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Comment by bradleyland | Hacker News Reader

Krugman makes me so angry, not as someone who is rich, but as someone who understands the difference between earned and entitled:

"... consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away."

If I am rich in America, chances are that either I, or my family before me, earned the money in the most effective free market known. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's the best we've got. The assertion that I should be able to keep what I have earned is not entitlement. Entitlement is the assertion that I have a right to something, without regard for effort or trade.

I am entitled to keep what I have earned. Taking my earnings is a moral wrong. There is no two ways about it. It is no more right to take a dollar from a man who has a hundred of them than it is to take a dollar from a man who has one.

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I am entitled to keep what I have earned. Taking my earnings is a moral wrong. There is no two ways about it. It is no more right to take a dollar from a man who has a hundred of them than it is to take a dollar from a man who has one.

Just to be clear, you are stating your moral opinion. There is nothing inherent about these opinions. Just like my opinion that if you are rich you have likely benefited disproportionately from and made use of the structures of society that made it possible for you to get rich, and as such it's perfectly reasonable to ask you to contribute from your wealth to the upkeep of society is also just an opinion.

And speaking of moral wrongs, what about the moral obligation to help people those who are less fortunate?

I just want to point out that most of the taxes you pay in the US do not go to the upkeep of society you may benefit from (which we can define as schools, police, education, etc).

Most of your tax money either goes to propping up a bloated military-industrial complex, maintaining bases overseas, counterterrorism ops, foreign aid to oppressive regimes, etc etc.

If you're a pro-tax liberal you're probably against high defense spending, but you're perfectly happy to keep funding it with your tax dollars.

Just food for thought.

EDIT: If you want to quibble, the majority of discretionary spending is military(not counting Social Security/Medicare). Since that's where your income tax dollars go, it's a reasonable argument to make.

These claims need citations.

And remember, we don't just pay federal income taxes. We also pay state incomes tax (most states), sales tax (most states and locales), property tax, item taxes (like luxury taxes), FICA tax, etc...

While I'm sure a LOT of money goes to the military, I'm not sure I believe it is most of it.

Maybe if more Americans knew how much we were spending on war they would be less inclined to support it. "Death and Taxes" is a well-known and clear infographic of government spending: http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

It shows military and security spending as 63% of the 2011 budget(895 billion).

The discussion here seems mostly about the income tax, so I'm focusing on that. I'm not morally opposed to paying taxes to live in a civilized society. I AM opposed to two thirds of my money being spent on instruments of death and building up the American war machine.

63% of the discretionary budget.

If you look at non-discretionary spending as well, you'll see that it's like.. less than 20% of the money spent.

Right, all I was saying is that the majority of the _income tax_ you pay goes to military spending. I'm not counting FICA, as nobody is discussing raising or lower those taxes.

It's true that if I had grown up in the US and not in Sweden, I might be more tax-averse than I ended up being... There is a difference between what you get in practice for paying your taxes in the US and the principle of taxation in general.

One of the things that amaze/frustrate me about the US taxes is that noone ever suggests that maybe the military budget could be cut by 50% or so...

Oh, people suggest it often enough, but they're successfully shouted down afterward (which is probably why you haven't really heard of them).

Statistics are only a google search away. At least make an attempt at a citation to support your assertion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY... (FY 2009 per the actual graphic, despite the file name)

"If you're a pro-tax liberal"

Have you ever, once in your life, met someone who identified as a "pro-tax liberal"?

Didn't think so.

I'm just drawing a distinction. I would describe myself as an anti tax liberal.

Eh, I think both of those are silly framings. Nobody likes paying taxes.

I'm a "pro balanced budget" liberal, and that meant that throughout the Bush years I was saying "Hey, we're gonna have to pay for these tax cuts eventually", while simultaneously saying "Hey, let's cut defense and homeland security spending because at least 1/2 of it is BS that doesn't make us safer."

Not like I love the idea of paying more taxes, or of quote "big government" - I just give basic arithmetic a lot of respect.

If nobody likes paying taxes then, why don't we as a society legislate ourselves lower taxes and cuts in defense spending?

