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I could argue that I am talking about US taxes. The overall discussion (beyond this news article) is entirely about US taxes, I live in the US, and most bait p

by CBLT 8y ago

I could argue that I am talking about US taxes. The overall discussion (beyond this news article) is entirely about US taxes, I live in the US, and most bait posts like the one I responded to are also American in origin. I'd rather be frank: I was not commenting in good faith. There was obviously no good discussion to come of the subtree, and I was bored and felt like getting my quill wet. I hope you found my comment as I intended it: polite but smug, responding but unanswering, and steering the discussion but noncommittal. Yes, it's not a good comment, it's a polarizing comment. Comment voting systems like these are quite interesting I think. Immediately after posting I was upvoted and you were downvoted by some other reader. They surely cast their votes on how they feel: I was disagreeing with the grandparent (bait post) and they too disagreed. Upvote. As I hinted above, my post isn't strong enough to stand on it's own merits, it was upvoted merely by context. Since you seemed to disagree (or at least not agree), you're an enemy, part of the opposing faction. Downvote. Again, your post wasn't irrelevant or otherwise misinformed, it was downvoted by context. I'm sorry that happened to you, I didn't do it but I'll say you need tough skin in flamebait trees.

xupybd 8y ago
The "Bait Post" is from a New Zealander. I live under socialized health care and generally in a very socialist society similar to most European countries. I wasn't trying to start a flame war but a discussion on the morality of taking such a high percentage. I knew very well that this a marginal rate but still after some level of earnings they're suggesting taking 70% of someone's income. I just think that's far too high to justify. topher515 has provided an interesting link to a well thought out and articulated article. That while I don't agree with it entirely I do think that sort of thing is a sign of a fruitful discussion. The position "tax is theft" is hard to justify but I'd say the other extreme where a 70% marginal tax rate is suggested is also hard to justify.
- CBLT 8y ago
  Well, hello from Saturday! I'm glad you're reasonable and not a troll like I feared. I think the post you made was inflammatory for 2 reasons: 1) It was short and didn't explain your position well. I'm sure it made perfect sense to you when you were writing it, but to me it was just a low-effort concern-trolling. You should explain yourself more. Notice what clarifications you had to give out in your other comments. 2) Indelicately including higher-impact, emotionally-charged topics. The appeal to morality is a tired and obnoxious trope when the subject of discussion is not a moral hazard. Additionally, the inclusion of violence was unnecessary; in this context it's not important how the government gets your money, go ahead and assume the government gets it. With that out of the way, I took the time to write a real response to what you said. In another comment you mentioned "pay their share of the roads, defense and police", and I think that this concept is interesting and not at all obvious. I mean, we need these things and they cost money, but what does it mean to pay one's share? Dollars have a distortive effect on the conversation I think. When you measure people's success in dollars, you see something interesting: a log-normal curve. Log-normal is the distribution of independent variables that multiply together to get the output. The implication of this is, that factors in your success (luck, hard work, skill as a Java programmer instead of a coffee barrista) multiply together to put together your money. People making much more money than you aren't the same as you but more hardworking, but rather are being vastly amplified by other factors. People making much less money aren't just lazy, again it's other factors that put a ceiling on their income, even if they pull all-nighters at their McJob. So this compound accumulation of other factors, many of which are out of your control, by and large affect your standard of living and how much