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Are we not allowed to criticize cheating significant others? Politicians who lie to their constituents? People who cut in line? Maybe we should just make all th

Are we not allowed to criticize cheating significant others? Politicians who lie to their constituents? People who cut in line? Maybe we should just make all these things illegal, since that's the line we're apparently drawing. Just because something's legal doesn't mean it's ethical.

csallen 8y ago
You're completely right, of course. But it's still incumbent upon you to make a convincing argument that paying <arbitrary>% tax is unethical. And I'd say you have your work cut out for you. It's much less black-and-white than cases like cheating on a spouse, misleading voters, cutting in line, etc.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  If I deduct a portion of my rent as a home office deduction and you don't because you either can't or didn't know about it, does that make my actions unethical?
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  Yeah, those were all "logical extreme" examples. My issue here isn't determining an appropriate level of taxation so much as OP's "it's legal, so it's ethical" justification. I am open to the idea that Google is still paying an appropriate amount in taxes! Just not by that particular argument.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    I didn't make that justification. Following laws is considered ethical though, because laws are the ethics of the society that they apply to. It's fine if you have personal ethics that are different, but that doesn't automatically apply to everyone.
    - jakelazaroff 8y ago
      I don't understand. You're saying you didn't make that justification ("it's legal, so it's ethical") immediately followed by that statement, almost verbatim ("following laws is considered ethical"). Of course ethics are subjective. But voicing those ethics is how we arrive at a set of societal values in the first place! It's crazy to suggest that anyone complying with the law should be immune from criticism.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        I did not make the justification but yes that is what society considers ethical as a property of making them laws in the first place. >> It's crazy to suggest that anyone complying with the law should be immune from criticism. Never suggested this. My point was to focus on the root cause if you want to create change, regardless of why.
    - cazum 8y ago
      >laws are the ethics of the society Law is the attempt at legalizing ethical principles. Quite often the laws fall short of the actual ethical consensus of the society due to the fact that the members of the society ultimately have little direct control over what laws get made and how those laws are enforced, for example: federal judges are appointed, not elected. most people aren't able to parse legalese enough to fully grasp the implications of a law they support. laws often get passed by Congress people by virtue of some group with financial interests using their money to influence decisions, etc.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        So the problem is politics... as I originally stated?
    - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      > laws are the ethics of the society That's grossly imprecise. Laws do reflect some of ethical issues that exist in a society but these two are intersecting sets.
    - 8y ago
fixermark 8y ago
But when it comes to the tax code, "ethical" is a lot murkier. The one piece we can generally agree on is you're required to pay what the law requires you to pay---no more, no less. Further ethical constraints and clarifications are forever up for debate. To give a concrete example: is it ethically better for the government that spends as much as it does on military infrastructure to have more money, or the company that builds a search engine and a video-sharing service?
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  I'm not espousing a particular ethical view here; rather, I'm saying that laws are not our way of dictating ethics by fiat. If Google (or anyone) does something I feel is unethical, I reserve the right to criticize them for it — whether it's legal or not!
- dwild 8y ago
  > Further ethical constraints and clarifications are forever up for debate. Like pretty much any debate about ethics I would say. When I do my deduction, you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense. It would be possible to argue that it is actually a business expense, it would be legal to, but we can both agree that it's abusing the law and it wasn't actually a business expense. This is the same, their office in Bermuda (if they even have a physical location there) aren't actually making $23B in 2017, that money was made in others countries, using peoples from theses others countries, using infrastructures from theses others countries, thus theses taxes have to be paid for this reason. This is what I consider unethical.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    > you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense I've seen a company exec cheat on his wife with a paid hooker on a holiday to Hawaii make it a business expense (both paying the hooker and the holiday itself) and treating the hooker bad enough the company got sued for sexual harassment (because they paid the hooker, that means ... you can fill in, and no it doesn't matter if they "knew" they were doing it or not), AND not getting fired for it. And while this is a tax offense, the idea of him getting sued by the IRS for this is sadly almost absurd. They might do it if they catch him in a lot bigger problems as well, but not likely. Purely coincidentally, currently in the newspaper, 72 year old millionnaire getting sued for running a company building luxury hotels, collecting unemployment, and charging a government-funded not-for-profit ~1 million euros for consultation services while not registering the income in his personal income statement for taxes. Ironically, this is happened 9 years ago and 7 months, so if the government made even a small error in this case it will be forgiven (which is a near guarantee). Just because you consider something cheating doesn't mean everybody does, or even that it's a common view, or that it's a crime.
manigandham 8y ago
You can criticize whatever you want. Ethics are subjective and personal. Society agrees on most principles and these are what become our laws, but not everything (like cutting in line) is at a scale that matters. In this case, society has agreed on tax laws that this is the right amount. You are completely free to suggest something else and get the support to change it. Tax laws change all the time and loophole has already been closed so it seems like everything is working as it should here.
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  > Society agrees on most principles and these are what become our laws Not at all. Society can, and does, agree on all sorts of stuff without it becoming law. This is generally a very good thing, because criminalizing behavior, even behavior everyone agrees is not great, has significant costs. Sometimes those costs are larger than the costs of the behavior itself.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    What you're describing is the scale of an issue and I would say that's 1 of 2 inputs into the overall equation: how many people agree and how many people does it affect.
z3t4 8y ago
I think after 20,000 years of feudal life it's evolutionary ingrained that those in a higher social class can do whatever they want.