I believe there is a famous quote about that.

To suggest that taxation equals help for those less fortunate and is therefore a moral obligation is a non-sequitur, particularly in this age of bailouts of banks and car companies.

Even if it wasn't, no moral obligation is being satisfied when such "help" is forcibly extracted.

Further, it can be convincingly argued that such forcible extraction and wasteful reallocation of wealth reduces many people's capacity and willingness to voluntarily help those less fortunate.

What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed?

Society isn't some uniform, monolithic thing that exists in own right, that we either choose to participate in or not. Society is the product of actual relationships among real people. They don't depend upon external institutions as a precondition of cooperating toward mutual benefit, but establish those institutions as a consequence of doing so.

Everything we call 'society' is the result of people making the choice to interact with each other. From there, communities arise, customs emerge, and economies develop. But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid.

When we so stridently pursue policies intended to 'upkeep' an abstract, taken-for-granted concept of society, we risk undermining the basis on which real, actual societies function.

What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed?

How about enforcement of contracts, roads, and currency, to name the first three that came to mind?

But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid.

I have no idea where you came up with this. It's empirically falsified just by looking at which of the populations of low-tax, laissez-faire America and high-tax, social democrat Western Europe is the most disconnected and paranoid...

Roads and currency? I suppose we could get into a detailed conversation about how well decentralized, voluntary forms of organization could create and sustain these - I'd suggest that they could, and often do - but for the sake of argument, I'll concede the point. Roads are slabs of pavement in the ground; currency are tokens used as a means of exchange. These are pretty mundane things, hardly the wellspring of society, and I do hope you'd agree that roads, currency, and other similar goods are consequences of, and not prerequisites for, a well-functioning society.

The question of contract enforcement is more interesting. I would entirely agree that law is a necessary mechanism, without which the few 'bad apples' in society would spoil the rest. But I think it's important to note that if breaches of contract - that is, failure of people to maintain their voluntary arrangements in good faith - were the general case rather than outliers, no amount of law could prevent society from failing. The judicial process is a tool we can use as a fallback solution to protect those arrangements we freely create with others. But it should be clearly distinguished from the regulatory mentality which seeks to prescriptively define those relationships in advance, and compel adherence to a set of prepackaged social models without specific regard to the preferences and expectations of the individuals in each case. The regulatory model designs the overarching system around the outlier failure conditions rather than permitting the flexibility that optimizes the general case. Law is appropriately the brake pedal, not the gas.

I'd disagree with your perceptions of America as being particularly disconnected and paranoid - Americans are stereotypically confident and optimistic - although I think that individualism and cultural pluralism in America might often lead to more paranoia about social policies that seek universal solutions to complex problems. There may be a reason why the social democratic model seems to work most effectively in the cultures where 'Jante law' is most evident.

I call BS on this.

You were able to earn that money because:

1. You most likely live in a relatively free society most likely operating under the rule of law.

2. You were able to achieve what you did by "standing on the shoulders of giants".

3. You're most likely the recipient of an education provided by society that gave you the tools and opportunity to succeed.

Now, if society says that "Because we've helped you be so successful, it behooves you to contribute X percentage of your earnings back to society.", is that so wrong?

You have a moral responsibility to leave the world the same or better than you entered it. This concept seems to be lost in a sea of selfishness today...

The disagreement isn't about leaving the world the same or better, almost everyone wants that.

The argument is which is the superior method for making the world better. On one side you have Krugman who believes you should tax the rich and let the government spend the wealth the rich accumulated to improve conditions for everyone.

On the other side you people who think that if you allow people to spend, save and invest their money as they choose, society will come out better in the end.

Side A likes to portray side B as selfish, greedy bastards and side B likes to portray side A as communists thieves. Really though, if you take the actual objectives of both sides I would argue they're generally noble.

There is still the matter of who is actually right. That is where the real argument is.

If the goal is to create economic activity...

- Taking actions that result in rich people having more money is more likely to result in them saving or investing it, and not in them going out and spending it right now.

- Taking actions that result in someone who is just scraping by having more money is more likely to result in them spending that money right now.

