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it's that it really is unfair. Moreover, the the creation of wealth depends upon a functioning society with a working police force, fire department, transporta

it's that it really is unfair. Moreover, the the creation of wealth depends upon a functioning society with a working police force, fire department, transportation system, etc., not to mention the accumulative effect that inherited money brings to kids growing up in a supportive environment and going to the best schools. It is a myth that the wealthy earned their wealth all on their own, but one Americans love because of their (our) infatuation with rugged individualism and personal agency. I personally do not mind levying tons of taxes to level the playing field, but that's probably just my temperament. I want to live in a society in which there is equal opportunity, not a plutocracy with a handful of perpetual dynasties.

nickff 13y ago
>"I personally do not mind levying tons of taxes to level the playing field" The question that comes to mind is whether you mind paying the taxes yourself, not what you think about foisting costs on others. It is very easy (and inexpensive) to say that every problem should be solved on someone else's dime; one might even care enough to vote with that in mind, but you are not taking any personal responsibility, or even using clever rhetoric to convince someone else to act.
- allochthon 13y ago
  It is very easy (and inexpensive) to say that every problem should be solved on someone else's dime It's not someone else's dime, full stop. The system misallocated the money in the first place by giving them a disproportionate amount. The mechanism for valuating people's contributions is self-serving and broken right now. A teacher contributes 1000000 times more to society than a hedge fund manager, despite what the hedge fund manager will tell you about the benefits of liquidity that his activities are supposedly bringing about.
  - nickff 13y ago
    >"The system misallocated the money in the first place by giving them a disproportionate amount." Though I have never seen convincing evidence (either way) on this subject, I will accept it ad argumentum. Using coercion to force someone else to pay for things I want is still a cheap and lazy way for me to achieve my ends. My point is that one should convince the hedge fund manager to donate money to important causes. Alternatively, you might contribute your own hard-earned money to achieve the ends you profess (or pretend) to value so highly.
    - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
      How very Randian of you. I don't imagine that you'd have much luck convincing the hedge fund manager to donate to anything unless they themselves think it is important. And it is very hard to convince them that others have it bad when they have it so good. Asking the parent to contribute their hard-earned money also seems sort of disingenuous. How do you know they are not doing so? Even if they did, if they are unable to contribute enough (for any number of reasons), it likely will not effect the issue in a large enough fashion. A Democratic decision is not 'coercion'. If the public decides something is important enough to them to pass a law/change the tax code they are not coercing the rich to pay more. The wealthy could just leave (with all that would entail for both parties) and no longer make their money off/with said public... Or they could stay.
      - nickff 13y ago
        >"A Democratic decision is not 'coercion'." So if a state decides (through referendum or legislative measure(s)) to compel slavery or imprisonment of one race or another, through police or military action, that would not be "coercion"?
        ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        Are you really attempting to equate slavery with the wealthy paying higher taxes? If we are reducing to absolute absurdity... This conversation is over. I have no interest in an HN fallacy battle. A 'democratic' decision to enforce slavery/commit genocide/etc is pretty clearly well outside of what was being discussed.
        nickff 13y ago
        >"If we are reducing to absolute absurdity... This conversation is over." My example was based on the many governments which have treated certain races as sub-human; I agree it is not directly analogous, but I was trying to demonstrate that democracies are not always fonts of virtue. You went and called me a "Randian" (without any demonstrated reason), I believe it was you who was enjoining a "battle" through unsubstantiated allegation.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    The average teacher's contribution? In America? I'm not sure if it's even a positive number. You must have gone to really good schools.
  - AnimalMuppet 13y ago
    The system didn't allocate what was given to them. Most of the wealthy either earned it (by doing something that others wanted badly enough that they paid for it) or inherited it. The only system that gave it to them was the free market. (Yes, I know: Some stole it, some got it via government influence, etc. But in the majority of cases, what I said is true. Bill Gates, for instance: what system gave him a disproportionate amount? Did he earn it by paying substandard wages to Microsoft employees? Well, no, he didn't.) (Also note that nothing in this comment is a justification for the appallingly poor rate at which we pay teachers.)
