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Comment by asdfasgasdgasdg | Hacker News Reader

I would like to see more evidence to support this viewpoint. In the US there are plenty of very wealthy people who are opposed to higher taxes. It seems like the claim in this article could be true, but it's not obviously the case to me.

I also think it's very questionable the view that there are a certain number of rungs of the wealth ladder and you have to displace someone else to climb. That may be true if the purpose of wealth is to be highly ranked among the wealthy, but that is not what most wealthy people seem to care about.

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"Higher taxes" is a very broad term and so the original article can be right that wealthy people support higher taxes and your "...opposed to higher taxes" observation can also be true.

The incentive for wealthy people is to avoid changes to the status quo. So billionaires tacitly benefit from stiff taxes on millionaires or new billionaires, because then they can't accumulate wealth so easily. Millionaires benefit from stiff taxes on the middle classes and new millionaires because then the competition can't climb out of the crab basket.

If the taxes were going to reshuffle the social order I suspect there'd be a lot less support from very wealthy people. It is a very rare soul who smiles when faced with an actual decline in their social standing.

A lot of claims here my dear about the intentions of other people, what evidence would you like us to refer to?

I had the same impression, it's not like there are a limited number of rungs of wealth. Furthermore, I doubt that rich people believe that supporting higher taxes will have an immediate effect in ensuring 'usurpers' don't get rich - it will probably take a few years to come into play.

The most confusing aspect of this is the fact that taxes are often progressive. Increasing taxes would then definitely hurt the wealthy more than the usurpers. This aspect of Hoffman's argument didn't make much sense to me.

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