If the goal is to get the economy moving again, I tend to think the latter solution is a better one in this instance.

Also, public works are a great thing to spend on - we're going to have to do it eventually, labor is really cheap right now, and it's better to fix before it breaks and more people die because of broken gas lines or collapsing bridges....

Taking actions that result in rich people having more money is more likely to result in them saving or investing it

Ummmm. What do you think that saving and investing are?

Surely the rich guy isn't saving by stashing the money under his mattress, or he wouldn't have gotten rich in the first place.

Perhaps he's putting the money in the bank, in which case it's going to be used to underwrite someone's mortgage, or something like that.

Perhaps he's investing it in the stock market. But support of equities means that he's financing business, which is just another way of saying that he's helping to create jobs.

someone who is just scraping by having more money is more likely to result in them spending that money right now

Assuming that's true, what comes of it. I picture that person going out and buying a nice new HDTV from Sony, and much of that money going to Japan rather than sticking around in America.

Obviously I've picked my examples to tilt in one direction. But it ought to illustrate that what many people seem to believe is obvious common sense is far from that, and perhaps even, counter-intuitively, turns out the opposite.

Surely the rich guy isn't saving by stashing the money under his mattress....

Perhaps Krugman is simplifying for those of us who don't have degrees in economics, but he's suggested multiple times that rich people who "save" their money somehow take that capital out of circulation.

The banks seem to have plenty of money sitting in their coffers to loan out. I've never heard of a (healthy) bank- even smaller neighborhood banks- run into trouble because the wealthy aren't stashing all their cash into their checking accounts.

After the IPO (and other secondary offerings), "the market" usually doesn't drive a corporation's funding. Companies can make some small out of money from releasing new stock, but not counting things like bond issuances (ie, borrowing from people or banks), they don't benefit from people playing the market.

That HDTV was probably built in China, not Japan. Even so, a lot of that money stays behind, in the distribution and retail channel. Someone's got to drive the trucks from the ports to the stores, for example.

Krugman's article actually speaks to this in a roundabout way. He seems to contend that side B has given up the pretense that they are trying to make the world a better place.

And I think you've seen some of this in statements from people like the lieutenant governor of South Carolina, when he said, "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better."

Their belief isn't one that they can make the world a better place. But rather of actual superiority (hence they shouldn't be forced to give resources to inferior people). This I do think is a fundamental difference.

Yeah, unfortunately you can always find example of people who really are bastards, but the examples come from both sides.

On one hand you have Keynesians who want to screw the rich out of envy and spite and have no concern for the poor, or even worse, actually want to oppress the poor to keep them as their constituents.

On the other hand, you have, like in your example, capitalists who think of the poor as an inferior species to be ignored, or worse, eliminated.

Neither side is immune.

But I do think that Krugman's position has some merit. Watch the Sunday morning shows. The argument that cutting taxes for the wealthiest is not about stimulating the economy. It's about doing what is moral for the wealthy. And if you read the comments in the right-leaning blogs, you'll see a LOT, if not the majority of comments being about how these taxes go to the worst in society -- poor, Blacks, Kenyans, communists, illegal immigrants, etc...

I mean think about this. We're talking about an increase of 4% in the marginal tax rate for those making above $250k/year. A rational argument would be to look at the impact of where these tax dollars go versus what the wealthy might do with it. In itself this should be a very innocuous discussion. But look at what we have.

This is not about the best way to make the world a better place. But I do think it is more about "who _deserves_ to have resources".

I agree, part of the argument of the rich is that they "deserve" to keep their riches, but what the Sunday morning shows and right wing blog comments may not highlight (I don't watch those shows or read the blogs) is the complete argument for why the rich should keep their wealth, regardless of if they "deserve" to keep it.

Of course greed and self-interest is part of the motivation for making those arguments, but most free market economists and supporters truly believe that by allowing the rich to keep their wealth that all of society will benefit. Rich, poor, everyone.

