Only the richest ancient Athenians paid taxes – and they bragged about it
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
This part really resonated with me.
About half of society would say the same about taxes.
And therein lies the problem. There's a bunch of fundamental disagreements we need to work through.
For example, the government could send everyone a bumper sticker saying "I have proudly paid $XX thousand dollars of taxes so far".
Some things could be given exclusively to high taxpayers - like for example better parking spaces, or the fastlane at the airport or the DMV.
https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
And only the richest ancient Athenians had the right to vote. There may be some causation...
"The Athenians believed sortition to be democratic but not elections[5] and used complex procedures with purpose-built allotment machines (kleroteria) to avoid the corrupt practices used by oligarchs to buy their way into office."
"In Athens, to be eligible to be chosen by lot, citizens self-selected themselves into the available pool, then lotteries in the kleroteria machines. The magistracies assigned by lot generally had terms of service of 1 year. A citizen could not hold any particular magistracy more than once in his lifetime, but could hold other magistracies. All male citizens over 30 years of age, who were not disenfranchised by atimia, were eligible. Those selected through lot underwent examination called dokimasia in order to avoid incompetent officials. "
Presumably the best crew wants to be on the best boat with the most generous trierarch.
Modern Capitalist workers actually have a very large spectrum they encompass, from very rich to very poor. Which is not totally unlike Athenian slaves, some of whom could become quite rich. But doubtless the modern worker has far more freedoms, and elects to restrict their life, in part due to institutionalized fear of no wages.
On the other hand rich people spend less than 1% of their earnings - so they only pay VAT on that 1%.
So, effective taxation caused by VAT is VAT rate for poor people and less than 1% for rich people.
A rich person invests in a company which buys a yacht (that they can use). They don't pay VAT because the company can claim it back if the yacht is used for business purposes, which of course it will be because the rich person will use it to have business meetings with all their other rich friends on.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Are you referring to percentage regarding revenue/income?