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This argument makes no sense. Even if the government is not efficient with money we still want it to be funded because they provide services that make no sense for any one person to provide. In that context taxing high income more still makes sense, even if the efficiency is not high, more input still leads to more output.

That's not necessarily true, it depends how inefficient the government is. for example, in my city the city controls trash pickup and tried to social engineer more composting/recycling by cutting trash pickup days to once every two weeks instead of every week. A private enterprise has sprung up offering the second pickup for the same price the city charges. They are able to provide that in the vastly less efficient setup of only a few people on each block using them, the city being dicks and not letting them collect from the city provided trash cans, etc. That tells you for this service the correct thing for the city to do is fire all the inefficient people they are employing and support private enterprise in gaining the efficiencies from automation and a bigger market and providing an even lower cost service. I suspect there are tons of services the city provides that are extremely inefficient as above.

They probably don't pay living wages. Its easy to be cheap when you don't pay living wages.

There's no such thing as a living wage because no matter what price you set labor at someone will fail at living there, be pointed to as an excuse to further manipulate the labor market. All there really is is the value at which the labor market clears. That they seem to have no problem providing the service at the price they are says they are paying at or above the price that would clear the labor market so there's nothing to talk about other than the government clearly overpaying, perhaps in the pursuit of a frankly stupid idea such as a living wage that is never clearly defined, constantly ratcheted higher when whatever number was mentioned previously fails to end poverty, and of which the only thing economic theory can say for certain is if the living wage price is set below the market clearing price of labor it will be ignored and if it is set above the market clearing price of labor it will cause unemployment and dead weight loss to society making it utterly ridiculous. The whole talk of this stupid idea honestly detracts from real discussion about real problems in the labor market interfering with actually making things better (i.e. the rampant monopsony and general geographic market power at the low to mid end of the employment market, the abuse of non competes at the mid to high end, etc.)

More input implying more output is a poor model, because there is rule of law in the middle.

input -> rule of law -> output is a more correct model. Maybe RuleOfLaw(Taxes) -> [Output distribution] is better.

When rule of law is weak, the powerful arbitrarily exercise their power to shift the output to them. When rule of law is strong the output is used for the public benefit.

So the efficiency of taxes depends greatly on the integrity of the legal system and therefore integrity of the legal system must come before the expectation of the usefulness of taxes.

When the legal system has no integrity, money siphoned from taxes to private interests increases the power of those private interests which further hurts the legal systems integrity. So more (general population) taxes in the context of weak rule of law is damaging to society.

If you want to increase rule of law (reduce arbitrary exercises of power), then the less powerful must become more powerful (unions), the more powerful must become less powerful (tax the rich or ask the french), or the institutions of society itself must ensure that there are consequences for arbitrary exercises of power (the people in power choose to exercise it responsibly), or a culture that respects rule of law must pervade (only possible through education).

It’s not strictly necessary for the government to provide everything that might interest more than a single person, so the premise of your rebuttal is already flawed.

I have no clue how people are ok with the government squandering away hard earned money. If people would like to donate to the government they are free to do so. Otherwise demand effective use of the tax or minimize collection.

To put it another way, should all of your income be taxed and you simply receive some sort of stipend from the government? Why or why not? Low efficiency is a problem because the alternative is population driven allocation which is definitionally superior in such a scenario.

> more input still leads to more output.

Not when people are involved

> If you believe the government is more effective than the people in spending your money you should want tax increased for everyone. If not you should want it lowered. Simple as that.

This is apples and oranges. I'm not going to go build roads or missile defense systems with my money (thought I might donate to science). There's no direct comparison between how "the people" spend their own money vs. what you can do with taxes, and it's definitely not "as simple as that"

Private companies managed to build railways just fine, until the govt in its infinite wisdom (with which I totally agree by the way, but most people in the pro-govt camp, who want more rail now, don't) decided to undercut them with a massive tax-funded highway system.

And roads (or defense) are about as an extreme example as it gets due to the complexity of acquiring a very long, very narrow plot of land. So, it's possible a govt might be a bit better than market at providing roads, although I'm not 100% convinced. For most things, govt is just an inefficient, thieving monopoly.

Yes it is. Money is a resource allocation mechanism. Suppose people were not taxed at all. Do you think there wouldn’t be roads?

Roads are a good example of how when you go to 0 to 1 it’s a great investment and thus good justification for taxes. At some point though there are diminishing returns.

How the government spends it is a massively less important consideration than preventing the rich from having it.

Money is power, and too much power in too few hands is a real threat to national security and the integrity of a republic.