    - gopher1 13y ago
      Actually, most of the wealth is created in the financial services industry, and one can make quite a compelling argument that most of this wealth is ill-gotten. Insider trading, market manipulation, government lobbying, money laundering, and on and on...
- tomp 13y ago
  But for almost every person, this question is not relevant - in most countries, if the top 1% (or the top 1% of the top 1%) was taxed as much (on income and on assets) as the average (or median) person is, all fiscal issues of the government would be solved. We don't really need to tax the general population more; we just need to make sure the rich stop avoiding their taxes.
  - nickff 13y ago
    The average one percenter has a 23% effective tax rate, double the average (which is 12%). http://taxfoundation.org/blog/top-one-percent-pays-twice-income-tax-rate-all-taxpayers http://taxfoundation.org/blog/top-one-percent-pays-twice-inc... edit: dragonwriter correctly pointed out that the numbers mentioned above are actually 'income tax', not 'total tax'. I apologize for my vagueness. edit: the average total effective tax rate for one percenters is 27.9%, compared to the lower 99%, who pay an average of 27.5% TETR http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf
    - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
      Two questions. Do they actually end up paying that tax rate? Or is that before deductions and only the rate on their personal earned income. There are a lot more ways to game the tax system when you have a great deal of wealth. What percentage of the wealth do they have relative to everyone else?
      - refurb 13y ago
        The definition of "effective tax rate" is what they actually paid.
        ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        But not in this case... which is why I asked. The parent has updated their post to show this. The quoted number was only their income tax rate.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  It may not be a question of if the person in question has to pay themselves. If enough people in a functioning democracy think that it is a good idea for those who are getting more, to pay more, then it would become law (decree if you like). Those people who would have to pay then could either take their wealth and attempt to leave with it (with all the consequences for both parties that might entail), or they can pay the share they are designated, and attempt to make more money with their wealth/connections/etc. Greed is funny in that if you have a lot, you don't tend to see wanting more (or to pay out less) as greedy, while those who are denied the same amount, see those with a great deal (who do not want to contribute what the public believes is their fair share) as greedy.
  - nickff 13y ago
    >"If enough people in a functioning democracy think that it is a good idea for those who are getting more, to pay more, then it would become law" This is how western democracies currently function, though it does not imply that the results are moral or even good. >"Those people who would have to pay then could either take their wealth and attempt to leave with it (with all the consequences for both parties that might entail), or they can pay the share they are designated, and attempt to make more money with their wealth/connections/etc." This statement basically says 'take it or leave it', which I suppose is fine, but does not mean that the state which implements high tax rates will achieve its desired results, and this does not speak to the morality of the average voter either. You seem to ignore my point, which is that people who vote for higher tax rates and increased redistribution of wealth are not actually doing very much to solve any real problem. Voting to raise taxes on the rich demonstrates little personal responsibility, as the voter does not pay to solve the problem, and does not even try to convince others of their moral responsibilities.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > You seem to ignore my point, which is that people who vote for higher tax rates and increased redistribution of wealth are not actually doing very much to solve any real problem. This requires the assumption that the distribution of wealth that is being address is not a real problem. > Voting to raise taxes on the rich demonstrates little personal responsibility, as the voter does not pay to solve the problem Payment to solve the problem is a method to "demonstrate personal responsibility" because it is one method by which one exercises one's power to solve a problem one has perceived, but voting is equally so a method to "demonstrate personal responsibility". > and does not even try to convince others of their moral responsibilities. Well, sure, voting itself may not be an mechanism for trying to convince others of their moral responsibilities (then again, it may be, people have been known to cite drawing attention to an issue and raising awareness to be motivations for voting behavior on issues and candidates), but even where it is not it is often not an isolated behavior, people who based on a preference for a particular policy very often engage in advocacy around the policy, including advocacy based on the premise that it enforces a moral obligation.