you pay in taxes. It's quite hard to say what someone's share of the social burden is. I will say that, in general, progressive taxes do a better job at making that share aligned with the exponential reward from properly cultivated effort. However, I do recognize the shortcomings of such a tax. An underpaid engineer that a company wants to do underpaid overtime so they can hit their deadline would be making poor financial use of their efforts, and hit unfairly hard by progressive taxes. Every dollar that engineer earns from the hardest work they do is taxed even harder! But there's no easy solution to that. My personal view is that progressive taxes should stay, and we should continue investing in financial literacy and supporting people in making strong financial choices (in the this example, probably switch jobs). What am I not considering?
  - xupybd 8y ago
    Hi, I hope yesterday is treating you well. I'll give you point 1, but as to point 2; I wanted to bring morality into the discussion and I think the use of violence is key to the moral argument. But yeah the first post was lazy and inflammatory. To me it's important to remember that when we tax people, it's enforced under the threat of violence. I do think there are lots of times where the use of violence is okay. If you rob a store you need to know there will be police that will come after you with the threat of violence. But if we are going to use this as our means of control in society it's important that we don't abuse it and are able to include that in our weighing up of the morality of different laws. When the tax rate gets this high, even when the person has a huge amount of money, it's hard to justify using force. Morality was my sole point. It seemed from this article that the morality of the tax rate wasn't considered. I'm sorry if this seems obnoxious to you but I think it's key to discussion and something that's left out. I'm also not trying to push the lazy poor just need to work harder line. I know there are a lot of factors the cause a person to be poor and don't want to beat up on them . I think it's still reasonable to provide a basic safety net for them but don't think you need such and extreme tax rate to do it. I also think we don't want to throw out progressive tax rates. Mostly because I don't think changing the tax system dramatically is ever a good idea. Slow incremental change is really the only safe way forward there. I'm not aware of any long term trials of a flat tax but it's not something you want to do without careful consideration and long term data. Anyway not something I'm pushing for. Going back to the point. At 70 cents on the dollar for every additional dollar someone earns the government has the right and some would say the prerogative to take that money and repurpose it as they see fit. To me that is unjust. It's a matter of proportion. Even at a flat tax someone earning a lot more is still paying for a higher proportion of the countries running costs. But at 70% society is taking considerably more than the person who is earning the money. Is it really just to have a law such that if they don't give 70% of the upper part of their income we'll throw them into jail? At some point the cost of the running the country costs x and we have to get that from somewhere so yes it justifies some tax. But we also have to keep in mind that no one is owed someone else's money just because they earn more. Yes too much inequality is bad and finding ways to avoid that is really good. But I think first we have to look at other things. Trying to remove as much corruption as we can. Avoid corporate welfare at all costs. The most appalling government action of recent times to me is the bailing out of the banks. If you want to make sure the rich stay rich the perfect way is to remove all the risk from them and put it on the tax payer. Idiotic things like corn subsidies need to be removed so taxes aren't helping those that don't need help. Sorry I'm a bit off topic. I suspect (and this may be unfair) a lot of the support for this idea comes from jealousy and if we got passed that people might see that it's not a moral idea to push someone's tax rate this high. It's too easy to go that person earns so much what's wrong with taking some of it.

