Do you really believe that if you are taxed more, someone else will be able to buy an appliance cheaper than you? Your taxes make literally zero dent in anyone’s miserable lives. However if you contribute towards buying someone a computer to help their child study or take over a young person’s college tuition, their lives will change for ever.
We pay a lot of taxes. Why are there homeless people and hungry people. Why isn’t our taxes enough? Because what is needed is individual attention and meaningful contribution. Outsource your work. Do what you can. Don’t expect results that pleases you. Not your business or responsibility. You have to act if you have empathy or sympathy. Do you bit and completely detach yourself from your action. It’s the only way. It’s more difficult to do than offer to pay more taxes, but it is super effective...much more than the govt can do.
I have a gardener, cleaning person, a handyman on call and a cook who delivers food twice a week. I have hired and trained female juvenile offenders in half way homes, young people from prison rehab at my farm and taught cooking to a person on parole. I KNOW for a fact that me hiring them and training them is more valuable than my taxes going to give them food stamps or a govt phone. Some of them are so smart and even better than me. There was this kid who needed a job till his upcoming court date and I was struggling with some paperwork while he was weed whacking at the farm.
He saw me frowning at the paper and then rattled off the legalese of the contract law. Like..verbatim. Turns out he has a photographic memory, but he didn’t actually know what to do with it.(case in point: tax payer funded public school failure) He was having trouble at work because the other workers were teasing him, making him angry and when he broke a bottle, they called the cops on him. One day he brought his violin that his father paid for long before he was thrown out of home. And played beautifully. Maybe that was his thing. Eventually he went back to community college because I asked him to... I don’t know what he is doing now but I know that if paid more taxes to the govt, it wouldn’t have made any difference to him.
Maybe he will still only be in a minimum wage job and never going to be a millionaire.. but I know I made a difference that my taxes never could...these folks are like my little brothers and sisters..they could very well be my own kids of a certain age.
I make money and I spend money like I want to and not because I am forced to hand it over to Big Gov. Fuck that. Every year, I donate my orchard fruits to be made into jams. And I demand special flavor combinations made for me. Because it’s not freebies. Each jar sells for $7.00 or something. Seasonally, someone who doesn’t make anything at all now makes a few thousand. There is no tax that can give someone that without any strings. And when you have a job, you have self worth. Some people can never be employed. They don’t have the skills or the aptitude to be hired. I pay them to charge all my tools and to be a greeter at the farm shed. They are bored shitless otherwise and then they get into trouble.
Of course..I am just sharing what I feel. YMMV. Maybe you feel like paying taxes is easier or more productive. But it’s still your opinion. Only your opinion. And that’s my point. There is no valid reason or nor has it been proven that higher taxes eradicated poverty or made the lives of bottom most rungs of society better. Like minimum wage and rent control and subsidies, these are instruments and policies that keep people where they are so they can never get out of their holes. Jobs and consumer spending ..otoh..is guaranteed to create a vibrant and thriving economy raising standard of life for everyone.
If you hired someone to drive you around instead of paying taxes, you made one person’s life better. You don’t even know what your taxes do. It probably pays a school administrator 240k salary from his previous year’s 200k salary while the person below poverty line is still without a job and needs handouts from the govt.
In California, we voted again and again to voluntarily raise our taxes and gas surcharge for the betterment of people and environment. Despite hundreds of millions spent, our homeless have increased. Our water and power bills have increased. Most of our major freeways are all toll roads, we didn’t get our high speed rail and no affordable housing either. But our taxes have steadily increased every year. I am not going keep throwing good money after bad. Taxes are theft.
If Silicon Valley has a higher income than anyone else, by that factor we should adopt the poorest of the poor towns and redirect our taxes to create tangible change. The state should be split into 8-10 economic improvement districts and paired like a mentor-mentee.
Salesforce Benioff gave 30 million to UCSF to study homelessness. Not to build homes, but to study homelessness. A tax write off for sure. But what is it really doing? It is paying the salaries of educated people who would otherwise have to compete in the job market. It is increasing the economic chances and job security of people who are more likely to thrive and do better.