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  The question that comes to mind is whether you mind paying the taxes yourself, not what you think about foisting costs on others. That's a shift of the argument and discussion. And the simple truth is that taxes are and always will be a form of mutual coercion, mutually agreed on. So long as the taxes are levied based on the ability to pay and not on "what other definable societal subgroup are you a member of", then anyone who happens to win at the wheel of fortune (in the metaphorical, not game-show, sense) is equally included. Taxes are the price of a civil society. Whether you are, as Anne Richards used to say of a fellow politician, born on third base thinking you hit a triple, happened to be fortunate enough to have been living on top of a patch of sand that had half the world's oil squirreled away underneath it (if you want to see a phenomenal story of windfall wealth impacts, look up the story of a few clans of former date farmers and oyster divers who got lucky), or just happened be be born within the geographical boundaries of one of the G7 industrial nations (the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, though much of western Europe could also be included), scored at startup bingo, and/or were ruthless enough to take on all challengers to claim your piece of the pie (see the recent story of "anti-poaching" collusion among Silicon Valley firms), there are tremendous inefficiencies in how "the market" allocates its rewards. Engineering systems almost always include negative feedback loops to prevent runaway destructive trends. Its a concept foreign to much of economics. Not in the least helped by the anti-empirical faith-based fundamentalism of Libertarian dogma that seems to be growing in popularity.
  - nickff 13y ago
    >"[T]axes are and always will be a form of mutual coercion, mutually agreed on." You appear to believe that my birth in a high-tax country is tantamount to acceptance of a social contract with an arbitrary tax level clause (subject to change without notice). For a valid contract, three elements are required: offer, acceptance, and competent persons.[1] I would contend that at my time of birth, I was not a competent person, and even then, I doubt that I would have accepted the contract which you are proposing. >"Engineering systems almost always include negative feedback loops to prevent runaway destructive trends. Its a concept foreign to much of economics. Not in the least helped by the anti-empirical faith-based fundamentalism of Libertarian dogma that seems to be growing in popularity." The problem is that democracy has almost no feedback at all, as people have very little incentive to accept that the policies they voted for have caused real harms; in addition, there are high switching costs when it comes to political views.[2] Libertarians usually resort to two arguments, economic efficiency, and the morality of coercion; I am not sure which of these involves the "dogma" you describe, but I will assume you speak of the economic arguments. You state that there is no feedback in markets, when I believe the opposite is true, as markets react to new information, though they may not always do it very well; the efficient-market hypothesis explains this, and is entirely compatible with feedback control systems theory, (especially the strong form EMH).[3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
dictum 13y ago
> I personally do not mind levying tons of taxes to level the playing field My view is certainly tinged by living in a country where taxes are high but public services are mediocre at best, but there's no use paying high taxes if your money is eventually used in a war with Somewheristan, making the owners and stockholders of military-industrial complex companies richer.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
There are so many who would argue that the wealthly earned their success all on their on that it is frightening (Even on HN). I've gotten into this discussion multiple times here and it amazes me how often people will fail to acknowledge that the 'birth lottery', as Warren Buffett describes it, is a huge factor in the vast majority of success stories. This sort of thing may be the primary reason that there will likely be some sort of very uncomfortable upheaval in the next couple of decades.
- refurb 13y ago
  I always find it interesting when the argument of why people are poor comes up. Usually it looks like this... "People are poor because they make bad life decisions" - usually comes from the right of the political spectrum "People are poor because the system is stacked against them, it's not their fault" - usually from the left of the political spectrum. Like most arguments, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    Agreed. If someone is professing either of those things or something similar they may be missing the point. People are not poor BECAUSE the system is stacked against them. But if they are poor (by birth, by screwing up royally, what have you), they have much less of a chance to become not poor, because the system is stacked against them.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > People are not poor BECAUSE the system is stacked against them. Yes, they (often) are. > But if they are poor (by birth, by screwing up royally, what have you), they have much less of a chance to become not poor, because the system is stacked against them. But then that means that there children are very often poor by birth because the system is stacked against them; specifically, the same features by which the system which made it more difficult for X's ancestor(s) to escape poverty by circumstance mean that the system is stacked against X in a way which produced X's poverty.