by CBLT 8y ago

xupybd 8y ago

The "Bait Post" is from a New Zealander. I live under socialized health care and generally in a very socialist society similar to most European countries. I wasn't trying to start a flame war but a discussion on the morality of taking such a high percentage. I knew very well that this a marginal rate but still after some level of earnings they're suggesting taking 70% of someone's income. I just think that's far too high to justify. topher515 has provided an interesting link to a well thought out and articulated article. That while I don't agree with it entirely I do think that sort of thing is a sign of a fruitful discussion. The position "tax is theft" is hard to justify but I'd say the other extreme where a 70% marginal tax rate is suggested is also hard to justify.

CBLT 8y ago
Well, hello from Saturday! I'm glad you're reasonable and not a troll like I feared. I think the post you made was inflammatory for 2 reasons: 1) It was short and didn't explain your position well. I'm sure it made perfect sense to you when you were writing it, but to me it was just a low-effort concern-trolling. You should explain yourself more. Notice what clarifications you had to give out in your other comments. 2) Indelicately including higher-impact, emotionally-charged topics. The appeal to morality is a tired and obnoxious trope when the subject of discussion is not a moral hazard. Additionally, the inclusion of violence was unnecessary; in this context it's not important how the government gets your money, go ahead and assume the government gets it. With that out of the way, I took the time to write a real response to what you said. In another comment you mentioned "pay their share of the roads, defense and police", and I think that this concept is interesting and not at all obvious. I mean, we need these things and they cost money, but what does it mean to pay one's share? Dollars have a distortive effect on the conversation I think. When you measure people's success in dollars, you see something interesting: a log-normal curve. Log-normal is the distribution of independent variables that multiply together to get the output. The implication of this is, that factors in your success (luck, hard work, skill as a Java programmer instead of a coffee barrista) multiply together to put together your money. People making much more money than you aren't the same as you but more hardworking, but rather are being vastly amplified by other factors. People making much less money aren't just lazy, again it's other factors that put a ceiling on their income, even if they pull all-nighters at their McJob. So this compound accumulation of other factors, many of which are out of your control, by and large affect your standard of living and how much you pay in taxes. It's quite hard to say what someone's share of the social burden is. I will say that, in general, progressive taxes do a better job at making that share aligned with the exponential reward from properly cultivated effort. However, I do recognize the shortcomings of such a tax. An underpaid engineer that a company wants to do underpaid overtime so they can hit their deadline would be making poor financial use of their efforts, and hit unfairly hard by progressive taxes. Every dollar that engineer earns from the hardest work they do is taxed even harder! But there's no easy solution to that. My personal view is that progressive taxes should stay, and we should continue investing in financial literacy and supporting people in making strong financial choices (in the this example, probably switch jobs). What am I not considering?
- xupybd 8y ago
  Hi, I hope yesterday is treating you well. I'll give you point 1, but as to point 2; I wanted to bring morality into the discussion and I think the use of violence is key to the moral argument. But yeah the first post was lazy and inflammatory. To me it's important to remember that when we tax people, it's enforced under the threat of violence. I do think there are lots of times where the use of violence is okay. If you rob a store you need to know there will be police that will come after you with the threat of violence. But if we are going to use this as our means of control in society it's important that we don't abuse it and are able to include that in our weighing up of the morality of different laws. When the tax rate gets this high, even when the person has a huge amount of money, it's hard to justify using force. Morality was my sole point. It seemed from this article that the morality of the tax rate wasn't considered. I'm sorry if this seems obnoxious to you but I think it's key to discussion and something that's left out. I'm also not trying to push the lazy poor just need to work harder line. I know there are a lot of factors the cause a person to be poor and don't want to beat up on them . I think it's still reasonable to provide a basic safety net for them but don't think you need such and extreme tax rate to do it. I also think we don't want to throw out progressive tax rates. Mostly because I don't think changing the tax system dramatically is ever a good idea. Slow incremental change is really the only safe way forward there. I'm not aware of any long term trials of a flat tax but it's not something you want to do without careful consideration and long term data. Anyway not something I'm pushing for. Going back to the point. At 70 cents on the dollar for every additional dollar someone earns the government has the right and some would say the prerogative to take that money and repurpose it as they see fit. To me that is unjust. It's a matter of proportion. Even at a flat tax someone earning a lot more is still paying for a higher proportion of the countries running costs. But at 70% society is taking considerably more than the person who is earning the money. Is it really just to have a law such that if they don't give 70% of the upper part of their income we'll throw them into jail? At some point the cost of the running the country costs x and we have to get that from somewhere so yes it justifies some tax. But we also have to keep in mind that no one is owed someone else's money just because they earn more. Yes too much inequality is bad and finding ways to avoid that is really good. But I think first we have to look at other things. Trying to remove as much corruption as we can. Avoid corporate welfare at all costs. The most appalling government action of recent times to me is the bailing out of the banks. If you want to make sure the rich stay rich the perfect way is to remove all the risk from them and put it on the tax payer. Idiotic things like corn subsidies need to be removed so taxes aren't helping those that don't need help. Sorry I'm a bit off topic. I suspect (and this may be unfair) a lot of the support for this idea comes from jealousy and if we got passed that people might see that it's not a moral idea to push someone's tax rate this high. It's too easy to go that person earns so much what's wrong with taking some of it.