In nature, when a bird hatches it’s nestlings and there is a runt, the stronger siblings will edge the runt out of the nest. The mother bird will turn a blind eye and ignore the soon to be dying baby bird on the ground. Because the little worms and morsels of food she brings needs to be fed to the strongest that has a chance of survival. She needs then give become stronger so they can leave the nest. Wasting it on the weakest baby bird who may never be strong enough to leave the nest leaves everyone vulnerable and weak. The mother bird is the govt. the worms and morsels are out taxes. If you give mama bird more food she will only take it to the ones in the nest because she wants them to leave. Soon. Be the net under the tree to catch the weakling baby bird and nurse him as a bottle fed baby. Don’t keep feeding the nest’s bigger birds. They know how to fly. They don’t need you.
Should benioff just have invested it in motels has housed people? Probably. That would have solved homelessness. But what he did was inject 30 million dollars that went as salaries and wages. And at least ten million of that likely went back to the govt as taxes. He gets a 30 million tax write off. The poor people still remain poor and homeless. Why? Because he needed to play along with the govt rules. He had to redistribute his wealth but had to pay a bribe to the govt so he can get his write off and maybe 15-30 people are employed. If he had given the money to the govt as taxes, it would have gone to pensions and increasing the size of some public sector employment ledger. So he just targeted his donation to create jobs. So we will always have homeless on the street and the pitifully poor. Regardless of whether a rich man is parted from his wealth or not.
The only way to help someone is by giving them the means to work. And the only way to do that is by providing education.
Back to topic: Because there is no need to tax anyone high or low. Taxation should be on the basis of consumption. Not on the basis of ability to create wealth.
When we give govt the ability and power to tax at will, it’s like handing them over a hammer and every one is a nail they can hit.
It’s like when there is a ‘good deal’ on Black Friday. Do you really need that ‘good deal’? Maybe you don’t need that 4th instant pot at 60% discount.
Taxing rich people is like that. Their wealth doesn’t create poverty. Otoh, wealth when diverted to capital creates all sorts of good things like employment, economic activity, innovation, charity ..that isn’t coerced.
Punitively taxing wealth is the worst thing you can do to an economy and to the business environment. Every tax dollar to the govt carries with it the potential to multiply into debt ten years down the line. Because public sector is bloated and public sector spending has no oversight. And everyone is unionized. It’s just one big circle jerk surrounding a cluster fuck and it’s concentric circle jerks all the way down, man. All tax spending is politically motivated and spending is usually towards appeasing vote banks.
In my observation, govt is motivated to keep creating special classes and protected classes and vulnerable classes of citizenry to create a welfare state. That’s what keeps them relevant and alive. Because if they don’t exist, there is no need for govt to exist or justify why they need to collect your money to spend. This has to be firmly nipped in the bud.
The govt is a beast with a maw that can only be cranked open..it will never become smaller or shut down. Small govt is a beautiful thing. It means they have no need to exist. Everyone is fine. It’s like a village with a dull and empty police station. The more sleepy and jobless the cops there are, it means the town is lovely and crime free and there is no need for policing. That’s what we need!
If you didn’t know how much some random billionaire is worth, yours or my life wouldn’t change. If we never knew Uber wealthy people or read about their enormous money bags or hear about it all the time in the media, our lives would go on. Probably for the better and we will be happier.
No one is starving because rich people exist. No one is homeless because a billionaire is buying all the suburban homes..homelessness is not due to Jeff Bezos accumulated wealth. No one is becoming dumber and failing in school because of Steve Jobs and his millions.
And yet...the constant drumming for the public to revolt against the rich classes and encouraging comparisons amongst us is what is causing strife.
Not everyone is going to be rich. We must just accept this. We can’t constantly engage in dick measuring contests to see who has it bigger and demand that the biggest one needs to be chopped down to size. And you know what..even if we do, it wouldn’t make any damn difference.