nickff 13y ago

>"I personally do not mind levying tons of taxes to level the playing field" The question that comes to mind is whether you mind paying the taxes yourself, not what you think about foisting costs on others. It is very easy (and inexpensive) to say that every problem should be solved on someone else's dime; one might even care enough to vote with that in mind, but you are not taking any personal responsibility, or even using clever rhetoric to convince someone else to act.

allochthon 13y ago
It is very easy (and inexpensive) to say that every problem should be solved on someone else's dime It's not someone else's dime, full stop. The system misallocated the money in the first place by giving them a disproportionate amount. The mechanism for valuating people's contributions is self-serving and broken right now. A teacher contributes 1000000 times more to society than a hedge fund manager, despite what the hedge fund manager will tell you about the benefits of liquidity that his activities are supposedly bringing about.
- nickff 13y ago
  >"The system misallocated the money in the first place by giving them a disproportionate amount." Though I have never seen convincing evidence (either way) on this subject, I will accept it ad argumentum. Using coercion to force someone else to pay for things I want is still a cheap and lazy way for me to achieve my ends. My point is that one should convince the hedge fund manager to donate money to important causes. Alternatively, you might contribute your own hard-earned money to achieve the ends you profess (or pretend) to value so highly.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    How very Randian of you. I don't imagine that you'd have much luck convincing the hedge fund manager to donate to anything unless they themselves think it is important. And it is very hard to convince them that others have it bad when they have it so good. Asking the parent to contribute their hard-earned money also seems sort of disingenuous. How do you know they are not doing so? Even if they did, if they are unable to contribute enough (for any number of reasons), it likely will not effect the issue in a large enough fashion. A Democratic decision is not 'coercion'. If the public decides something is important enough to them to pass a law/change the tax code they are not coercing the rich to pay more. The wealthy could just leave (with all that would entail for both parties) and no longer make their money off/with said public... Or they could stay.
    - nickff 13y ago
      >"A Democratic decision is not 'coercion'." So if a state decides (through referendum or legislative measure(s)) to compel slavery or imprisonment of one race or another, through police or military action, that would not be "coercion"?
      - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        Are you really attempting to equate slavery with the wealthy paying higher taxes? If we are reducing to absolute absurdity... This conversation is over. I have no interest in an HN fallacy battle. A 'democratic' decision to enforce slavery/commit genocide/etc is pretty clearly well outside of what was being discussed.
        nickff 13y ago
        >"If we are reducing to absolute absurdity... This conversation is over." My example was based on the many governments which have treated certain races as sub-human; I agree it is not directly analogous, but I was trying to demonstrate that democracies are not always fonts of virtue. You went and called me a "Randian" (without any demonstrated reason), I believe it was you who was enjoining a "battle" through unsubstantiated allegation.
- philwelch 13y ago
  The average teacher's contribution? In America? I'm not sure if it's even a positive number. You must have gone to really good schools.
- AnimalMuppet 13y ago
  The system didn't allocate what was given to them. Most of the wealthy either earned it (by doing something that others wanted badly enough that they paid for it) or inherited it. The only system that gave it to them was the free market. (Yes, I know: Some stole it, some got it via government influence, etc. But in the majority of cases, what I said is true. Bill Gates, for instance: what system gave him a disproportionate amount? Did he earn it by paying substandard wages to Microsoft employees? Well, no, he didn't.) (Also note that nothing in this comment is a justification for the appallingly poor rate at which we pay teachers.)
