self-actualized has some sort of moral high ground or other advantage. The taxes described here attack the resulting pattern of a run amock narrative but don't actually weaken it. It may actually strengthen it as it provokes a reflex response.