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Raising taxes on the rich means you can fund the government without raising (and ideally by lowering) taxes on everybody else. This is objectively a social good

Raising taxes on the rich means you can fund the government without raising (and ideally by lowering) taxes on everybody else. This is objectively a social good (the rich can bear the burden of incredibly high tax rates, whereas current tax rates are a very high burden on a large percentage of the population). I am not an economist but I would also assume it would benefit the economy by stimulating spending. I believe this is in fact the basic idea of the tax cuts so favored by Republicans, except it turns out that giving rich people more money doesn't do this (because they already have enough money to cover all the spending they want to do), whereas giving everyone else more money does. The goal of taxes has never been "raise as much money for the government as possible", it's "raise enough money for the government to fund government operations, hopefully without hurting the economy in the process".

Eridrus 8y ago
I think we're arguing the same thing, but my point was that at some marginal rate (around 70% give or take 10%), increasing the tax rate causes you to get less money from rich people, which all but the most radical fringes of the left can generally agree is not a desired outcome. And 83% is definitely past that point. So unless your explicit goal is to just stop people having that much money, that combined tax rate is too high.
- eridius 8y ago
  By what mechanism would increasing the tax rate result in getting less money from rich people? I can only imagine the answer is because they reduce their income, though I don't know what your explanation is for rich people reducing their income when the tax rate hits 70% ± 10%. What's more, if rich people are reducing their income, it seems to me that this means they're not taking advantage of as many opportunities to earn money as otherwise, which hopefully means not-so-rich people are now taking advantage of those opportunities (or, more cynically, are not being taken advantage of as much by rich people). So yes, if taxing rich people more means getting less money from them, and if the reasoning for this leads to not-so-rich people earning more money, then that seems like a win.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

Eridrus 8y ago

I think we're arguing the same thing, but my point was that at some marginal rate (around 70% give or take 10%), increasing the tax rate causes you to get less money from rich people, which all but the most radical fringes of the left can generally agree is not a desired outcome. And 83% is definitely past that point. So unless your explicit goal is to just stop people having that much money, that combined tax rate is too high.

eridius 8y ago
By what mechanism would increasing the tax rate result in getting less money from rich people? I can only imagine the answer is because they reduce their income, though I don't know what your explanation is for rich people reducing their income when the tax rate hits 70% ± 10%. What's more, if rich people are reducing their income, it seems to me that this means they're not taking advantage of as many opportunities to earn money as otherwise, which hopefully means not-so-rich people are now taking advantage of those opportunities (or, more cynically, are not being taken advantage of as much by rich people). So yes, if taxing rich people more means getting less money from them, and if the reasoning for this leads to not-so-rich people earning more money, then that seems like a win.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve