Unfortunately, rich people love money too much, so we're not allowed to talk about the real solution, and have to talk about all these fake solutions instead.
We don't talk about the real solution because none of the person that want to "take more from the rich and give more to the poor" proposes one. The problem isn't what to do, but how to do it.
Courtesy of being born in a Communist country, I had to learn Karl Marx and such in middle school. And almost every single statement on this comment chain reads like my term exam questions (I'm not being facetious here). He has a whole chapter on general formula of capital, and another one on rent seeking behavior. It's all good idea ... until you actually try to implement it and the resulting government is nuts.
Take those with 100% inheritance tax idea. Are you gonna also tax gift at 100%? Cause it's obvious what will happen. Now we're adding special case that parents are not allowed to gift their house to their children?
The poor spendthrift vagabond says to a rich man:
"I have discovered there is enough money in the world for all of us, if it was equally divided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy together."
"But," was the response, "if everybody was like you, it would be spent in two months, and what would you do then?"
"Oh! divide again; keep dividing, of course!"
Where in the real world we have confounding factors such as racism, sexism, cultural norms, differing costs of transit and habitation, limited opportunities and limits on resources.
Collectivism should be avoided.
You literally have to do nothing to cash a rent check, receive share dividends or interest on a loan.
From a systems' perspective that's parasitism.
The only thing that stops this system of parasitic wealth transfer from spinning out of control is re-redistributive taxation.
How are you yourself different from the vilified "rent seeker"?
Fantastic.
You can spin that fact any way that you want but it's still a fact.
That's why I don't call it redistributive taxation. It's re-redistributive taxation.
At least we're in agreement that parasitism is not a desirable outcome. We seem to disagree on what constitutes parasitic behavior.
First of all, I think that the idea of estate tax is lunacy in and of itself but now that we have it, let's think about what you're saying; that it's not okay for an individual upon death to transfer his/her wealth to a person of their choosing (whom they may have mentored to further a legacy they were passionate about) but that it is okay for the proletariat to forcibly acquire said wealth because they know better?
How is that not outright theft? I would like the opportunity to freely determine how my acquired wealth will be spent after I'm dead. If I would like to leave it to a mentee of mine to further some work I had began, then being the acquirer of said wealth, I deserve that right.
You know, this experiment is already done and dusted. Any time you advocate for egalitarianism, look at the results of "The Berlin Wall's great human experiment" then be afraid. What sort of government shoots its own people to prevent them from running away from the horrid conditions they've created? I'll tell you which one, a socialist/communist one.
It's re-redistributive. Taxation somewhat compensates for the redistributive effect of the rentier economy, which you could also characterize as theft for similar reasons.
>I would like the opportunity to freely determine how my acquired wealth will be spent after I'm dead
And I would like not to have to dedicate 40% of my income to renting property from non-productive (sometimes anti-productive) members of society.
Euthananize the rentier and I'll be happy for you to keep 100% of the wealth you earned with actual work.
Until that time, no.
No, that's called a property management company. Around where I live they take ~10% of the rent and pass the rest on to the rentier.
Try again.
Landlords are doubly parasites.
That sounds utterly contradictory.
Landlords provide a service by maintaining and managing properties. They assume most of the risks including damage to the property due to fire and natural disasters. They provide a means for people with little to no credit to afford a roof over their head when they can't get a loan. You are not just paying to live somewhere when you pay rent. You are paying for all of these services and more. If landlords were purely parasites they wouldn't be able to make any money. People would just go around them. Just because you don't like the need for the service they provide doesn't mean they don't provide a service.
We already established that property management companies do this for 10% of the rent.
>They assume most of the risks including damage to the property due to fire and natural disasters.
Should I charitably assume that you've just never heard of insurance?
>They provide a means for people with little to no credit
That 80% of the rent which goes into their pockets after management, insurance and repairs are taken care of is pure, unadulterated parasitism.
Just as payday loans are parasitism.
They both effect net transfers of wealth that, similar to a payday loan. Capitalism grants an entitlement to those with more money to receive an income only because they have more money.
>You are paying for all of these services and more
You are often paying and not even getting these services. Many landlords end up not fixing stuff that breaks.
>If landlords were purely parasites they wouldn't be able to make any money. People would just go around them.
Not possible while they own deeds to the land. Ownership of the land is the part that lets them be parasites.
>Just because you don't like the need for the service they provide doesn't mean they don't provide a service.
Owning land is what gives them the ability to provide a service and charge 5x what it is worth.
If land ownership were illegal and it were simply rented from the government at the exact prevailing unimproved rental value then landlords would become more like an average shop owner rather than massive leeches on productive members of society.
Closer to 30% and that doesn't include maintenance costs and insurance which are _VERY_ significant.
>Should I charitably assume that you've just never heard of insurance?
I've been charitable by not bringing it up. It costs ~40-50% of your gross income from a rental property where I'm from.
>That 80% of the rent which goes into their pockets after...
Point me to where I can make that kind of money and I'll quit my job today. I'm sure I would have absolutely NO trouble at all getting a loan if I was pretty much guaranteed an 80% profit.
>Many landlords end up not fixing stuff that breaks.
If it's in the lease that they will (It's in mine.) Then sue them. If not, fix it or move. I've yet to see a lease that didn't include timely repairs.
>If land ownership were illegal and it were simply rented from the government...
It pretty much is. What do you think property taxes are? When you pay for land you're just providing an incentive for another party to cut their lease short.
>Not possible while they own deeds to the land. Ownership of the land is the part that lets them be parasites.
Land is cheap in a lot of places. Sometimes much cheaper than renting. The barrier to buying land varies, but sometimes renting is a better option.
How dare they!
Get real.
That profit is parasitically extracted. No 'work' was done to actually get it - it's merely the privilege that having money gives you.
Some landlords do do the work themselves, which simply means that not all of the income derived from their properties is parasitically extracted - only ~80%.
Probably not. You'll barely break even. It's not as lucrative as you think it is.
If you were being generous you could argue that landlords lose another 10% of the rent to repairs.
That still leaves a big fat 80% slice of the rents coming in which is free money.
EDIT: Don't forget about property taxes! Those eat up a pretty big chunk of the rent too. They're usually a couple hundred a month. Let's be nice and call that 10% although it's generally much larger.
That is called narcissism.
From my anecdotal experience it is too often people who are themselves near or at 1% trying to justify how the "rich" are taking something away from them.
You mean, the people who are advocating for taking someone else's pie.
Where does this idea come from that the rich are "taking" from them? No one takes from you, except for the government when they collect taxes. All other relationships are consensual relationships negotiated by people who are all looking for the best deal they can find. Someone pays me for my labor, and in return for compensation I give them my labor. It's a fair deal and entered willingly. If I did not think it was a fair deal, then I could offer my labor to someone else and look for a better one, or I could start my own business and work for myself.
If you think that someone else is taking from you or paying an unfair price, then start your own business. You might end up with a different perspective on the value that business owners and capitalists have in society. When you start a business, all of the wealth you create is done with your own hand: you provide a product or service, and you convince people to give you their money in exchange for it. They do, and (hopefully) you end up with more money than it costs to create the product or service, and so you profit. The difference is, no one is taking care of you by saying, "Hey, just come into work every day and we'll pay you." The business owner needs to make sure its suppliers deliver product on time, and its clients pay what they owe on time, and handle various sorts of concerns that are easy to fail to recognize. The business owner needs to make sure their facilities are operational, and that laborers have the tools and supplies they need to do the job, otherwise work stops! There's a chance that your business can crash and you'll be left with nothing. You take on a risk that you work for years and end up with essentially nothing, because your company might be running out of money, and no one might be willing to buy your (at that point) failing, borderline worthless company. There's a lot of risk involved, especially in companies that develop new products -- the value of the product isn't known, and so you're taking on a risk that the company itself might collapse due to being immature, and a further risk that the product might not be valuable, and many more risks.
If anyone be believes that they or someone are "not getting a fair cut", then they are welcome to strike out on their own or with like minded people and create their own organization. This website frequently writes about organizations that were created by just a few people, delivered incredible value, and so grew into something great.
Furthermore, if this company founder is correct in their theory that organizations that employ laborers are not giving the laborers a fair share, then the new company that they found will be able to and will choose to pay laborers much more than any competitor will (due to recognizing their true value). In paying more for the labor, this company will be able to attract by far the best laborers and hire as many people as it needs. Competitors meanwhile will be starved for talent and will suffer. In this way, a company that fairly values and fairly compensates the work produces by its laborers will out-compete companies that undervalue their laborers. In the end, companies that value worker labor correctly will come out on top.
If you have studied economics, and you have followed this reasoning, then you should be open to the possibility that laborers are in fact fairly compensated for the value they produce. That's not to say that we should not have progressive taxes, but when you recognize this, you might look differently at the idea that peoples' value is being "stolen". They're willingly trading it at a price they negotiated. You shouldn't be sour about a deal you negotiated and accepted; and you shouldn't be mad at someone that a better deal isn't available. Perhaps I think I should be paid $1 million dollars per year, but just because I believe that doesn't make it true. A person deserves to have the compensation that they earn by providing value to others, at a rate the other people agree to willingly (and enough to say alive, whichever is greater).
It seems the poor man in that story knows more about how the economy works than the rich man.
A case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmji36q8E4o
How many generations out do you plan to ban? Cause it might be a good time for me to start getting to know my extended cousins. ;)
I'm guessing all of them.
Not that it really changes anything. You'll just put your major assets in other people's name long before you die so the state doesn't take them. If you raised your children right, they won't sell your house while you're still living in it.
The "nordic model" has actually very little to do with Marxism. Marx didn't write about money, he wrote about power, specifically economic power. Experiments with that idea all failed because it's a very bad idea to randomly give people power (or, as it happened in most of those experiments, give it to the government).
There's a newer idea which people are generally advocating when they mention Scandinavia which so-called "Social democrats" came up with: just redistribute (some of) the money. Leave enough to the wealthy to leave incentives intact, give enough to the poor so they and their children can live a somewhat normal life. I believe it's worked quite well for almost all countries that have tried it.
A lot of people on HN is supporting Basic Income policy (I do, too). And that's why I specifically pointed out the extreme hyperbole policy while replying to a very antagonizing comment, it wasn't a critic on the "idea". This is the kind of things that the specific matters and you need to says what exactly you are looking for.
FWIW, when I posted there were much fewer comments, and the sentiment was different than the current top comments.
That's just a lie. I could reel off about 20 or 30, many of which were the centerpiece of a presidential campaign.
* Raise minimum wage.
* Implement 100% LVT.
* Water down intellectual property laws.
* Water down laws that attack unions (e.g. 'right' to work).
* Strengthen laws that allow unions to organize.
* Remove carried interest rule.
* Implement a job guarantee.
* Make trade deals with other countries contingent on ^^^ this stuff happening in those countries too.
Unfortunately, left economists who can make a case for policies like this are consistently shouted down by the 'respectable' economists who predict austerity will cause growth 7 years in a row (any day now!) and catastrophic job losses will be the only result of raising the minimum wage. Those who make being usefully wrong a profession, in other words.
>Courtesy of being born in a Communist country, I had to learn Karl Marx and such in middle school. And almost every single statement on this comment chain reads like my term exam questions (I'm not being facetious here). He has a whole chapter on general formula of capital, and another one on rent seeking behavior. It's all good idea ... until you actually try to implement it and the resulting government is nuts.
98% of his writings were a critique of capitalism. He didn't provide a detailed description of how to implement anything.
Of course, some dictators used his writings as a pretext to seize power and implement fairly bog standard authoritarian regimes and guilt by association works wonders on the feeble minded, so there's that
Yeah that's exactly my point. The issue is when we try to turn all those seemingly "good" things into practice, we couldn't figure out how.
Let me pick the one that I disagree the most in your list:
> Implement a job guarantee
How would you do that?
He wrote a critique of capitalism
Das Kapital was not a list of seemingly good thing that could be turned into practice. The fact that other people read the book and did misguided or horrible things is no reflection on what he wrote.
>>>Let me pick the one that I disagree the most in your list:
>>Implement a job guarantee
>How would you do that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
If you think the Lincoln Tunnel was a waste of money and you think that the private sector overproducing shoddy McMansions where nobody wants to live in 2007 was a great thing then you probably wouldn't be a fan.
Of course, which side of the argument a person lands on probably depends on their moral politics, see[1] - basically I'm referring to the progressive vs. conservative divide.
Fortunately for me I live in Australia where we have social welfare to the tune of $527.60 a fortnight for a single adult[2], and $952.80 for a couple. But of course we still have bunches of poverty, but I've never been to the US so I can't really say how it compares.
Also, I think the example of the Nordic countries is a poor comparison. The 'Nordic Countries* as a whole have a population of 26.6 million, comparable to Australia. Sweden has a population of about 10 million, the others are close to half that or much less.
In a country that has a population the size of Melbourne (4.5 million) or Sydney (4.9 million) I would imagine it would be a lot easier to want to care for other people. I think that matters a lot.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM 2. https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/payment-r...
The net cost to society of not having those things is probably magnitudes of order greater than paying for them, both in the economic sense and the social costs.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-amer...
"Social mobility in Denmark and the U.S. seem to be remarkably similar when looking exclusively at wages—that is, before including taxes and transfers."
I linked to the article to point to the fact that poor people also have a hard time getting out of their poornes in Denmark and it's actually worse because the high "minimum salaries" makes it almost impossible for them to get a job.
What are you going to do when the rich dedicate their resources to avoiding that taking (which they already do for the current taxation policies)? I don't think you have a reasonable solution for that.
For real-world examples of that, look at FBAR and FATCA and related legislation. They were meant to help the IRS tax rich people, but they had some insane side effects.
For one, all US citizens and permanent residents have to file a tax return every year, even if they haven't lived in the US for years and don't owe anything to the IRS. This is a significant hassle for many people. Because of FATCA, anyone who qualifies as a "US resident for tax purposes" also has to report foreign assets and income over a certain value ($50000 if I'm not mistaken).
Another "fun" effect (of FBAR this time) is that foreign banks now have to report accounts of US citizens to the IRS, which has made many foreign banks refuse to deal with US citizens or permanent residents. I would not want to be an American expat if I had to deal with that.
Idealistic plans like "let's tax the rich and give all that money to the poor" have, in practice, significant negative consequences on people they never intended to harm (such as the middle class). How do you propose to eliminate or mitigate such unintended consequences?
As professor of economics Mark Blyth explains[1], "The Hamptons are not a defensible position."
Similar to the problem with the Martingale betting system where (it works great until your bankroll runs out), all of that theory about taxes is suddenly irrelevant when hungry people decide that taking your stuff directly is a better solution.
> How do you propose to eliminate or mitigate such unintended consequences?
I don't. Everything has unintended consequences and no plan is perfect. We will always have to manage problems as they arise.
How do you propose to keep people from burning your house down because they are hungry, angry, and see no alternative?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGvZil0qWPg#t=506
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_%28betting_system%2...
But you do, if you (or the GP) want people to support your taxation plan and go along with it. Otherwise, it will get rejected. You need to prove that your plan is effective.
> How do you propose to keep people from burning your house down because they are hungry, angry, and see no alternative?
That's not really happening even in countries much poorer than the US. Those people are much more likely to steal my stuff than burn it down.
I think you're trying to sell a "tiger-repelling rock".
I'm offering advice. You're free to ignore it.
> That's not really happening even in countries much poorer than the US.
Events like Occupy were important warning signs. As the video I linked to discusses, the rise of populism (Trump, etc.) and the rejection of traditional institutions (e.g. brexit) are further examples of people rejecting the status quo.
Do you actually have any direct experience in living at or below the poverty line in the US? Recent experience is important, as the situation has been changing. Or are you observations made from a position of privilege? If the latter, you might want better data.
The bigger problem, though, is that you seem to be looking for signs of the open revolt I was describing. By the time that happens, we are well past the time these problems might be fixed with social programs. I'm suggesting that our current ship of state is heading towards an economic minefield; "I haven't seen any explosions" is not a particularly useful observation.
You're presenting a political view. That's not just "advice".
> Do you actually have any direct experience in living at or below the poverty line in the US? Recent experience is important, as the situation has been changing. Or are you observations made from a position of privilege? If the latter, you might want better data.
I grew up in a post-communist Eastern European country, and have a lot of experience with that (my parents were on the poor side). I'm currently a middle-class programmer, so I wouldn't say I'm privileged (although you might disagree).
I believe I have plenty of data and experience with poverty. I'm also very skeptical of redistribution, after seeing what communism actually did to my own country.
[0]http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/ec...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/norway-see...
1) Does this solution scale to countries that have no rich? Forbes billionaires list is heavily concentrated around a dozen or so countries, what rich targets are there to take from in large portions of African continent, for example?
2) Does this solution work long-term? How do you expect not to run out of rich after three or more iterations of the same?
2) What do you think happens to the money, that it gets burned? The money will continue in circulation (ie. the previously poor will now pay for their food instead of stealing it etc.), and if you were rich before the money will obviously keep coming back, as more people have the wealth to purchase your services.
In a scenario where the original rich person was a landlord, factory owner or a farmer, the property progressively got taken away to cover the tax bills and either sold to a bunch of third parties or just taken over by a government agency, as those property auctions take a while to set up, find respective buyers and run.
The "services" thesis works for someone charging per engagement, like a doctor, as they can probably operate with relatively small overhead, but for a bunch of occupations the property that's responsible for building wealth is also the tool of building that wealth.
It's just tax which depending on it's size and how it's used and where have consequences good and bad depending on who you ask.
There isn't some objective version of tax or non-tax.
But, when looked at on balance, simple things like fair working wages also help redistribute wealth down the ladder but aren't burdened with the hyperbole of the rich being mugged by the poor.
The argument is forever framed as three sets of hands - one with cash, one in the middle that pries the cash from the first set and hands it to the third. We don't need to talk about direct redistribution by force. Fair market practices and regulations that prevent one from taking unfair advantage of another do the trick just fine.
There's nothing wrong with people earning lots of money from their own work, but they shouldn't be able to pass that on to heirs who have done literally nothing to earn it.
In the most basic sense, how much should I be allowed to do what I want with my own money?
A step more complex; giving to your kids is, AFAIK, one of the biggest drivers in why people try to make money during their lifetimes.
A step more liberal: Inheritance (the accumulation of wealth by a family), again, AFAIK, is an important part of upwards mobility.
The current setup is definitely sub-optimal. 100% would also be sub optimal, and, I'd argue, worse than what we've got here, because it's another thing that rich people could dodge that not-rich people couldn't.
It's not your money once you're dead. As far as I'm concerned, dead people don't have any rights.
> A step more liberal: Inheritance (the accumulation of wealth by a family), again, AFAIK, is an important part of upwards mobility.
On the contrary, I think it hurts economic mobility a lot more than it helps. If you're competing for opportunities with people who inherited millions of dollars (without doing anything themselves), it's a lot harder to advance yourself.
Non-rich people don't generally leave enough of an estate for it to matter in the first case. We could easily exclude the first $100k for that matter.
We have an existing estate tax. It's not a novel concept.
Yes, it is novel to do that.
There's already a 40% inheritance tax. How do you think it works in the status quo?
Plenty of estates have to be liquidated to settle debts and taxes today. It's hardly unprecedented.
It would take years to sell off $50 billion of stocks without crashing the company. Even if they are patience and manage to do that, alot of people, myself included, would have trouble with the government being in de-facto control of the company.
If you dismissed either of the two reasons above, I guess I don't see a point in continuing the discussion.
I agree. It's not worth continuing this discussion if you believe that it takes 10 years to sell off $50 billion of stocks.
Russian oligarchy is an illustration of this - the inheritance tax is effectively 100%, with the understanding that the property can be taken and re-gifted away any day, so most enterprises are stripped of their cash as soon as possible with money redirected towards conspicuous consumption.
The Russian example seems to be more a testament to the danger of unstable political regimes, not the problems of a high inheritance tax.
I don't want to live in your world.
I don't particularly like living in a world where my hard work is confiscated at a high rate while someone who just has the good fortune of wealthy parents can receive millions tax free.
I have no interest in living in your dream world of justice. As it would have been a totalitarian nightmare where everybody would be worse off.
I really don't understand why you're so vehemently protective of inherited wealth. Do you think it's abhorrent that Bill Gates is voluntarily donating most of his wealth to charity instead of leaving it to his children?
Why do you think an inheritance tax is "totalitarian?" At least, why is it any worse than income taxes?
I don't care what people do with their property out of their own free will.
I do care when people are trying to instate authoritarian totalitarian governments.
I oppose inheritance tax - as that inheritance has already been taxed at least once.
I have plenty of good solid arguments on my side.
And I would advise you to put a bit more thinking into your ideas.
If you have so many "good solid arguments" on your side, I'd love to hear them. Or answer my question of why they're so much worse than income taxes.
Why do you think that an inheritance tax implies an "authoritarian totalitarian government?" It's a total non sequitur. Does Denmark have an authoritarian government because they impose a high income tax?
Your conflation of income and inheritance tax is disingenuous.
My crown argument against inheritance tax is that the property being inherited has already been taxed before.
Another would be that taxing inheritance destroys capital base, which no society really wants.
Third would be that governments are really bad at managing capital. There are plenty of issues in the nordic models, where there are already signs that their massive welfare states are going to implode in the next couple of decades.
p.s.: How is me remarking that you have poorly thought out positions an ad-hominem?
Why? What is the taxation level where the government is automatically authoritarian? 99%? 90%? 80%?
You can't just assert things and then not provide a causal chain.
What makes double taxation an unmitigated evil? Sales taxes are double taxes, as are taxes on corporate dividends. Yet I don't hear people railing about how they're symptomatic of an authoritarian regime.
> Another would be that taxing inheritance destroys capital base, which no society really wants.
How does it "destroy" capital base? Redistribution of wealth does not equal destruction of wealth.
I agree that many governments do manage their capital poorly. Instead of having government hold on to the capital, I'd say we should collect all estate taxes and channel them into an annual basic income for all citizens. Let the living decide how to use the money.
> p.s.: How is me remarking that you have poorly thought out positions an ad-hominem?
It's not attacking the merits of the argument but instead the thinking of the arguer. I have actually thought about this quite a bit.
p.s.: for readers - see what Milton Friedman had to say on the very topic, to a person that seems very much on the same level as some of the contributors to this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRpEV2tmYz4
Right. Like I mean, it's more complicated than a straight 100%.
For example: What if I transfer my wealth to my family BEFORE my death? What if I set up a trust to manage properties so that my descendants don't own it, but benefit from it? (What if those properties produce their own cash-flow, which goes to my descendants, but they still don't own the property?).
Let's take another example. Let's take Cliff's Variety store in the Haight. Do you think it's worth more than $100k? Do you think they bought/built it for <$100? (hint: no, it's been around in one form or another since before WWII). It's been in that family for generations; it's still in that family. Should it stay in that family? If the current owners die suddenly, before they can transfer ownership, what should happen?
What if my parent owns a company, and I work for that company adding substantial value - like, say, Dr Bronner's soap company? How much of that company's value do I deserve as inheritance, or by ownership, given my contribution?
People live a long time now. I don't have to have the millions of dollars to make you compete for opportunities against my with the benefit of that. Parents (and grandparents, and reasonably, great-great-grand parents) can pay for my education. Or buy me houses. Or not buy me houses - buy themselves houses - and then let me stay there; and this problems is just going to get worse as longevity increases.
The stability of capital is in fact a huge part of how NY/CA remain successful—if you're ambitious, you have to move towards the capital to access it.
