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Comment by heydenberk | Hacker News Reader

Wealthier people also receive much greater benefits from the government. The court system makes complex contracts possible in a way that really only benefits holders of capital. Infrastructure for transportation and information technology benefits everyone, but especially people who own companies that ship goods and deliver services over the internet. Government contracts benefit people who have a stake in the companies that service those contracts. The police tend to provide better protection to wealthier people in wealthier communities, who have more to lose from property crimes in any case.

In case you're not persuaded that people who can afford to pay more taxes should pay a greater share, all of these things are valid reasons for the wealthy to kick in a lot more of their wealth, in relative and absolute terms, than other people.

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> Wealthier people also receive much greater benefits from the government.

I've seen this said a few times before - I'm kind of confused on what this means? I'm technically in the top few percent (idk exactly where) and I receive less from government than I did when I was an undergraduate in college. I'm from a poorer family, so the government was straight up paying my family in the past.

I don't think this is remotely true, and if you're arguing that it's protection or something, I'm also calling B.S.. for my taxes I can easily hire a full time body guard, buy a few machine guns and make my house and car a fortress, and after some napkin math, I could still probably pay 10% taxes to keep the roads up (as opposed to the graduated 45% I pay).

The vast majority of taxes go to medicare, Medicaid, social security, and payments to foreign countries. I honestly do not see any benefit to me from any of the above. And the people who benefit from the prior mentioned, are also zero threat to me (retired, sick, etc.).

Not saying we should get rid of it, but it's definitely not benifiting me.

Edit: just for reference, I refused any government grants for school and took up a job to start paying for my own food / clothing when my parents started getting welfare. I didn't want to be a hypocrite at then (at 13), so I can say stuff like this now.

An ordered society with a stable government is a necessary precondition to building a business like say Facebook. (In the absence of a State, your best bet as a nerd is to try to make yourself as useful as possible to the most powerful warlord who will have you.) In that sense, Facebook's shareholders and employees receive a lot more benefits from the existence of government than say a day laborer.

Exactly. The tax rates in Somalia are very low, but there's a reason that rich tech geeks are not rushing to set up shop there.

I urge you to look at spending, you can have a stable government at 1/4 the cost or less. That's kind of my point.

heydenberk was talking about benefits--rich people, whose wealth is built on large-scale organization and sophisticated transactions, benefit more (in absolute terms) from government than poor people. You're talking about costs--can we decrease costs dramatically and still get the benefits of a stable government? The answer to that is probably "yes."

That gets us into the realm of political philosophy. What is the purpose of government? Achieving stability at the lowest cost? My view is that, once you yoke people under the boot of the State, you're morally obligated to give them Democracy. And in a Democracy, people will tend to vote for policies that maximize the benefit to the middle 50% or so, which is going to lead to a larger government than the minimum necessary to ensure stability. (In my view, thus, an anarchist libertarian society is not possible, while a statist libertarian society is fundamentally immoral.)

As for statist libertarian, I only partly agree. I think you can both have a democracy and a political system that is fairly libertarian. I depends what you call a democracy, a pure 51% majority rule, then its true, but in my opinion that is equally as immoral as a libertarian state.

However, I do think that a combination of democracy and a founding system, constitution or whatever can be better.

Switzerland is a example of a country that is very democratic but its more libertarian in many ways then most other democracies. That has probably to do with the way the system is set up outside of the pure democracy idea.

Not sure why you claim anarchist libertarian society is not possible, seems that has little to do with your post.

US Government spending as a % of GDP: 37.6%

Switzerland government spending as a % of GDP: 34%

https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm

Strip out the military (where the US spends quite a bit maintaining global hegemony), and the Swiss have a bigger government than the US.

Yes, and Switzerland and US both are pretty small. Compare Switzerland to the countries around it.

My point was not that Switzerland is a libertarian paradise but rather that it is not true that more democracy makes the government larger.

> Not sure why you claim anarchist libertarian society is not possible, seems that has little to do with your post.

Anarchist libertarianism solves the moral quandry of statist libertarianism, which is imposing a state on people but restricting the ability of people to use their vote to create a big government. I just don’t think it’s possible and would inevitably degenerate into feudalism. Central to anarchist libertarianism is the idea that coercion through violence is wrongful. True or not, violence is one of the most basic interactions that exists between oeganisms. You can’t wish it away, just control it by e.g. consolidating it into a State that has greater power to exercise violence than any group of individuals.

I didn't really want to into argument about libertarian anarchism but I just didn't see your point directly relating to the rest of your post.

But your argument, inherent bias toward centralisation is the old and traditional argument that statist libertarian also use. Nozick is most well known for that argument.

I don't want to really argue for it to much, just want to make clear that, its not about 'wishing' anything away. Violence is reduced if some level of balance of power exists and conflict resumption is available and the believe is that this could exist without government.

