4 ms·

A person is a person and all of us must be equal - until it comes to paying things. Then it's ok to burden the rich for paying for dramatically more than their

by czbond 7y ago

A person is a person and all of us must be equal - until it comes to paying things. Then it's ok to burden the rich for paying for dramatically more than their fair share. When one runs out of other ideas, and can't extract money from the bottom 50% of US citizens who do not pay taxes, yet want to continue spending instead of cutting entitlements - treating rich people as another revenue source will continue.

onion2k 7y ago
Then it's ok to burden the rich for paying for dramatically more than their fair share. They own dramatically more than their fair share so it all balances out.
close04 7y ago
That's because having that much money gives you disproportionate power. That power should come at a cost. Democracy is supposed to represent each individual equally yet money (powerful lobbies) have swayed that in the favor of a very small few since forever. If equality is important when paying taxes then it should be equally important when pulling strings. And if we're talking about fairness if you were always happy with one of these imbalances then it's only fair to accept the second.
- czbond 7y ago
  Edit: Why would taxing "power" solve anything? We tax responsibilities and assets. Sure there are massive inequalities in the US - but it is not because of "wealthy people". I could suggest it is because of the mainly failings of humans as a barely evolved species to create scaleable entities (businesses) as it requires a huge human effort, skill, luck, and capaiblity to do. Most humans give up on the really hard stuff required to build strategic levers that multiply their monetary outcomes. And instead focus on small ROI skills (monetarily speaking). I disagree - I believe this is mostly projection. Most wealthy people aren't exorbitantly wealthy. There are 607 billionaires in the US (thats not many). They're not all hiring lobbyists, and trying to corrupt the US. Neither are the deca-millionaires, they're just either building things (businesses to employ others) or getting better at their craft.
  - close04 7y ago
    You did not object to the fact that democracy does not give each individual equal share of power as one would expect. Since you don't object to the perversion of democracy you should not object to the perversion of the taxing system... mainly due to failings of humans as a barely evolved species to create scaleable [taxing systems].
mikepurvis 7y ago
A lot of it starts with how you frame the discussion. If you start from an instinctive sense of what's "fair", then you get the current state of affairs: escalating wealth disparity (where else is this more visible than on the streets of SF, where millionaires trip over the homeless?), an America in 2019 that has no sane health policy in sight, and guys like Paul Ryan gleefully crowing about reining in "entitlements" in order to feed an agenda of tax cuts. All of it starts from the kind of mindset demonstrated in the parent post. If, instead of starting from a vague sense of what feels fair, you instead see wealth as a measure of one's responsibility to a society and look at the actual effects of these various redistributive policies, you get a very different picture. It's often pointed out (including in TFA) that some of the most prosperous, productive periods of American history had extremely high tax rates, but it's amazing when you actually look at the raw numbers for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#cite_ref-79 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State... It's baffling to me that faced with this, people continue to push this idea that the key to economic stimulation is tax cuts at the top end.
- hnlurker 7y ago
  I mean, to me "fair" would be everyone paying the same tax total, like $1k per person per year. The next level of "fair" would be everyone paying the same tax rate, like 10% of their income. Just because a tax can be shouldered by some group doesn't mean it ought to be levied. It's extremely unfair. Equity is evil. Equality is good.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    The whole point of my post is that when your starting point in the discussion is to seek a taxation scheme that's "fair", you've already lost. The point should be to seek an outcome that is good for the society as whole, and that means balancing a lot of different objectives. For example: - People who are wealthy and successful should enjoy an elevated standard of living. - Regardless of your birth and other factors outside your control (race, wealth of parents, etc), it should be possible to achieve wealth through hard work. - No one who works hard should lack basic necessities like food and shelter. The current system optimizes heavily for the first item at the expense of the other two, and the fact that someone can even propose with a straight face that a flat $1k/year taxation scheme would be "fair" is just a sign of how broken our attitudes around this are.

by czbond 7y ago

onion2k 7y ago

Then it's ok to burden the rich for paying for dramatically more than their fair share. They own dramatically more than their fair share so it all balances out.

close04 7y ago

That's because having that much money gives you disproportionate power. That power should come at a cost. Democracy is supposed to represent each individual equally yet money (powerful lobbies) have swayed that in the favor of a very small few since forever. If equality is important when paying taxes then it should be equally important when pulling strings. And if we're talking about fairness if you were always happy with one of these imbalances then it's only fair to accept the second.

czbond 7y ago
Edit: Why would taxing "power" solve anything? We tax responsibilities and assets. Sure there are massive inequalities in the US - but it is not because of "wealthy people". I could suggest it is because of the mainly failings of humans as a barely evolved species to create scaleable entities (businesses) as it requires a huge human effort, skill, luck, and capaiblity to do. Most humans give up on the really hard stuff required to build strategic levers that multiply their monetary outcomes. And instead focus on small ROI skills (monetarily speaking). I disagree - I believe this is mostly projection. Most wealthy people aren't exorbitantly wealthy. There are 607 billionaires in the US (thats not many). They're not all hiring lobbyists, and trying to corrupt the US. Neither are the deca-millionaires, they're just either building things (businesses to employ others) or getting better at their craft.
- close04 7y ago
  You did not object to the fact that democracy does not give each individual equal share of power as one would expect. Since you don't object to the perversion of democracy you should not object to the perversion of the taxing system... mainly due to failings of humans as a barely evolved species to create scaleable [taxing systems].

mikepurvis 7y ago

A lot of it starts with how you frame the discussion. If you start from an instinctive sense of what's "fair", then you get the current state of affairs: escalating wealth disparity (where else is this more visible than on the streets of SF, where millionaires trip over the homeless?), an America in 2019 that has no sane health policy in sight, and guys like Paul Ryan gleefully crowing about reining in "entitlements" in order to feed an agenda of tax cuts. All of it starts from the kind of mindset demonstrated in the parent post. If, instead of starting from a vague sense of what feels fair, you instead see wealth as a measure of one's responsibility to a society and look at the actual effects of these various redistributive policies, you get a very different picture. It's often pointed out (including in TFA) that some of the most prosperous, productive periods of American history had extremely high tax rates, but it's amazing when you actually look at the raw numbers for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#cite_ref-79 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State... It's baffling to me that faced with this, people continue to push this idea that the key to economic stimulation is tax cuts at the top end.

hnlurker 7y ago
I mean, to me "fair" would be everyone paying the same tax total, like $1k per person per year. The next level of "fair" would be everyone paying the same tax rate, like 10% of their income. Just because a tax can be shouldered by some group doesn't mean it ought to be levied. It's extremely unfair. Equity is evil. Equality is good.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  The whole point of my post is that when your starting point in the discussion is to seek a taxation scheme that's "fair", you've already lost. The point should be to seek an outcome that is good for the society as whole, and that means balancing a lot of different objectives. For example: - People who are wealthy and successful should enjoy an elevated standard of living. - Regardless of your birth and other factors outside your control (race, wealth of parents, etc), it should be possible to achieve wealth through hard work. - No one who works hard should lack basic necessities like food and shelter. The current system optimizes heavily for the first item at the expense of the other two, and the fact that someone can even propose with a straight face that a flat $1k/year taxation scheme would be "fair" is just a sign of how broken our attitudes around this are.