Also, keep in mind we're in the context of a thread where people are already discussing how to soak the rich. I'd much rather tax estates than dramatically increase taxes for people who have earned their money.
For what it's worth high estate taxes don't seem to correlate with economic growth (neither are zero estate taxes, to be fair) - I am reading this graph http://taxfoundation.org/article/estate-and-inheritance-taxe... and Japan, for example, being high on the GDP ranking is kinda dead in the water as far as economic growth ranking.
I think eventually the estates succumb to "three generations" rule, so the problem might be self-correcting.
The advantage of a high estate tax is more a social one of removing unearned wealth and freeing up some money to spend on social programs.
But you're right that it might be more efficient to make the tax 95% so the beneficiary has an incentive to handle the liquidation so they can get their 5%.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_Sta...
So then the next question is, obviously, how do you fix that? How do you ensure that the market, regulations, employment, etc. are all perfectly fair and free? And the answer there is, you very much cannot. At best it's an enormously difficult problem beyond the scale of any problem that has been tackled by human civilization to date, at worst it's fundamentally intractable.
The next question then becomes, so how do we make it more fair in the easiest way we can in the near-term? And the answer there is wealth redistribution. Power and wealth perverts fairness of markets, including labor markets, and it perverts our systems of laws and governance. That's not to say that wealth is purely evil, there are many up sides to the accumulation of wealth, and personally I'm a big fan of "capitalism" (for lack of a better word). But we need to recognize that it is very much not only a flawed and imperfect system but a system that inherently contains many aspects that are poisonous to the operation of a peaceful and sane free society. The longer we ignore that, which we have for almost 4 decades, the worse those inherently problematic aspects become, and the more those who see the truth (that the system is very much rigged against the little guy) become increasingly intolerant of the continuation of the system that they perceive is systematically putting them at a disadvantage, and that leads to "very bad things".
This is a... let's go with "subjective" - this is a subjective interpretation of "fairness". It is totally fair to profit from the effective functioning of civilization. I think what you're actually trying to say is it's not fair to claim credit for that wealth without sharing credit with the system that created the situation within which you could make it.
I tend to think of wealth in the current system like water and hydropower, except that "natural" resting place of wealth is in one big pile (at the top), instead of one big pile at the bottom (oceans). (I could go into why, but I think, observationally, it's pretty clear what the steady-state trends towards).
With that in mind, power is extracted (and work done by that power) as water moves towards it's resting state. Other systems (that are importing entropy) then work against that trend (evaporation), keeping the cycle going.
Wealth accumulates. Something outside the system of wealth (such as government) needs to "import entropy" back into the economy so that work can be extracted as wealth moves back towards it's resting state.
Does that make sense?
(Please, poke holes in my model!)
And we would be fools, utter fools, to deny that, no matter how much we treasure the ideals of free market economies. In fact, if we do value the free market we must be aware of these things, because they are a major reason why people might fight against the model of the free market and they are a major corruption of the ideals of the free market itself. Regulatory capture, for example, is very much an enemy of the free market, but it very much exists, and pretending it doesn't won't make it go away.
As such the idea that taxing wealth is necessarily "theft" is ludicrous. Not only can it be seen as a "fee" for being allowed to operate in a civilized society with many robust services and infrastructure (the argument you seem to claim I'm making) but it is also a means of correcting the inherent corruption and unfairness in the system. It's a fudge factor that attempts to correct (via Kentucky windage) for the problems that would otherwise require likely tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars of concerted effort (or more!) to fix properly to any reasonable degree. So in lieu of spending significant fractions of the world's GDP it's vastly easier and at least somewhat effective to simply engage in wealth redistribution.
Let's look at some facts. We know that wage theft (where employers illegally avoid paying employees what they are due) exists, and accounts for a few tens of billions of dollars in lost wages every year in the US alone. We know that discrimination (based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) in employment and housing exists. We know that many instances of health and safety violations exist in many corporations across the world on a daily basis. We know of many examples of predatory business practices (such as predatory lending, municipal fine collection, etc.) that have bled money out of people in poverty. We have seen consistent weakening of labor laws and union power. We know that corporate tax breaks and corporate welfare are widespread at all levels of government, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in tax revenue. All of these things are instances where people at the bottom are being unfairly taken advantage of while money is flowing into the pockets of those at the top. Look at the VW emissions scandal. Where a company violated the law across numerous countries in order to line its own pockets. And the consequences of that? Likely a significant number of deaths due to emissions levels higher than they should be.