As this is Hacker News its not the place for this argument, I would just recommend 'Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice' as a great book on this. It includes chapters by different people arguing the two positions, and some other nice content about the subject.

How many of Capital One's customers do you think benefit from social services like Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security?

Just because the checks aren't going straight into your bank account doesn't mean you don't benefit from these things.

100% of the funds for those come from taxes... Meaning, Capital One would likely make more money if those customers weren’t using those welfare services.

Think for an instances, where their hospital bills would go?

More than that, there’s the loss value due to the overhead of redistribution. Imo again if we are just looking at my salary, I’d be better off without the payroll taxes from both angles.

User fees are a much more accurate way to charge heavy infrastructure users their fair share.

The better police, schools, etc. in wealthy communities are funded by the higher property taxes there.

Except then you often hurt those who can least afford it, those who have to live further away from their jobs due to costs and thus use infrastructure more to make it to work.

At policy level, is this the most robust tax system you want to build heading into the future?

What happens when one of those people/families decides to shift their residence?

It happened to NJ a while back https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top-taxpayer...

It can be considered in terms that wealth would be effectively entirely without meaning (whoever was stronger than you could just club you over the head and steal it) without strong organized governments.

I just don't think that is true.

> The court system makes complex contracts possible in a way that really only benefits holders of capital.

The court system is not all that expensive to run. Furthermore, just enforcing arbitrary contract would also allow most of these contracts.

> Infrastructure for transportation and information technology benefits everyone, but especially people who own companies that ship goods and deliver services over the internet.

Again, infrastructure is not the major cost of the government. Secondly, many people who make their living form simple stuff like pluming NEED the roads to make money also.

I think its hard to argue that OVERALL, richer people profit more from infrastructure then poorer.

> The police tend to provide better protection to wealthier people in wealthier communities, who have more to lose from property crimes in any case.

Again, the police is actually not a major cost of the government.

Furthermore, property protection is a pretty small part of police work and there a LARGER force of private security already operating to do that.

> Government contracts benefit people who have a stake in the companies that service those contracts.

That point I actually agree with.

Complex contracts? Pretty sure the rich pay for their own lawyers for those.

And you’re also not looking beyond first order beneficiaries. The factory worker also benefits from the court system that allows for complex contracts as it allows his employer to operate and him to have a job.

Absolutely.

1. Forced Arbitration clauses in an employment contract.

2. Successful reduction of workplace safety laws.

3. Easy relocation of factories and capital to low-wage locations.

4. Poor environmental protections

5. the elimination of defined benefit pension programs

6. CEO income being 400-1000x greater than average worker at same firm.

Oh, I see you are talking about factory workers in South-East Asia.

What kind of anti-capitalist talk is this? How can you justify saying wealthy people receive more benefits? Poor people receive money from the government, like straight up cash on a debit card. They receive an hourly bonus through the earned income tax credit. They can receive free health care through Medicaid. The court system makes contracts fair and equitable precisely so that poor people aren’t taken advantage of. Check out all the mortgage/ home title papers you have to sign to get a house. And police are absolutely not providing better protection. If anything, they use the well off neighborhoods to raise some speeding ticket money.

As a European I'm genuinely not sure whether this is satire or not.

As an American I can’t tell either.

I used to work for a US bank. It’s not.

Not satire - if you can provide more concrete examples of how the rich receive more benefits from the government, I’m open for learning.

Pick a post from this site: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

Ha, 3/4 of the page of an anti-capitalism website is trying to convince people to give them money.

This is true of any non-profit as well. Salvation Army, goodwill... your point is not a point. Just a comment that everyone needs to eat.

I think it's down to how we define "more". In dollar amounts then no. You're correct.

But in terms of value? Almost by definition, the rich are benefiting from the status quo more than the poor and it seems to be a strange feat of logic to argue that they are getting the raw end of the deal.

It's not like the wealthy ever go "those people on benefits have it easy. Hell. I'm going to join them".

No, they don’t say they want to join the poor, but I think wealthy people think the government is not really involved much in their day to day life, whereas I don’t think poor people can say the same.

Let's say Wal-mart pays so little that their workers regularly have to go on food stamps to get by. Are those workers benefitting the most, or is Wal-mart? Working for low wages while additionally being held to the strictures of a government program is a double-dose of agency removal.

I think it’s hard to argue the wealthy obtain more benefits overall, but I think it’s fair to point out that there are some ways in which they (we, I’m in the top 2% in the UK but only just) do benefit more but are not charged for it.

The problem with your comment is that it assumes that because someone benefits more from something they represent the bulk of the cost of that thing. That's just not true.

Or that taxation should be made pro rata of the utility someone derives from something which is an odd idea.

Once you give up that calculus you will be hard-pressed to defend these levels of taxation without consciously conceding that this is in fact organized racket. You can dress it with a skirt and call it necessary, moral, or utilitarian, it's still the same beast underneath.

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