You may disagree, lots of people do since at face value it is counter-intuitive, but my point is just that a lot, probably the majority of free market supporters, actually do have the benefit of all of society in mind. They'd say that the 4% increase in marginal tax rate would actually be detrimental to the poor. Again, you may have excellent arguments for why it is better for the government to take and spend that money, but they have logical counter-arguments.

I don't disagree that a rate increase _might_ be a bad thing (although I don't think it is). But I do think, that as Krugman points out, this is not the current argument.

In Reagan's era they would pitch trickle down as how everyone benefits from these tax cuts. The actual stated goal was to make life better for everyone, but starting from the top.

The current stated goal from the right is that the rich deserve the money, and the poor do NOT deserve. Not that the tax cuts will have some side benefit to the poor. Rather that we need to keep the money out of the hands of the poor. This is why the constantly use the code word "welfare" when talking to their base.

Again, there is a very rational argument to be had here. In fact, I think a rational argument would be a very boring one for most people in the US. But I think the reason that everyone is up in arms is not due to their passion for capitalism. But rather I think there's a fundamental belief that there are certain groups of people unworthy of _their_ money.

I dislike this framing of taxation in absolute terms. Yes, the government "takes" a portion of your earnings, but in doing so it provides a number of services, some of which were prerequisites to those earnings in the first place (paving the road that brought customers to your storefront).

Sure, we can argue about particulars of how the government chooses to allocate those "takings." I wish my government would spend less on its military, for instance. Other people might wish it to spend less on social welfare programs. But neither of us can honestly use absolute language like "Taking my earnings is a moral wrong. There is no two ways about it." Arguing that states cannot tax is arguing that states cannot exist.

My apologies if you are an honest defendant of some form of anarchism, but I feel like using such absolutist language to discuss a proposed three percent increase in the top marginal tax rate seems incongruous. It feels like you have the intent of inspiring knee-jerk emotions instead of rational discourse. It's fishy.

Our economy is an ecosystem. I'm a software developer because there is a demand for it, and the only reason this demand exists is because people are educated enough to use my product.

How do you determine the line between what one has earned vs. what one may have been granted via a series of societal issues?

Don't these societal conditions apply to "good" and "bad" software developers alike? All other things being equal, if you're successful and somebody else fails (selling to the same market), then the most obvious explanation is that you met the needs of your customers better and somehow improved their lives. This is signaled by a monetary reward greater than the guy who failed, and proportional to the value you added.

The general prosperity of society is built up by an uncountable number of these successes and rewards. Hand-wringing about whether your own contribution would be possible absent all the prior contributions is putting the cart before the horse. You aren't illicitly skimming profits from society, you're making valuable contributions in your own right.

I agree that I'm making valuable contributions, but I'm clearly in debt to the society I live in for the opportunities that are available.

"earned" is a more complicated concept than you make it out to be.

did you "earn" the particular set of aptitudes and interests that made you a "high earner" at this juncture in history? i'm pretty sure you were just lucky in that respect.

you mention "or my family before me" - it takes quite a particular set of beliefs to say that you are entitled to what your ancestors earned.

what if you inherit tremendous wealth from ancestors who "earned" it through tremendous injustice (slavery, exploiting addiction, etc.)? even if you go on to leverage that wealth legitimately, how do you compare your earnings against those of someone who started out differently.

I didn't inherit any money. As for my aptitudes and interests, they didn't make me a 'high earner'; they didn't make me a dime. My work to apply them did.

I see a lot of that attitude, that because I was born smart is why I have the job I do now. I wasn't born smart. That information didn't start out in my brain. I spent a lot of Saturdays as a kid at the library, reading non-fiction. I spend a lot of time now, reading non-fiction. In other words, I study.

I have a career coach, that helps me make plans to accomplish my goals. A lot of work went into this 'born success'. I think it's only perceived that way because others don't want to see that they can do it, too.

no, i'm not claiming you didn't put effort into exercising those aptitudes. that goes without saying. you were still profoundly lucky in having those aptitudes, in recognizing them, in having the opportunity to exercise effort, and so on.

Nobody is being taxed on the cash one has in his bank account. You're taxed on the income your cash generates.

So cut the crap.

