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Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

We are also taxed on goods, property, transactions, consumption, death, inheritance..even gifting.. etc. we pay a lot of taxes.

Imagine you make 2.5 million/year. Why should you pay 1.25 million as taxes? Are you being taxed for being wealthy? Isn’t it punitive? What services do you receive that is worth 1.25 million?

But imagine you make 60k/year. Roads, infrastructure, essential services, public schools for a family of 4 with 2 kids does make sense. A larger family benefits more as they get more than they contribute.

Our tax system incentivizes larger families and redistributes wealth. It works if there is a healthy middle class. In CA the very rich is thin but they also support a larger proportion than other states.

When we are looking to hit 9 billion soon, it’s probably not best to incentivize rampant population growth and large families.

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You're taxed at that rate because that's what the government thinks is optimal for the economy. It's not punitive and it's got nothing to do with what anyone "deserves" or how much they use.

The point of social security is to mitigate risk, which increases fluidity in the job market. Without that, you have scores of potential successful business owners working in factories, contributing fuck all to the economy.

There's some real positives to progressive taxation too. It acts as a negative tax on risk, incentivising veteran devs to take on more low paying research positions and startups instead of lucrative consulting and big business gigs.

There's a reason almost every highly successful country has a similar tax system. Progressive taxation up to ~50% and not much higher. Because despite what people on the far-left or far-right keep crapping on about, fucking with either free markets or welfare is a recipe for disaster, you need a good balance of both to have a healthy economy.

> When we are looking to hit 9 billion soon, it’s probably not best to incentivize rampant population growth and large families.

US fertility rate is already below 2 (per woman), and overall population growth is already very low. It doesn't make sense to use population growth as a reason for anything at this point.

Also, the growth to 9 billion worldwide isn't due to US. It's mostly due to Africa. And we already know what lowers the birth rate - better healthcare, better economy and better education. Nothing to do with tax policy or wealth transfer.

True but we only have a fixed land/resources in our planet and we must stay within carrying capacity.

Maybe migration is in order. But we can’t increase a nation or a people’s population to keep up with others out of some kind of racial purity goal.

Better healthcare also increases life span and population due to lower mortality rate.

More women are educated today than 100 years ago, yet population has kept increasing steadily.

World poverty has decreased and yet population has increased.

"The future is here already; it's just not evenly distributed" -- William Gibson.

> World poverty has decreased and yet population has increased.

I think the demographic transition model applied on a per-country basis explains that quite well (and also makes clear that there is no immediate cause for concern based on population alone).

https://www.thoughtco.com/demographic-transition-geography-1...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

Your worldview is likely very wrong. The population growth is not a "sustained" state - it's an artifact of the transition from poverty to prosperity. Once a country has low child mortality rate and high education, the birthrate drops like a rock - you know, even China, which isn't that rich overall yet, has its birth rate drop below that of US - i.e. China's population growth has already effectively stopped (the actual number of people will continue to grow as the current population grows older, but the number of children won't change much).

You may want to watch:

https://www.gapminder.org/videos/population-growth-explained...

and a few other videos on gapminder.

> we only have a fixed land/resources in our planet and we must stay within carrying capacity.

There's no evidence that's the case. We do have serious environmental issues (like global warming, and pollution) but they are not directly related to "carrying capacity" to sustain the overall human population. For all we know, we know we can produce enough food to sustain the population. We know technological solutions to solve the global warming.

Look at the historical data on birthrate (click play to see it change from 1800 to present):

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;&mar...

you'll find that the world has largely already converged to the steady state, and it's only Africa that needs to finish its transition to the sustainable state. Thus, the only humanitarian and practical way to end the population growth is to get the (most African) poor countries get better health, better education and economy, which is already in well progress.

> What services do you receive that is worth 1.25 million?

A stable state that protects your property rights over the other 1.25 million.

Like protection money? Then the Govt is like the mafia?

No? The mafia fucks your shit up if you don't pay. The government protects you from civil unrest, which is instigated by all the other people that aren't millionaires.

If the mafia protected you from other people robbing you, then they'd be a legitimate business. It's called a security company.

So..it’s still protection money? Robin Hood economy?

Say you have $2.5 million in income for the year. For $1.25 million, the government maintains the system that allows you to spend it as real wealth. It maintains the system that enforces your business and employment contracts. It enforces that when you deposit your money in a bank or buy stocks, you don’t also have to pay for your own gunmen to make sure you can get your money back out. It makes sure that when your house is on fire, the firemen don’t first evaluate your net worth and then extort you in front of your burning house. The mafia comparison severely underestimates just how much useful (wealth creating) infrastructure modern governments provide.

