Hacker News Reader

Comment by kryogen1c | Hacker News Reader

> I wish it was possible to talk about important and interesting issues like optimal tax levels without everything being an ideological battle. I don't care if you think taxes are too high

Irony meter off the charts.

most people don't understand they are likely tax consumers, not providers. As a thought experiment, it must be true that at some income level a person uses more taxes than they provide. Quantifying the exact number is difficult and locality dependent, but it clearly exists. Who do you think the major tax revenue providers are? Corporations and rich people. I don't understand why anyone thinks they're not paying their fair share when they are almost the only ones paying.

The top 10% of us wage earners account for over 70% of personal income tax revenue, while the bottom 50% (under 40k/year) contribute <3%

https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxe...

View on HN

The reason people see it as unfair is because the wealth in the United States goes disproportionately to the top. Of course they are going to be the ones paying they are the only ones left with anything of value and any real disposable income. The money they pay mostly goes to services that benefit themselves anyways. There's a reason that wealthier areas have nicer schools, better roads, always get plowed first. I mean come on if the top 10 percent are only paying 70% then they are underpaying based on the fact that they hold 77% of American wealth. Let's not get into the world. https://billmoyers.com/story/top-10-percent-wealth/

Pareto distributions occur in all skill dependent distributions from musicians and academics. You say it like it's some evil conspiracy or that the rich only become rich by making others poor.

When a man tells you he got rich by hard work, ask him: Whose? -Don Marquis

It's not that rich people are evil. Rich people control the systems by which money is made and logically reserve as large a portion of that pie as they can for themselves. The problem is that as a group they have made it so that there is not enough at the bottom and policy needs to be changed to reflect that. It's like saying you have a group of two people in a room with a pump that keeps giving them air, but the pump is fed by a room full of 50 people who keep having a dwindling supply of air to breathe. The only thing keeping those two rooms apart is an unlocked door. At some point either the people with all the air share it, or the people in the room without it will open the door by force. It's just a statement of human nature. Imbalanced systems have a way of achieving balance.

> Imbalanced systems have a way of achieving balance.

You glossed over that like there is some ideal system we're being kept from by evil rich people. What exactly is this unlocked door we open and everything is solved?

> disproportionately

Says who? If it is, who says that's wrong? Life is inherently unequal in every way. Disproportionality is not a moral argument.

> they are the only ones left with anything of value and any real disposable income

by almost every measure, now is the greatest time to be alive in all of recorded history. Additionally, as long as youre not homeless in America you are in the top 1% wealthiest people in the world.

> I mean come on if the top 10 percent are only paying 70% then they are underpaying based on the fact that they hold 77% of American wealth.

How does that make any sense? You personally have more money than millions of people with a better quality of life that they are _literally dying_ to achieve. Did you drink clean water today? could you go to an emergency room for life saving care, even if the bill would be difficult to pay? How much do you donate, since you have such a disproportionate amount of wealth - are you paying your fair share in the world?

Disproportionately is a function of a fact, it's not moral or ethical, it's a statement. I feel bad that you are personally offended by facts.

You keep talking globally without the valid counterpoint. You're mixing American taxation with global outcomes and saying because we have it better off it's not wrong. That's the functional equivalent of telling a person on a sinking ship that they should feel lucky they aren't drowning while you pass by on your yacht. You can always find someone worse off, but wouldn't it be more productive to build the pie by bringing up the bottom rather than pulling up the ladder behind you.

You again don't seem to understand facts. It's simple numbers. If money keeps pooling at the top democracy doesn't function, it functionally can't because of the power imbalance and we've seen it more than once in the United States.

Since you're asking personally questions I donate large amounts of my personal money because I know my station and came up from poverty, but my lack of hypocrisy isn't the point. The point isn't how much you give it's how much you have left after you've given. The United States is one of the most charitable countries in the world, however that means absolutely nothing because as stated prior, the people at the bottom no longer have the funds to go to the hospital. You seem to be woefully unaware of the reality in the United States, many Americans literally cannot or will not go to the hospital or an emergency room due to cost and a not insignificant percentage of those people either die or end up worse off because of it. Right now in the United States we have literally entire towns and cities that do not have access to clean, safe water, much less electricity and running sewage. Add to that infant mortality rates in the United States are worse than most other developed countries, economic mobility is currently anemic in either direction and has been since Ronald Reagan and nearly half Americans are one or two months away from a foreclosure and homelessness. Just what wonderland do you think most Americans are living in?

edit: For terrible, no good, horrible grammar.

> "Disproportionately is a function of a fact, it's not moral or ethical, it's a statement. I feel bad that you are personally offended by facts."

If all you are doing is starting the fact that some people have more money than others, that is a correct and useless statement. You very clearly mean to imply that this inequality is morally wrong and should be changed, and I challenge that moral claim as incorrect (and dangerous and self destructive).

> That's the functional equivalent of telling a person on a sinking ship that they should feel lucky they aren't drowning while you pass by on your yacht.

I have no idea what you're getting at.

> If money keeps pooling at the top democracy doesn't function

This doesn't have anything to do with taxes, but American campaign finance laws certainly have room for improvement. The constitutional republic is certainly unhinging from the needs of the masses, but I would argue this is a federal government problem, not a money-buys-influence problem.

> You seem to be woefully unaware of the reality in the United States

I am aware bad things are happening. This is not a reason to totally dismantle the capitalist system that catapulted hundreds of millions of people into an unprecedented standard of living and quality of life the world has never seen.

> Add to that infant mortality rates in the United States are worse than most other developed countries

This is basically meaningless. The US has ~6 per thousand, and other countries like canada, Germany, and France have 3-5. You sound like you're regurgitating memes you saw on Facebook.

http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&ser... https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

More to my point - those infant mortality rates you're complaining about? Those have dropped at an unprecedented rate continuously for 80 years across the world.

> half Americans are one or two months away from a foreclosure and homelessness.

What? Everyone that owns a home under mortgage is 3 months from homelessness. It's a bill you have to pay or they take it from you.

> Just what wonderland do you think most Americans are living in?

America.

I think your irony meter needs to be calibrated.

Whether we can agree that a given tax policy is good or bad is dependent on whether we can agree to what the goal of taxation is. I think the goal is to maximize human flourishing. I honestly don't know what the optimal levels are, but I don't think it's 0 and I think it will involve a progressive tax structure of some sort. It's true that if millionaires were "fleeing" California than we could agree that California's tax policy was running counter to that goal. But that's not what is happening. It's a clickbaity headline that only serves to score a point in an ideological battle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com