csallen 8y ago

You're completely right, of course. But it's still incumbent upon you to make a convincing argument that paying <arbitrary>% tax is unethical. And I'd say you have your work cut out for you. It's much less black-and-white than cases like cheating on a spouse, misleading voters, cutting in line, etc.

jjeaff 8y ago
If I deduct a portion of my rent as a home office deduction and you don't because you either can't or didn't know about it, does that make my actions unethical?
jakelazaroff 8y ago
Yeah, those were all "logical extreme" examples. My issue here isn't determining an appropriate level of taxation so much as OP's "it's legal, so it's ethical" justification. I am open to the idea that Google is still paying an appropriate amount in taxes! Just not by that particular argument.
- manigandham 8y ago
  I didn't make that justification. Following laws is considered ethical though, because laws are the ethics of the society that they apply to. It's fine if you have personal ethics that are different, but that doesn't automatically apply to everyone.
  - jakelazaroff 8y ago
    I don't understand. You're saying you didn't make that justification ("it's legal, so it's ethical") immediately followed by that statement, almost verbatim ("following laws is considered ethical"). Of course ethics are subjective. But voicing those ethics is how we arrive at a set of societal values in the first place! It's crazy to suggest that anyone complying with the law should be immune from criticism.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      I did not make the justification but yes that is what society considers ethical as a property of making them laws in the first place. >> It's crazy to suggest that anyone complying with the law should be immune from criticism. Never suggested this. My point was to focus on the root cause if you want to create change, regardless of why.
  - cazum 8y ago
    >laws are the ethics of the society Law is the attempt at legalizing ethical principles. Quite often the laws fall short of the actual ethical consensus of the society due to the fact that the members of the society ultimately have little direct control over what laws get made and how those laws are enforced, for example: federal judges are appointed, not elected. most people aren't able to parse legalese enough to fully grasp the implications of a law they support. laws often get passed by Congress people by virtue of some group with financial interests using their money to influence decisions, etc.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      So the problem is politics... as I originally stated?
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    > laws are the ethics of the society That's grossly imprecise. Laws do reflect some of ethical issues that exist in a society but these two are intersecting sets.
  - 8y ago

fixermark 8y ago

But when it comes to the tax code, "ethical" is a lot murkier. The one piece we can generally agree on is you're required to pay what the law requires you to pay---no more, no less. Further ethical constraints and clarifications are forever up for debate. To give a concrete example: is it ethically better for the government that spends as much as it does on military infrastructure to have more money, or the company that builds a search engine and a video-sharing service?

jakelazaroff 8y ago
I'm not espousing a particular ethical view here; rather, I'm saying that laws are not our way of dictating ethics by fiat. If Google (or anyone) does something I feel is unethical, I reserve the right to criticize them for it — whether it's legal or not!
dwild 8y ago
> Further ethical constraints and clarifications are forever up for debate. Like pretty much any debate about ethics I would say. When I do my deduction, you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense. It would be possible to argue that it is actually a business expense, it would be legal to, but we can both agree that it's abusing the law and it wasn't actually a business expense. This is the same, their office in Bermuda (if they even have a physical location there) aren't actually making $23B in 2017, that money was made in others countries, using peoples from theses others countries, using infrastructures from theses others countries, thus theses taxes have to be paid for this reason. This is what I consider unethical.
- candiodari 8y ago
  > you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense I've seen a company exec cheat on his wife with a paid hooker on a holiday to Hawaii make it a business expense (both paying the hooker and the holiday itself) and treating the hooker bad enough the company got sued for sexual harassment (because they paid the hooker, that means ... you can fill in, and no it doesn't matter if they "knew" they were doing it or not), AND not getting fired for it. And while this is a tax offense, the idea of him getting sued by the IRS for this is sadly almost absurd. They might do it if they catch him in a lot bigger problems as well, but not likely. Purely coincidentally, currently in the newspaper, 72 year old millionnaire getting sued for running a company building luxury hotels, collecting unemployment, and charging a government-funded not-for-profit ~1 million euros for consultation services while not registering the income in his personal income statement for taxes. Ironically, this is happened 9 years ago and 7 months, so if the government made even a small error in this case it will be forgiven (which is a near guarantee). Just because you consider something cheating doesn't mean everybody does, or even that it's a common view, or that it's a crime.

manigandham 8y ago

You can criticize whatever you want. Ethics are subjective and personal. Society agrees on most principles and these are what become our laws, but not everything (like cutting in line) is at a scale that matters. In this case, society has agreed on tax laws that this is the right amount. You are completely free to suggest something else and get the support to change it. Tax laws change all the time and loophole has already been closed so it seems like everything is working as it should here.

bzbarsky 8y ago
> Society agrees on most principles and these are what become our laws Not at all. Society can, and does, agree on all sorts of stuff without it becoming law. This is generally a very good thing, because criminalizing behavior, even behavior everyone agrees is not great, has significant costs. Sometimes those costs are larger than the costs of the behavior itself.
- manigandham 8y ago
  What you're describing is the scale of an issue and I would say that's 1 of 2 inputs into the overall equation: how many people agree and how many people does it affect.

z3t4 8y ago

I think after 20,000 years of feudal life it's evolutionary ingrained that those in a higher social class can do whatever they want.