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Comment by Supermancho | Hacker News Reader

> This is the (first) fundamental mistake of the article.

You did not present a reasoned argument as to why this is a mistake. Taxes are one way to incentivize behavior AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN, historically.

> The only question is how to raise those funds fairly.

This is not the only question, specifically because "fair" has a philosophical answer, not an objective one.

> It's not a penalty

That's a matter of perspective. It's bad because it's regressive (historically), as you allude. It's not like there can't be a better sliding scale based on cost/consumption indexes but that's not practical in a country as large and disparate as say... the USA.

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> You did not present a reasoned argument as to why this is a mistake. Taxes are one way to incentivize behavior AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN, historically.

I did. I argued:

1) The goal of incentivizing/deincentivizing behavior comes into conflict with the goal of raising revenue for government services. For example, people have suggested high taxes on cigarettes and gasoline. But if you significantly reduce consumption of products, then you limit the ability of the government to raise revenue from sales of those products.

2) It's a free country, and thus the government has no business trying to do Skinnerean behavior modification on the populace. IMO that's a pretty disgusting idea and reeks of totalitarianism.

3) Income taxes do not actually stop people in any way from trying to better themselves financially. There is simply no empirical evidence of this.

> "fair" has a philosophical answer, not an objective one.

Yes, so?

While you are correct that "income taxes do not stop people from trying to better themselves financially", an important nuance is that it also massively incentivizes how they try to better themselves financially. This is evident globally and often has unintended consequences.

Generally speaking, you want to incentivize people to try to better themselves financially by pursuing highly productive and legal activity. If the best way to better yourself financially is rent-seeking, becoming a government bureaucrat, corruption, or participating in the gray/black market, that is what you will get.

The best way to better yourself financially is highly individualistic. It depends on your wealth, skills, education, abilities, location, opportunities, etc. In any case, I don't really see how a blanket abolishment of income taxes is going to magically incentivize the "right" things and deincentivize the "wrong" things.

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