  - gopher1 13y ago
    Actually, most of the wealth is created in the financial services industry, and one can make quite a compelling argument that most of this wealth is ill-gotten. Insider trading, market manipulation, government lobbying, money laundering, and on and on...
tomp 13y ago
But for almost every person, this question is not relevant - in most countries, if the top 1% (or the top 1% of the top 1%) was taxed as much (on income and on assets) as the average (or median) person is, all fiscal issues of the government would be solved. We don't really need to tax the general population more; we just need to make sure the rich stop avoiding their taxes.
- nickff 13y ago
  The average one percenter has a 23% effective tax rate, double the average (which is 12%). http://taxfoundation.org/blog/top-one-percent-pays-twice-income-tax-rate-all-taxpayers http://taxfoundation.org/blog/top-one-percent-pays-twice-inc... edit: dragonwriter correctly pointed out that the numbers mentioned above are actually 'income tax', not 'total tax'. I apologize for my vagueness. edit: the average total effective tax rate for one percenters is 27.9%, compared to the lower 99%, who pay an average of 27.5% TETR http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    Two questions. Do they actually end up paying that tax rate? Or is that before deductions and only the rate on their personal earned income. There are a lot more ways to game the tax system when you have a great deal of wealth. What percentage of the wealth do they have relative to everyone else?
    - refurb 13y ago
      The definition of "effective tax rate" is what they actually paid.
      - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        But not in this case... which is why I asked. The parent has updated their post to show this. The quoted number was only their income tax rate.
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
It may not be a question of if the person in question has to pay themselves. If enough people in a functioning democracy think that it is a good idea for those who are getting more, to pay more, then it would become law (decree if you like). Those people who would have to pay then could either take their wealth and attempt to leave with it (with all the consequences for both parties that might entail), or they can pay the share they are designated, and attempt to make more money with their wealth/connections/etc. Greed is funny in that if you have a lot, you don't tend to see wanting more (or to pay out less) as greedy, while those who are denied the same amount, see those with a great deal (who do not want to contribute what the public believes is their fair share) as greedy.
- nickff 13y ago
  >"If enough people in a functioning democracy think that it is a good idea for those who are getting more, to pay more, then it would become law" This is how western democracies currently function, though it does not imply that the results are moral or even good. >"Those people who would have to pay then could either take their wealth and attempt to leave with it (with all the consequences for both parties that might entail), or they can pay the share they are designated, and attempt to make more money with their wealth/connections/etc." This statement basically says 'take it or leave it', which I suppose is fine, but does not mean that the state which implements high tax rates will achieve its desired results, and this does not speak to the morality of the average voter either. You seem to ignore my point, which is that people who vote for higher tax rates and increased redistribution of wealth are not actually doing very much to solve any real problem. Voting to raise taxes on the rich demonstrates little personal responsibility, as the voter does not pay to solve the problem, and does not even try to convince others of their moral responsibilities.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > You seem to ignore my point, which is that people who vote for higher tax rates and increased redistribution of wealth are not actually doing very much to solve any real problem. This requires the assumption that the distribution of wealth that is being address is not a real problem. > Voting to raise taxes on the rich demonstrates little personal responsibility, as the voter does not pay to solve the problem Payment to solve the problem is a method to "demonstrate personal responsibility" because it is one method by which one exercises one's power to solve a problem one has perceived, but voting is equally so a method to "demonstrate personal responsibility". > and does not even try to convince others of their moral responsibilities. Well, sure, voting itself may not be an mechanism for trying to convince others of their moral responsibilities (then again, it may be, people have been known to cite drawing attention to an issue and raising awareness to be motivations for voting behavior on issues and candidates), but even where it is not it is often not an isolated behavior, people who based on a preference for a particular policy very often engage in advocacy around the policy, including advocacy based on the premise that it enforces a moral obligation.
