But how can you morally justify taking 70% of someone’s income at threat of violence?
But, for better or worse, we're all in this together.
We drive on the same roads, we breathe the same air, we swim in the same waters, we use the same electricity grid, we live in the same cities, we share many, many things with each other, whether we like it or not.
Taxes buys you civilization, better shared infrastructure, better environment, less social unrest. If you are rich, these things benefit you too. You can't isolate yourself from the rest of the world and just hope that the bad outside goes away. Instead, if you invest in it, the world becomes a better place for everyone, and in turn, it becomes a better place for you.
But if you were to tax someone at 100% even at a marginal rate most would not agree that is moral. I think 70% is getting to the point that it needs a moral justification. Not just a discussion on the feasibility.
That's not how taxes work. You take 70% of their income after they've already made a ton of money that is more than enough to live in comfort. The effective tax rate for the median Swede is 27%
Also, I do understand your point of view. When I was an ardent Ayn Rand fan (much younger then), I used to use this same argument, an in fact the same phrasing: taking income at the threat of violence (which, IIRC, is from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). I've just come to realize over the years that the opposing viewpoint is actually morally superior.
I see no issues with some having 1000x the wealth of others. We both probably have 1000x the average citizen in some of the poorest countries in the world. Is this a problem yes. Are we morally wrong for having that wealth, no I don't think so.
Is there a problem with the difference in power at the political level, yes, is this a moral issue yes. But I don't think taking from the rich giving to the poor solves this problem. The reason being that as we do this it tends to make the situation worse. Welfare programs tend to restrict the freedom of those on the programs more that the rest of the population and have been shown to develop a learned dependence on these programs. Even if it did work I don't see how that justifies taking so much from someone.
It's a good idea to try and level the playing field. But I don't think massive income taxes are moral and as such should not be chosen as the tool to do this.
The old question is whether this results in less motivation to do work which brings you above the (whatever) top tax bracket. In my experience it actually is.
And, really? Theft is never morally justified? Never ever?
and theft is never morally justified.
You don't have to agree to the laws of a democratic constitutional republic, but you sure do have to follow them.
Also, those extremely wealthy people are free to leave that country and not pay the tax rate. As long as they have enough advance notice, it's like a contract that they've entered into. The threat is if they don't hold up their end of the bargain.
The point is if we're going to use violence against someone we have to make sure we're justified in doing so. Forcing someone to pay their share of the roads, defense and police sure that's easy. Then forcing them to pay 70 cents in the last dollar they earned, now it's getting a little harder to rationalize. The cut off point is not clear but it should be part of the argument. Fine if it works somewhere that doesn't mean it's right does it?
It's easy to make the argument that a person with a lot of wealth should help those less fortunate than them selves but it's not so easy when you are forcing them to help the less fortunate. I don't think two wrongs make a right in this case.
> It's easy to make the argument that a person with a lot of wealth should help those less fortunate than them selves but it's not so easy when you are forcing them to help the less fortunate.
I think you may misunderstand the mainstream arguments for tax rates this high. There are several, and this won't be an exhaustive list.
1) Extreme wealth indicates disproportionate benefit from social programs. Every business (and therefore business owner) is an upstream beneficiary of monthly welfare payments, for example. Roads are another: Tim Cook makes a lot more money off of road infrastructure than someone who works at a grocery store.
2) A rising tide raises all ships. A highly-taxed, rich person in a secure, well-funded society may actually end up netting more money in the end.
3) Your actual wealth goes down if your country doesn't have the foundations of a good quality of life. For example, my uncle lives in Brazil and spends $200k/year on a full-time security team. Someone at his level of wealth in the US would never do that. It just isn't worth it because the risk of being kidnapped is almost zero.
4) A lot of ultra-wealthy people aren't value creators. For example, some very highly-paid people every year are actually failed CEOs who are riding their golden parachutes out of their company.
There have been literally thousands of books written about this concept, so I suggest digging into it through someone more authoritative than me. Piketty might be a good start.
I’m not sure I completely buy into the article’s thesis. But I think it’s extrmely valuable viewpoint to consider on taxation.
And I do think it’s at least “coherent”, so if someone made it the moral framework with which they analyzed taxes they wouldn’t be being intellectually dishonest.
[1] https://www.taxjustice.net/2014/10/08/money-taxation-isnt-th...
It’s not about how much money you have to live on it’s about other people claiming a right to money you have earned.
That means you have to follow the law whether you agreed with it or not, it's how democracy works.
This is how democracy works. But if collectively a people democratically decide to do something that doesn't make it morally correct.
You do have to follow the law, but what I'm saying is that we need to consider the moral implications of the law being suggested.
Taxing higher rates on much higher income amount is morally better than taxing that same rate on a lower income.
This is because of the impact it has on the earners well being. Income after 10 million has a much lower impact on that persons well being than say, their first 1 million.
That is why we should take care thinking about tax changes. You are forcing someone to provide money. It's obvious we have to force people to pay for somethings. But how much should they have to pay for? At 70% I think there has to be a solid discussion about the moral implications not just about the feasibility.
Also, you misspoke, it's not 70% of someone's income, it's 70% of income over $10 million. The first $10 million isn't being seized, you'll find it's quite comfortable to live on.
