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Comment by anarchimedes | Hacker News Reader

(C'mon downvotes!) I thought the idea of paying your "fair share" was in relation to the services provided by the taxes paid. I can take an extreme example that I've tried to steel man to hold up this point: Bill Gates.

Does Bill Gates the man use more taxpayer provided military/healthcare/infrastructure.. than anyone else? Of those things that he does use more of, if he taxed by the volume of those services used (example: water/sewer) and therefore paying his fair share?

What difference does it make if her was born to rich parents? How does that make it right to make him pay more money?

I am asking respectfully and I sincerely hope that you do not take this as an attack.

edit: spelling

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What is 'fair' is always debatable, but ... let me tell you one way I look at it.

I see democratic governments as an extension of society; and their most important service is a reasonably stable, safe society (with a few exceptions, there's no rioting; I can walk around the streets without fear of getting killed; I don't even worry about whether I lock my hour or car doors).

Given a live a nice upper/middle class life, I value this a lot, and am willing to pay high taxes for it; if I'm a poor teenager in the ghetto, I'm not getting as much from this; Bill Gates is getting much more than I am from this; it makes sense he pays a lot more than me, and that I pay a lot more than the teen from the ghetto.

Imagine society goes to heck ; do you think Bill (or me :) would keep his money ? his nice life ? his life ? :) If that happens, most people would be worse off than now, but Bill would be much worse off, whereas the teen from the ghetto may only be slightly worse off (and some people might even be better off). It seems 'fair' Bill pays more; it actually seems to me it is smart for Bill to pay more to keep our nice society (which is one reason he, and many other billionaires advocate for higher taxes).

This answer assumes that your nice neighborhood is somehow provided by the government with the tax dollars you give them. The government, especially the federal one, provides extremely little to upper/middle class neighborhoods. The real beneficiaries of government are the poor and the very rich.

Your neighborhood is only nice because of the people who live there :)

The wealthy want to believe it was their hard work and not luck that made them successful. (It’s both of course.)

Consider where their wealth comes from: it comes from skimming off some of the income earned by employees or by investment - which again, skims off earnings from productive enterprises.

Neither of those incomes come from their own actual work.

>How does that make it right to make him pay more money?

Because he can. And yes, he does use more Government services.

He was asking for a moral argument. "Because he can" is not an argument at all.

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