Again, it's impossible right now to fix every single one of those problems, but those problems still exist, and in many cases they are becoming severe enough to weaken the very foundation of our society. These problems are the reason why people in the UK voted for Brexit, they're the reason people turned out in droves for Bernie Sanders and for Donald Trump. They're a big part of the reason why there has been an unprecedented increase in the mortality rates of white, middle aged Americans over the last several years, in contravention of all accepted wisdom about advances in medical care and so forth. The public is not always going to respond in the best way possible to these issues, because for the most part they don't fully understand them, but they do feel the pain, and sometimes that will result in them latching on to anyone or any cause that proclaims to explain their pain and offer a solution.
As to your model, again that seems to rest on the theory of the fairness of the economy. Natural accumulation of wealth is an issue, certainly, and there are good and bad aspects to it, and the bad aspects need to be countered. But I'd say that's a second order problem compared to the one we're facing right now.
There's this old saw about "the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer", and for much of the industrialized age it wasn't actually very true. The rich got richer, but the poor got richer too, as the pie got bigger. For the last 4 decades the pie has continued to get bigger as well, but the rich managed to not only take their (also growing) slice of the pie, but also take some of everyone else's slices as well. And we've stumbled into a state where the poor are actually getting poorer even while the whole economy grows by leaps and bounds. And a state that has persisted for more than a single generation as well. That's untenable.
Taxation is just that taxation. If you want to be free of the "thievery" just don't participate in the economy created by the rest of society. Don't use computers which fundamental development have been largely funded by government. Don't use the internet which was largely funded by governments.
You can't have your cake and eat it.
Sound fair?
Thus I owe it to them to keep fighting the government creep towards authoritarian totalitarianism.
What have your forefathers been doing that you are now arguing that 100% of what I have earned and paid taxes on already, should get taxed again at some later date - as a punishment for me not spending it all?
I too don't want government to be too big or too all encompassing but that has nothing to do with whether some sort of taxation could be considered ok.
One things is certain though. If you had to pay for everything yourself you wouldn't be able to afford it. The price of many of the things we consider obvious today are based on many years of accumulated hard work by others than your forefathers which you benefit from today.
So we can discuss whether we pay too much tax, I am fine with that discussion.
But positioning it as all taxation being thievery is both incorrect and simplistic.
And don't get me wrong. I have no problems with participating in a community. I have a problem with government setting up barriers and maintaining a monopoly on community.
I have no apriori issue with government offering services, I have an issue with being forced to pay and consume those services, regardless of how (in)efficient they may be.
I am also very much aware that I am only at the end of a long line of people striving for a better future. And nearly all my personal efforts are directed towards fulfilling my obligation towards my forefathers as towards my descendants.
And resisting crazy talk about totalitarian governments as a savior for all our problems is a part of that.
Don't get me wrong - the manifesto above has hardly anything to do with your position, I am merely explaining my own position.
You can choose to pay your taxes or you can choose to move somewhere else where you aren't taxed. You don't have the right to anything anymore than anyone else do. If you don't like the society you live in move somewhere you like or start your own.
Taxes are not voluntary contributions.
I'm of native descent. I was on this continent before this government and there's no way it could exist with my consent.
The US government don't have the right to control the US continent anymore than the British do England or Swedish Sweden and so on. They took it and is defending it through the sheer use of power.
There is no justice in how land is distributed, no right or wrong only the power to claim and hold it.
And so it goes with taxation; there is no right or wrong taxation, it's the price to live in a society for any of us unless we can find a way to change it through the system, build our own or find some isolated place where no one will bother us.
Neither homesteading nor claims of natural laws changes that.
So yeah I guess unfortunately might is the final word in right.