>"By our collective grace are people permitted to be so successful"
While I fundamentally disagree with you, if this applies to rich people, why doesn't it apply to everyone? Why shouldn't the government take 90% of your income? The logical conclusion to your position is communism. Nobody may have more than another because we all helped equally to build Amazon (no we didn't).
The reason I disagree with your statement is that nobody participated in another's success unwillingly. It is not by "grace", it is by mutually beneficial transactions. Yeah you can make the argument that Amazon relies on the entire society around them to run: people to build and maintian roads, people who build and maintain and drive trucks, people who make cardboard and tape, people who buy from Amazon, etc etc etc. But here is the thing: all those people have been paid in the process. A fundamental principle of capitalism is that two rational actors only ever make a transaction if both people find it to be beneficial. Again, this is why I find it so entitled to claim some stake in Amazon's success when, by definition, you've already been compensated for your participation.
No. But I think that if Jeff Bezos wants to live in a world where people don’t climb over the gates of his mansion and eat him then he better make sure to contribute enough to ensure an orderly, well functioning, and somewhat equitable society.
This dynamic is as old as civilization itself. The rich can claim to be entitled to whatever they want, but it’s only by the grace of the masses that they avoid the guillotine. Literally.
People have made it pretty clear over thousands of years and seven continents that if you don't share the spoils of society reasonably they will eventually storm the castles, mansions, or government buildings and put everyone's head on a spike.
The rich should never get too confused about the fact that they are alive because the masses are choosing not to kill them and take their possessions, not the other way around.
Billionaires are pretty outnumbered, it's not a fair fight.
I think you malign the penguins, sir.
It is not absurd at all that society thinks you shouldn't have this right if it is at the expense of others. Society can take all the wealth it wants from you if it thinks there is a problem to be solved. Poverty for example.
Taxes are tool at civil society's disposal to tackle problems. Considering them immoral that they should only be used as a last resort is absurd.
It quite funny that we consider property more important than people's lives. In the current political climate, going to warnis easier than rising taxes.
But all property relies on the state alienating (or ratifying a predecessors alienation) of material—and thus the natural freedom enjoyed by every member other than the one favored by the alienation with regard to that material—from the commons to some particular party, in the most beneficent case—where it is not overtly solely for the private good of the recipient and/or the state decision-maker—at least notionally because doing so will indirectly serve the public good.
So, all systems with property are, thus, by the standard you have proposed, Tyranny at best.
The state allows for people to possess material things without needing to provide for the defense of those possessions.
It is incredibly naive to assume that anything ever belonged to "the commons". "The commons" are a spook. At best, some material possessions would have collectively belonged to a tribe - which would brutally massacre anyone who tried to take it from them or get brutally massacred in turn - and others would be unclaimed.
Having a possession isn't the same as having property. Property is the legal right to deny other people some set of actions regarding a thing.
That people did things before the state arose also, in any case, doesn't establish a right to those things. People were, after all, deliberately killing each other without provocation (often to secure possessions) before the state arose, too (by any definition where “before the state arose” is a coherent concept, which it arguably is not under one of the more common ones used), but virtually no one argues on that basis that theft and murder are natural rights.
> It is incredibly naive to assume that anything ever belonged to "the commons".
No, it's not: the commons consist of everything in which no one is vested exclusive proprietary rights (and if there was no commons, then instead of alienation from the commons property—which unquestionably often involves conversion of something in which the property holder did not ab initio have a property interest—would generally involve theft from someone in particular rather than alienation from the commons; that property involves state-licensed alienation from the commons is the only alternative to “property is theft”.)
People often denied other people some set of actions regarding things even without the state-enforced legal right to do so. As I said, the only thing the state changes is that people do not need to defend their property themselves.
If, for instance, I raise a sheep for a few years expecting to be able to use its wool and milk, it is in my best interest to stop other people from using its wool and milk, as they have not participated in the raising of the sheep.
Therefore, I would declare myself proprietor of the sheep, and would obviously stop other people from taking its milk and wool, in order not to deprive myself from the benefits I have acquired through my own work and effort.
This is not "state-licensed alienation".
NO!
The right to the fruit of one's labor is a basic human right! The form the fruit of one's labor takes is irrelevant.
It basically boils down to the right to private property or to be able to have ownership of things. What you legally own is yours. If you grow a tomato in your garden it's your tomato. If you trade that tomato for a dollar it's your dollar. If you help someone grow tow tomatoes and they give you one it's your tomato. If you help someone grow a ton of tomatoes and they give you money it's your money.
We just so happen to tolerate society (via the government) skimming some off the top because the benefits (i.e. everything taxes pay for) far outweigh the cost.
Pretty much every society ever recognizes the right to private property. Taxes in various forms are an exception to that rule.
To proclaim that it is the other way around and that society owns everything by default and one may only keep what society lets them is basically the same as medieval Europe where the land and everything on it (people included) and all wealth generated by it are property of the lord by default and he/she can do with them as he/she pleases (only the lord is replaced with "society").
Taxes are an important part of a functioning modern society but people would do well to remember that private property is the rule and a forced contribution to the group fund is the exception not the other way around.
But the current consensus is that property is not fundamental to the existence of a human. The term property doesn't appear once on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human....
Following your tomato example, you grew the tomato on some land and the plant absorbed nutrients from the land. Who gave your the right to do that? Do you own the nutrients?
How did humans come to own land? Was everybody born with their piece which they chose to trade? Of course not.
What we call property came about over thousands of years due to complex interactions between people. There is a concept of fairness to getting to keep what you made. But, there is nothing simple or fundamental about it.
>Who gave your the right to do that? Do you own the nutrients?
If I lend you a pen and expressly state that I want it back when you're done and you use some of the ink in the pen that's to be expected.
If I rent you land it's foreseeable that you might grow something on it and unless our agreement stipulates that you can't it's implied that you can.
When property is in the hands of someone else we don't bother controlling for the common use cases. If I let you borrow my pen I expect you to write with it. If I sell you a pen it comes with the ink in it. If I rent you land I can expect you to grow something on it. If I sell you land it comes with everything therein.
We specifically negotiate for the uncommon use cases (e.g. mining/timber rights)
>How did humans come to own land? Was everybody born with their piece which they chose to trade? Of course not.
This is a sideshow and not material to the conversation.
Pretty much all land in the world is owned by someone or some entity. There is a chain of ownership. If you go back far enough the land was owned by whoever was there first.
Perhaps, but income isn't the fruit of your labor, it's the product of exchange of that fruit through mechanisms provided and protected at public expense and through limitations on natural liberty by the State.
Also, all actual things (tangible and intangible) in which legal property interests exist involve a mix of fruit of individual labor and either material alienated from the commons or the state-granted privilege of restricting others natural freedom (or possibly both of the latter.)
Wars cost money. Taxing the wealthiest the most keeps wealth in investments and productive companies while securing the lower and middle class to provide demand with their lower rates. If you want low taxes on the wealthy, avoid allowing a geopolitical situation in which war occurs, and don't enter into them unnecessarily.
It went back up above 90% for 1950-1963 after a brief dip into the 80s.
> The rate didn't go similarly high for Vietnam, Desert Storm/Shield, or Afghanistan/Iraq because we have played shell games to cover the cost
It was never less than 70% during Vietnam; though you are right it wasn't up into the 90%+ range if, as many people wrongly do, you count the US war in Vietnam from the Gulf of Tonkin.
Desert Shield/Storm was an extremely brief war without a major post-conflict occupation.