dredmorbius 13y ago
The question that comes to mind is whether you mind paying the taxes yourself, not what you think about foisting costs on others. That's a shift of the argument and discussion. And the simple truth is that taxes are and always will be a form of mutual coercion, mutually agreed on. So long as the taxes are levied based on the ability to pay and not on "what other definable societal subgroup are you a member of", then anyone who happens to win at the wheel of fortune (in the metaphorical, not game-show, sense) is equally included. Taxes are the price of a civil society. Whether you are, as Anne Richards used to say of a fellow politician, born on third base thinking you hit a triple, happened to be fortunate enough to have been living on top of a patch of sand that had half the world's oil squirreled away underneath it (if you want to see a phenomenal story of windfall wealth impacts, look up the story of a few clans of former date farmers and oyster divers who got lucky), or just happened be be born within the geographical boundaries of one of the G7 industrial nations (the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, though much of western Europe could also be included), scored at startup bingo, and/or were ruthless enough to take on all challengers to claim your piece of the pie (see the recent story of "anti-poaching" collusion among Silicon Valley firms), there are tremendous inefficiencies in how "the market" allocates its rewards. Engineering systems almost always include negative feedback loops to prevent runaway destructive trends. Its a concept foreign to much of economics. Not in the least helped by the anti-empirical faith-based fundamentalism of Libertarian dogma that seems to be growing in popularity.
- nickff 13y ago
  >"[T]axes are and always will be a form of mutual coercion, mutually agreed on." You appear to believe that my birth in a high-tax country is tantamount to acceptance of a social contract with an arbitrary tax level clause (subject to change without notice). For a valid contract, three elements are required: offer, acceptance, and competent persons.[1] I would contend that at my time of birth, I was not a competent person, and even then, I doubt that I would have accepted the contract which you are proposing. >"Engineering systems almost always include negative feedback loops to prevent runaway destructive trends. Its a concept foreign to much of economics. Not in the least helped by the anti-empirical faith-based fundamentalism of Libertarian dogma that seems to be growing in popularity." The problem is that democracy has almost no feedback at all, as people have very little incentive to accept that the policies they voted for have caused real harms; in addition, there are high switching costs when it comes to political views.[2] Libertarians usually resort to two arguments, economic efficiency, and the morality of coercion; I am not sure which of these involves the "dogma" you describe, but I will assume you speak of the economic arguments. You state that there is no feedback in markets, when I believe the opposite is true, as markets react to new information, though they may not always do it very well; the efficient-market hypothesis explains this, and is entirely compatible with feedback control systems theory, (especially the strong form EMH).[3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

dictum 13y ago

> I personally do not mind levying tons of taxes to level the playing field My view is certainly tinged by living in a country where taxes are high but public services are mediocre at best, but there's no use paying high taxes if your money is eventually used in a war with Somewheristan, making the owners and stockholders of military-industrial complex companies richer.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ItendToDisagree 13y ago

There are so many who would argue that the wealthly earned their success all on their on that it is frightening (Even on HN). I've gotten into this discussion multiple times here and it amazes me how often people will fail to acknowledge that the 'birth lottery', as Warren Buffett describes it, is a huge factor in the vast majority of success stories. This sort of thing may be the primary reason that there will likely be some sort of very uncomfortable upheaval in the next couple of decades.

refurb 13y ago
I always find it interesting when the argument of why people are poor comes up. Usually it looks like this... "People are poor because they make bad life decisions" - usually comes from the right of the political spectrum "People are poor because the system is stacked against them, it's not their fault" - usually from the left of the political spectrum. Like most arguments, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  Agreed. If someone is professing either of those things or something similar they may be missing the point. People are not poor BECAUSE the system is stacked against them. But if they are poor (by birth, by screwing up royally, what have you), they have much less of a chance to become not poor, because the system is stacked against them.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > People are not poor BECAUSE the system is stacked against them. Yes, they (often) are. > But if they are poor (by birth, by screwing up royally, what have you), they have much less of a chance to become not poor, because the system is stacked against them. But then that means that there children are very often poor by birth because the system is stacked against them; specifically, the same features by which the system which made it more difficult for X's ancestor(s) to escape poverty by circumstance mean that the system is stacked against X in a way which produced X's poverty.