I'd rather be frank: I was not commenting in good faith. There was obviously no good discussion to come of the subtree, and I was bored and felt like getting my quill wet. I hope you found my comment as I intended it: polite but smug, responding but unanswering, and steering the discussion but noncommittal. Yes, it's not a good comment, it's a polarizing comment. Comment voting systems like these are quite interesting I think. Immediately after posting I was upvoted and you were downvoted by some other reader. They surely cast their votes on how they feel: I was disagreeing with the grandparent (bait post) and they too disagreed. Upvote. As I hinted above, my post isn't strong enough to stand on it's own merits, it was upvoted merely by context. Since you seemed to disagree (or at least not agree), you're an enemy, part of the opposing faction. Downvote. Again, your post wasn't irrelevant or otherwise misinformed, it was downvoted by context. I'm sorry that happened to you, I didn't do it but I'll say you need tough skin in flamebait trees.
I wasn't trying to start a flame war but a discussion on the morality of taking such a high percentage. I knew very well that this a marginal rate but still after some level of earnings they're suggesting taking 70% of someone's income. I just think that's far too high to justify.
topher515 has provided an interesting link to a well thought out and articulated article. That while I don't agree with it entirely I do think that sort of thing is a sign of a fruitful discussion.
The position "tax is theft" is hard to justify but I'd say the other extreme where a 70% marginal tax rate is suggested is also hard to justify.
1) It was short and didn't explain your position well. I'm sure it made perfect sense to you when you were writing it, but to me it was just a low-effort concern-trolling. You should explain yourself more. Notice what clarifications you had to give out in your other comments.
2) Indelicately including higher-impact, emotionally-charged topics. The appeal to morality is a tired and obnoxious trope when the subject of discussion is not a moral hazard. Additionally, the inclusion of violence was unnecessary; in this context it's not important how the government gets your money, go ahead and assume the government gets it.
With that out of the way, I took the time to write a real response to what you said. In another comment you mentioned "pay their share of the roads, defense and police", and I think that this concept is interesting and not at all obvious. I mean, we need these things and they cost money, but what does it mean to pay one's share? Dollars have a distortive effect on the conversation I think.
When you measure people's success in dollars, you see something interesting: a log-normal curve. Log-normal is the distribution of independent variables that multiply together to get the output. The implication of this is, that factors in your success (luck, hard work, skill as a Java programmer instead of a coffee barrista) multiply together to put together your money. People making much more money than you aren't the same as you but more hardworking, but rather are being vastly amplified by other factors. People making much less money aren't just lazy, again it's other factors that put a ceiling on their income, even if they pull all-nighters at their McJob. So this compound accumulation of other factors, many of which are out of your control, by and large affect your standard of living and how much you pay in taxes.
It's quite hard to say what someone's share of the social burden is. I will say that, in general, progressive taxes do a better job at making that share aligned with the exponential reward from properly cultivated effort. However, I do recognize the shortcomings of such a tax. An underpaid engineer that a company wants to do underpaid overtime so they can hit their deadline would be making poor financial use of their efforts, and hit unfairly hard by progressive taxes. Every dollar that engineer earns from the hardest work they do is taxed even harder! But there's no easy solution to that. My personal view is that progressive taxes should stay, and we should continue investing in financial literacy and supporting people in making strong financial choices (in the this example, probably switch jobs).
What am I not considering?
I'll give you point 1, but as to point 2; I wanted to bring morality into the discussion and I think the use of violence is key to the moral argument. But yeah the first post was lazy and inflammatory.
To me it's important to remember that when we tax people, it's enforced under the threat of violence. I do think there are lots of times where the use of violence is okay. If you rob a store you need to know there will be police that will come after you with the threat of violence. But if we are going to use this as our means of control in society it's important that we don't abuse it and are able to include that in our weighing up of the morality of different laws. When the tax rate gets this high, even when the person has a huge amount of money, it's hard to justify using force.
Morality was my sole point. It seemed from this article that the morality of the tax rate wasn't considered. I'm sorry if this seems obnoxious to you but I think it's key to discussion and something that's left out.
I'm also not trying to push the lazy poor just need to work harder line. I know there are a lot of factors the cause a person to be poor and don't want to beat up on them . I think it's still reasonable to provide a basic safety net for them but don't think you need such and extreme tax rate to do it.
I also think we don't want to throw out progressive tax rates. Mostly because I don't think changing the tax system dramatically is ever a good idea. Slow incremental change is really the only safe way forward there. I'm not aware of any long term trials of a flat tax but it's not something you want to do without careful consideration and long term data. Anyway not something I'm pushing for.
Going back to the point. At 70 cents on the dollar for every additional dollar someone earns the government has the right and some would say the prerogative to take that money and repurpose it as they see fit. To me that is unjust. It's a matter of proportion. Even at a flat tax someone earning a lot more is still paying for a higher proportion of the countries running costs. But at 70% society is taking considerably more than the person who is earning the money. Is it really just to have a law such that if they don't give 70% of the upper part of their income we'll throw them into jail?
At some point the cost of the running the country costs x and we have to get that from somewhere so yes it justifies some tax. But we also have to keep in mind that no one is owed someone else's money just because they earn more.
Yes too much inequality is bad and finding ways to avoid that is really good. But I think first we have to look at other things. Trying to remove as much corruption as we can. Avoid corporate welfare at all costs. The most appalling government action of recent times to me is the bailing out of the banks. If you want to make sure the rich stay rich the perfect way is to remove all the risk from them and put it on the tax payer. Idiotic things like corn subsidies need to be removed so taxes aren't helping those that don't need help. Sorry I'm a bit off topic.
I suspect (and this may be unfair) a lot of the support for this idea comes from jealousy and if we got passed that people might see that it's not a moral idea to push someone's tax rate this high. It's too easy to go that person earns so much what's wrong with taking some of it.