All of those things were essential for you to have earned your $2.5 million in the first place without always having to look over your shoulder in case the local warlord notices your money and decides to take it.

Right. Warlords in Europe and America?

How much is the tax rate in Rwanda?

I'm having trouble believing that you actually tried to understand what I wrote.

The ‘warlord’ caught my eye and I couldn’t read past it. Sorry.

The warlord part was at the very end of their post.

> Our tax system incentivizes larger families and redistributes wealth.

Do you have a shred of evidence to back this up?

In reality, the situation is the opposite: places with higher taxes that pay for better government services see a declining birth rate.

Taxes pay for a social safety net and birth control. Both of those things cause birth rates to go down, not up. By contrast, large families are the safety net in places with riskier economies and poorer public health.

45% of California state budget goes to public school education. A middle class family with 4 children and one earning member pays way little and gains more.

Someone making 2.5 million and paying 1.25 million in taxes supports the others with less benefits.

This is the first example that came to my mind. What are your thoughts on this?

"What are your thoughts on this?"

We need much higher taxes on millionaires.

Why? Because they are more productive than non-millionaires?

What makes you think they are?

What makes you think they are not..?

I don’t know what to make of this pointless back and forth..

If you think someone who creates products is less productive than say...a supermarket check out employee, I have nothing more to contribute to this back and forth. Have a nice day.

I am glad to subsidize those kinds of services that I myself do not personally need. And anyone who has the mentality of "why am I paying the government to provide stuff that doesn't help me?" needs to be taught compassion and empathy. Or given a one-way ticket to the government-free utopias such as Somalia that is clearly their dream come true.

Have to be taught compassion and empathy? Like in re-education camps?

I hear your emotional plea, but I can’t find logic or rationality behind it.

> What are your thoughts on this?

Data shows that lowering the cost of education doesn't increase birth rate. Otherwise Germany, which has 100% free education through college, would have a high (and increasing) birth rate.

The same is true for every country that has developed economically. Stability/security reduce birth rate.

It makes sense, doesn't it? Having a child is a huge emotional, physical, and financial burden, regardless of the cost of education. The government would have to give people an astronomical amount of money to make it feel like people were "getting paid" to have kids, and even then, I still doubt they would.

Children take an enormous toll on people's lives and bodies. As an example, the Japanese government is trying to get people to have them, and they just won't.

How do taxes pay for birth control?

Could declining birth rate be a sign of a better society that values quality of life over quantity of offspring genes? Of course, causation isn’t correlation and all that.

Perhaps if incentivizing smaller families with UBI for life will be a better policy than incentivizing large families?

> How do taxes pay for birth control?

Most people in developed, Western countries get free birth control (and all other medical necessities) from the government. This is funded by their taxes.

This is also true of US citizens using Medicare.

Further, taxes pay for sex education at public schools, CDC awareness campaigns, and other

> Could declining birth rate be a sign of a better society that values quality of life over quantity of offspring genes?

Yes. What I'm saying is that the "better society" part is funded by governments (especially in Western Europe and Canada): public health programs and social safety nets decrease economic reliance on children, which reduces economic motivations to produce them. Fewer children also die, reducing the need to already have "extra" children to replace them.

> Perhaps if incentivizing smaller families with UBI for life will be a better policy than incentivizing large families?

UBI may make sense. I don't know. It depends on the specifics and hasn't been extensively studied.

However, I'm still trying to understand why you think anyone is "incentivizing" large families. Who is doing it and why? What part of the government is trying to increase the birth rate?

Google search for ‘large families welfare’ : https://calmatters.org/poverty/2017/01/about-face-state-stop...

There is no family cap for welfare. What are you going to do? Let the others starve? It’s an impossible situation.

Currently smaller families don’t get incentives. This isn’t to say larger families should be let to be destitute. I am just saying that those who dont should be rewarded.

But if smaller families are heavily incentivized and with everyone getting UBI, then the scales will tip for quality over quantity.

Again, you haven't provided evidence that welfare payments increase birth rate because you can't. It is not something that happens.

Your theory that changing welfare payments based on number of children will increase children is wrong.

I am sorry if I was unclear.

I don’t have a theory but I proposed that if we reward parents who have small families, then they will be incentivised to maintain smaller healthier families.

It might also encourage those who want to have larger families to have smaller families.

> What services do you receive that is worth 1.25 million?

And what do you produce alone that is worth 2.5 million?

I honestly don’t know anyone who makes that much. But generally that high income comes passively because of lack of expense externalities. This is also generally to higher risk and speculative activity involving proportionally high capital investment.

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