It seems to me like those who are voting this comment down are doing so not because the viewpoint it provides is wasting our time, or poorly expressed, or anything like that.

This looks to me like nothing but shouting him down because you disagree with what he's got to say. In a case like this, I think you ought to win the battle through superior logic and rhetoric, not just by voting him down so nobody sees his thoughts.

You really think this is not a waste of time to read? "It is no more right to take a dollar from a man who has a hundred of them than it is to take a dollar from a man who has one."

And given how extraordinary the claim is, there's not a single argument to support it. It seems like the definition of trolling. A well-reasoned argument for why we should either have no taxes or an extremely regressive tax system would be welcome, but I see nothing of the sort in that post.

There's nothing extraordinary about the claim. I'd be surprised if there was anyone here who hasn't heard the Objectivist idea that the fruits of ones labor are ones own, and no man has the right to take it.

It sounds now like what you want is not a reminder that there is a valid and consistent moral theory that supports this idea (just as there are alternate theories that arrive at different conclusions). And to be perfectly blunt, this is all that Krugman has done: voice one alternate theory, with no concrete support whatsoever (and that from a Nobel prize-winning economist!).

It seems you're looking for nothing but political punditry. But to me, we should start with a moral code, and then work out how well we're tracking that code. You seem to want the opposite: calculate an answer, and then find a moral code that fits it.

I've also heard of "an eye for an eye", but in a debate about the modern justice system its an absurd position to take.

Likewise, your position that taxation in the US is wrong is an extraordinary claim, even with a pithy saying. Most conservatives would agree that some taxes are necessary.

With that said, there's probably nothing that stops you from buying an island and enjoying all fhe fruits of labor you can create outside of the global economy. If you don't want to enjoy any investment that the state has made (past, present, and future), you can remove yourself from the state.

But you're arguing that in the US any taxes are wrong, period. End of argument. That's an extraordinary claim in my book. And looks exactly like the form that trolling usually takes.

your position that taxation in the US is wrong is an extraordinary claim

If you scan back up the thread, you'll see that I haven't made any such claim. My statement was that this is a valid moral theory, and can't be dismissed out-of-hand (as you are continuing to do).

That is, I haven't argued in agreement to the poster above, I've just called you (and others) out because you've shouted him down with negative votes, without actually addressing his viewpoint.

Now that I think about it, this just might be the heart of what Krugman was referring to. If people are so dismissive of these concerns, then it should hardly be surprising that others having these values are left angry and frustrated.

Sorry, my argument about the extraordinary claim was against the poster who was downvoted, not you.

I'm not sure what a "valid" moral theory is. What I do know is that he made a claim that no reasonable person that I know would agree with. And provided no evidence to back it up. This is trolling. When you say that Wiles proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is wrong, with no evidence, that is trolling. When you say Ruby is strictly superior to any other programming language, with no evidence, that is trolling. When you say that taxes are morally wrong, with no argument for it, that is trolling.

And trolling gets people downvoted. That's my argument against you. :-)

> And given how extraordinary the claim is, there's not a single argument to support it.

How is that an extraordinary claim?? I personally believe that it's so self-evident and obvious, that to argue otherwise would be the extraordinary position.

The problem is that the distinction between "earned" money and "handout" money is not so clear. If you "earn" your money by servicing porky government contracts, is this something that you have done entirely on your own? Are you entitled to keep your profits if you pull them out of the ponzi scheme before it collapses?

Alot of the wealth in the top 1% of Americans these days was earned by people who in one way or another got rich by timing their entry and exit from the scam properly. An honest assessment of wealth creation since 1980 could come to no other conclusion. The scam was so big that they might not be morally accountable in a personal sense for doing wrong. But do these people deserve to keep their earnings, even as the extent of the scam becomes clear to the rest of us?

The reality is that money is not earned in a vacuum. We all depend on others to make our living somehow, even self-employed solo founders. If society cannot bear to give so much to the wealthiest 1 in 1000 any longer, do they have a right to collapse the whole economy in defense of their profits?

If your argument shows that all taxation is immoral and not to be borne, doesn't it prove rather too much?

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