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Exactly, this kind of thinking freaks me out. They want to take property from people who have earned it precisely for having earned it! It's theft, it's lootin

Exactly, this kind of thinking freaks me out. They want to take property from people who have earned it precisely for having earned it! It's theft, it's looting, and it's slavery! You cannot take one man's property and give it to another based on need.

Pinckney 16y ago
By living and working in a country such is America, you are accepting a social contract: if you do well, you will be taxed, if you do poorly, you will at least receive some services to support you. This strikes me as an entirely reasonable contract, though there are others that are different. In Abu Dubai, you can do well, and keep all your money, or do poorly and wind up in debtor's prison. To complain that you're taxed too heavily after you have already become wealthy and secure strikes me as akin to looking back on your healthy, illness free life and complain that you should get a refund on your insurance payments, since they didn't do anything for you. The above is not to argue that one system is superior to the other, but rather that you're in one, and very probably complaining about it now that you know you're well prepared enough that it's clear that you'll probably never be destitute. In a perfect world, we might ask everyone how much risk they want. Unfortunately, so much is determined in your youth. You (I assume) grew up in a family that raised you well, and left you with reasonable earning potential. If we just asked everyone at 18, we would wind up with an upper class that would rarely suffer financial failures, and would accept risk, and those who know they won't get rich on their own, and accept no risk, and so for the most part, this system would be unfundable. As a compromise, and as many of us feel quite strongly that it's simply not acceptable to have people destroyed when they suffer financial ruin, we have some basic social services.
- mike_esspe 16y ago
  As long as you can't leave this contract (with your property), it's not a voluntary contract. With the same logic you can justify slavery.
  - khafra 16y ago
    If you get your property by exploiting the contract, then get to leave the contract instead of paying your side of it, it's not worth much as a contract.
- axod 16y ago
  The problem for me arises when you start taxing 'the rich' more heavily than others. And having a tax rate above 50% for anyone is morally indefensible IMHO.
benohear 16y ago
I have a theory: In the good ole days, taxation consisted of the lord owning the land (the means of production) and taxing the peasents. This is pretty much what happens when you're employed - someone else owns the means of production, and you are paid less than the value that you create (hopefully for the company, anyway). For me this is a form of taxation - The main difference is that insead of being paid the gross amount and being hit for x%, you get the net amount. On a macro level, it's similar. The country IS the ultimate means of production, and you pay a tax to use it.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  You've reinvented the core thesis of Marxism: that the difference between what the worker earns and the capitalist sells is a theft of value. The problem is that it assumes that labour is the true source of value -- this has turned out to be a troublesome assumption. In practice value is subjective.
  - benohear 16y ago
    That's not quite what I meant. I was referring to the value your employment adds to the company, not the sales value of the final product. And yes, that's extremely difficult to evaluate, but it seems to me that on average everyone has to be paid less than their contribution, otherwise there would be no profit or funds to pay salaries for people not directly contributing to production. Nor was I passing judgement, by the way, so I don't go along with the "theft" thing. I do however think it is a form of taxation.
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      Sorry if I gave the impression that you were passing judgement. I just find it interesting that smart people come up with the same ideas again and again. "Taxation" is not the best way to put it. It is a market exchange. In exchange for a fixed portion of your value output (which will be variable), the company guarantees a certain payment upon a fixed input (usually hours-per-week). Thus the company is essentially taking on the risk that you will produce enough value to cover the cost and leave some space for profit. If you or the company disagree about the values involved, the employment relationship ends. The concept that a capitalist's profits come from the risk he or she takes to earn them is the other half of what is missing from the Marxist theory of economics -- following almost inevitably from the adoption of the labour theory of value.

Pinckney 16y ago

By living and working in a country such is America, you are accepting a social contract: if you do well, you will be taxed, if you do poorly, you will at least receive some services to support you. This strikes me as an entirely reasonable contract, though there are others that are different. In Abu Dubai, you can do well, and keep all your money, or do poorly and wind up in debtor's prison. To complain that you're taxed too heavily after you have already become wealthy and secure strikes me as akin to looking back on your healthy, illness free life and complain that you should get a refund on your insurance payments, since they didn't do anything for you. The above is not to argue that one system is superior to the other, but rather that you're in one, and very probably complaining about it now that you know you're well prepared enough that it's clear that you'll probably never be destitute. In a perfect world, we might ask everyone how much risk they want. Unfortunately, so much is determined in your youth. You (I assume) grew up in a family that raised you well, and left you with reasonable earning potential. If we just asked everyone at 18, we would wind up with an upper class that would rarely suffer financial failures, and would accept risk, and those who know they won't get rich on their own, and accept no risk, and so for the most part, this system would be unfundable. As a compromise, and as many of us feel quite strongly that it's simply not acceptable to have people destroyed when they suffer financial ruin, we have some basic social services.

mike_esspe 16y ago
As long as you can't leave this contract (with your property), it's not a voluntary contract. With the same logic you can justify slavery.
- khafra 16y ago
  If you get your property by exploiting the contract, then get to leave the contract instead of paying your side of it, it's not worth much as a contract.
axod 16y ago
The problem for me arises when you start taxing 'the rich' more heavily than others. And having a tax rate above 50% for anyone is morally indefensible IMHO.

benohear 16y ago

I have a theory: In the good ole days, taxation consisted of the lord owning the land (the means of production) and taxing the peasents. This is pretty much what happens when you're employed - someone else owns the means of production, and you are paid less than the value that you create (hopefully for the company, anyway). For me this is a form of taxation - The main difference is that insead of being paid the gross amount and being hit for x%, you get the net amount. On a macro level, it's similar. The country IS the ultimate means of production, and you pay a tax to use it.

jacques_chester 16y ago
You've reinvented the core thesis of Marxism: that the difference between what the worker earns and the capitalist sells is a theft of value. The problem is that it assumes that labour is the true source of value -- this has turned out to be a troublesome assumption. In practice value is subjective.
- benohear 16y ago
  That's not quite what I meant. I was referring to the value your employment adds to the company, not the sales value of the final product. And yes, that's extremely difficult to evaluate, but it seems to me that on average everyone has to be paid less than their contribution, otherwise there would be no profit or funds to pay salaries for people not directly contributing to production. Nor was I passing judgement, by the way, so I don't go along with the "theft" thing. I do however think it is a form of taxation.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    Sorry if I gave the impression that you were passing judgement. I just find it interesting that smart people come up with the same ideas again and again. "Taxation" is not the best way to put it. It is a market exchange. In exchange for a fixed portion of your value output (which will be variable), the company guarantees a certain payment upon a fixed input (usually hours-per-week). Thus the company is essentially taking on the risk that you will produce enough value to cover the cost and leave some space for profit. If you or the company disagree about the values involved, the employment relationship ends. The concept that a capitalist's profits come from the risk he or she takes to earn them is the other half of what is missing from the Marxist theory of economics -- following almost inevitably from the adoption of the labour theory of value.