Obviously the marginal effect of one person paying more in taxes is close to zero. There's no hypocrisy in advocating the group pay more collectively without unilaterally taking it upon oneself first.
There is a clear distinction.
If this individual was advocating for people in his position to pay more, he could simply start a campaign for like-minded millionaires to pay more, and perhaps build some infrastructure to support this voluntary donation to the government.
That is actually what he's doing, the whole point of the article.
He is not campaigning for like-minded millionaires to pay more voluntarily, he is campaigning for them to force other millionaires to pay more through the tax code.
You can clearly see that’s what I meant if you hadn’t just quoted out of context, so I question whether your comment is in good faith.
Take a chill pill. It's not clear that's what you meant, I think many people will agree. It's the internet after all. That doesn't mean we have to be accusing each other of bad faith immediately.
That makes it abundantly clear that I was talking about a voluntary scheme because that is plainly stated, and it seems like you saw the sentence because you chose to quote the first half. The first paragraph also makes that same distinction.
If you had quoted the full sentence instead of the partial one, your comment would simply be false.
I didn’t accuse you of bad faith but I did raise the question, and this is why.
Think about it, why would the government need anyone's help to collect money? And in what sense would it be voluntary? The taxpayers are either forced to by law or by social pressure to pay.
Anyway, let's put that to bed.
It seems odd to me that you don’t seem to make a distinction between government power and social pressure.
A key principle of the legal systems of the US and tbe UK and many other western democracies is limit the use of force to the government precisely so that confirming to social pressure is voluntary and not forced. Forcing people to do things is reserved to the government.
I realize this is not the case in many regressive regimes or weaker states, but the author is writing for a British publication about the US tax code.
He is not asking for infrastructure to support voluntary donation tobthe government. That would be stupid and ineffective. He is asking for the government to change its tax structure to tax people like him more.
How do you know if it would be stupid and ineffective? Perhaps he’s representative of rich people who want to pay more tax.
Because you can already pay more taxes than required in many places, and (almost) nobody does so.
> Perhaps he’s representative of rich people who want to pay more tax.
He is representative — he doesn't pay more than is required. He is proposing that the government require people like him to pay more taxes, which would mean that low income people pay less.
There are lots of things people can do but don’t until a social movement encourages them to do so. Charities for example don’t receive donations until someone makes a case for why they should.
Also, I’m not sure why you think that raising taxes on one group automatically results in other groups being taxed less. That isn’t typically how it works.
That is exactly how it works. The state has the same expenses and must fund them somehow. Reducing taxes for one group doesn't magically make those expenses go away. When one group pays less, other groups pay more. Similarly, when one group pays more, others pay less. The state doesn't magically have more expenses.
When states take in more tax than their expenses, they run a surplus. When they take in less, they run a deficit. Usually when they run a surplus, they find ways to spend it after not too long.
Raising taxes on any particular group or activity has no direct effect on the other tax rates.
Those ways to spend it typically help the poor, so taxing the rich more helps the poor. The money doesn't magically disappear.
“Similarly, when one group pays more, others pay less. The state doesn't magically have more expenses.”
And that is absolutely false.
Also, there is certainly no relationship between raising taxes and the poor benefiting. The money can be wasted or spent on the military, etc.
You are also still confusing taxes with spending.
Exactly the same as when other people do. Probably more, actually.