4 ms·

This is not a taxation by envy, this is Adam Smith "ability to pay" theory, it's the guy who rules UK who invented it, it can't be wrong, on an authority groun

This is not a taxation by envy, this is Adam Smith "ability to pay" theory, it's the guy who rules UK who invented it, it can't be wrong, on an authority ground! Man! Adam Smith! You have to understand that absolute tax rate is just not meaningful, you can't say it's high or low, you need a reference. The real question is: where does the money go? In France it's easy the accounting is public: it goes mainly into retirement and medicines. (yeah, technically it's not taxes, but it's still money the State takes, it's bigger than actual taxes and the debt incurred there is carried by the State General Budget anyways). And then the discussion goes, are the pensions fair in France (and the system where one generation pays for the previous one), what about medicine prices? etc. Don't believe the complaint of the wealthy, they still have a better life than the rest of the population, the only difference is that their friends are journalists. Doctors in France have a better life than street workers. And the thinking than a banker is more important and deserve more money than the garbage man is more alive than ever (also only one of them is literally protecting us from the plague, and only one of them can say: "it me or the chaos in 3 days"). Nobody has been punished by taxes here, the wealthy are perfectly happy to come to Paris through a tax-funded airport, through a taxpayer maintained highway, or through a tunnel that was used to fuck over middle class people. We have gated communities, we give truckloads of money to big corps, and some of the biggest fortunes in the world are here, we're not very different. One difference is that the average people here don't think that they are temporarily embarrassed millionnaires, they know that only a very few people get out of their birth class. And they are conservative (and that drive me crazy). I think the real problem is that we should enjoy the safety net for doing innovation, not mess with the taxes or what some special interests in the UK and US are saying.

WalterBright 13y ago
>they know that only a very few people get out of their birth class Ironically, high income taxes will ensure that result.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_comparison http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_compari... this is completely wrong. edit: and this is frightening to see this kind of thinking on HN, this is not Fox News here, we all have access to the same google.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    I'm curious as to what you think of the first century of the US, where income taxes were 0% and tens of millions of people rose from poverty into the middle class. Also, 85% of American millionaires are self made (see "The Millionaire Next Door").
    - nraynaud 13y ago
      So you select one country, over a carefully selected period of time, you select one parameter amongst hundreds to explain one other. I'm not very good at US history, but slavery, an almost infinite amount of natural resources comes to mind, more that the tax system. While during this time European countries were still wasting resources in wars, throne successions and a mostly feudal system. If I give you another country that pushed people out of poverty into middle class with heavy taxes (Germany after the war for example), then I win at telling the taxes are not the primordial criterion? Or maybe we cut the crap and we look at global data, statistics and economic theory instead of looking at one datapoint and make it an example. Millionnaires are a very small population, they are statistically irrelevant at the people level. Having a very few millionnaires, all of them self made, doesn't influence the social mobility. Otherwise, a few winners at the lottery in a very poor country (imagine the winners being more numerous than the war profiteers) would be enough to claim that it's a country where there is social mobility. You're just looking at the statistics of an infinitely small population. edit: and I probably forgot to throw some Chinese railroad workers in there.
      - WalterBright 13y ago
        Is it really careful cherry picking to pick one of the largest countries in the world over a 100 year timespan that had 0% income taxes? It's a tough case to make that slavery in the US, 1800-1865, transformed tens of millions from poverty into the middle class. The southern states failed to industrialize, which is arguably one of the causes of the Civil War and one of the reasons they lost. The industrialization and rapid economic growth happened in the free states. There are innumerable books on this, but I suggest Bruce Cabot's "The Civil War" which discusses the two economies. You might want to compare it with what happened in South America over the same time period.
- yaantc 13y ago
  Then we should have higher social mobility in the US than in France right? But it doesn't seem to be the case (look for "Country comparison"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility Note also that the northern Europe countries are much better than either France or the US. Not really low taxation countries either.

WalterBright 13y ago

>they know that only a very few people get out of their birth class Ironically, high income taxes will ensure that result.

nraynaud 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_comparison http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_compari... this is completely wrong. edit: and this is frightening to see this kind of thinking on HN, this is not Fox News here, we all have access to the same google.
- WalterBright 13y ago
  I'm curious as to what you think of the first century of the US, where income taxes were 0% and tens of millions of people rose from poverty into the middle class. Also, 85% of American millionaires are self made (see "The Millionaire Next Door").
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    So you select one country, over a carefully selected period of time, you select one parameter amongst hundreds to explain one other. I'm not very good at US history, but slavery, an almost infinite amount of natural resources comes to mind, more that the tax system. While during this time European countries were still wasting resources in wars, throne successions and a mostly feudal system. If I give you another country that pushed people out of poverty into middle class with heavy taxes (Germany after the war for example), then I win at telling the taxes are not the primordial criterion? Or maybe we cut the crap and we look at global data, statistics and economic theory instead of looking at one datapoint and make it an example. Millionnaires are a very small population, they are statistically irrelevant at the people level. Having a very few millionnaires, all of them self made, doesn't influence the social mobility. Otherwise, a few winners at the lottery in a very poor country (imagine the winners being more numerous than the war profiteers) would be enough to claim that it's a country where there is social mobility. You're just looking at the statistics of an infinitely small population. edit: and I probably forgot to throw some Chinese railroad workers in there.
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      Is it really careful cherry picking to pick one of the largest countries in the world over a 100 year timespan that had 0% income taxes? It's a tough case to make that slavery in the US, 1800-1865, transformed tens of millions from poverty into the middle class. The southern states failed to industrialize, which is arguably one of the causes of the Civil War and one of the reasons they lost. The industrialization and rapid economic growth happened in the free states. There are innumerable books on this, but I suggest Bruce Cabot's "The Civil War" which discusses the two economies. You might want to compare it with what happened in South America over the same time period.
yaantc 13y ago
Then we should have higher social mobility in the US than in France right? But it doesn't seem to be the case (look for "Country comparison"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility Note also that the northern Europe countries are much better than either France or the US. Not really low taxation countries either.