If the big banks can say "bail me out or else" or any of these billionaires can say "If you try to hold me accountable I will make it hurt," how much freedom from tyranny do we really have?

And is the government itself some platonic entity? This comment is deeply ironic - we are afraid of the concentration of power in the hands of some rich people, so we are going to give more power to the most massive and heavily armed entity in human history, barely accountable (beyond extremes) given that most actual ruling is done by bureaucracy and even the "choice" between parties is not very meaningful, and increasingly controlled by one man via executive action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Here is some classic internet for you (CCP Grey's: rules for rulers) that I think you would have trouble refuting while being consistent with your post.

I watched the amount of video that it would take to read a comment here and it was not insightful. You'd have to summarize, nobody watches videos :P

That said, to expand my argument a bit

1) Vast majority of abuse of power in history has been done by governments.

2) Out of that, majority has been done by the govts that came by thru revolution by non-rich people, and/or were populist - i.e. based upon popularity among masses of non-rich people, and/or partially thru vote of non-rich people.

3) Even when rich people, excluding those rich because they are in the government in the first place, directly abused power (e.g. corporations like United Fruit), they usually did it mostly via a government that was either friendly to them or easy to bribe.

There are very few exceptions. Power concentration among rich men not in government is literally the last thing I would worry, by itself, about as far as power goes. The only problem with Bezos having lots of power is that he could buy the politicians and use their power. So, the best solution is to reduce their power.

If you don't want to understand that's sad but fine.

The video will explain why you're model is wrong if you watch it.

> So, the best solution is to reduce their power.

If Bezos can buy the cops, should we get rid of cops so he can't exercise power through cops?

Well, I can recommend a few books by e.g. Thomas Sowell that I'm pretty sure refute whatever model some rando on youtube armed with an opinion has. Come back when you've read them, although if you don't want to understand that's also fine... this is not how discussions work. You actually have to present an argument, not expect someone to watch an 18 minute video from a rando.

> If Bezos can buy the cops, should we get rid of cops so he can't exercise power through cops?

Exactly! Well, almost. Ideally, the powers they have should be treated as baseline evil, and then there should be a good argument for any of them being a /necessary/ evil - e.g. is the alternative actually, obviously worse; at the very least, the powers should be restricted and defined as much as possible, so that there's the least possible room to stretch and abuse them.

EDIT: I realized I responded kinda out of context after that. As per above, Bezoses bribing govt actors has historically been much less less of a concern than govt actors just abusing power of their own accord; and when Bezoses do abuse power via govt actors, the main reason is that govt actors have lots of power, wide discretion, complex easy to obfuscate rules, etc. With cops, drug prohibiyion is a great example - rife for abuse and selective enforcement. Remove the power, and it becomes much harder to abuse.

If that’s the concern there’s no need for tax, simply have a wealth limit. Agree or disagree?

Who enforces the wealth limit? If there is no tax, there can be no enforcement, no regulation, and no solving disputes by means other than who is most powerful.

It's not the concern, it is one concern, but specifically in the context of taxing the rich, I think it is the dominating concern.

Isn't this just as true of income taxes? They rely on accurate self-reporting, and there are legal remedies when inaccurate self-reporting is discovered. We could have people self-declare their wealth to the IRS annually on tax day.

The rich have a much lower marginal utility per dollar than the poor. My goal at least is to maximize utility, so increasing taxes on those who enjoy dollars less is the correct decision.

Found the economist.

Meaning a person who argues economic theory and not purely from neo-liberal ideology.

That actually does not justify increased role of govt at all. Redistribution is nearly orthogonal to that... tax the rich, give money to the poor, fine. Just make sure to fire all the bureaucrats beyond what's necessary to maintain the simple transfer first.

You're assuming the value per dollar a poor person gains from their money is equal to what a rich person gains.

I want progressive taxation precisely because I think rich people are less able than others to spend their resources in a way that brings net benefit to the world.

It's important to remember that not all dollars have equal value. If you're broke, $10 has significant value. If you're Bezos, it's effectively worthless. So when we decide how much to tax whom, we have to take this effect into consideration.

> Suppose you believe the government is not good at spending your money. Let’s say half of every dollar is wasted. Why would you want rich people to be taxed more?

So they can spend half of it well?

No, because definitionally the money was better spent by the rich people. Note: I am not saying that this is the case, but the constructed scenario already supposes that.

"Better" as in better for social good? If that's what you're arguing your constructed scenario is just dumb.

Better as in like how the population would want the money spent.

seems like a pointlessly unrealistic premise

> learn to spend the money more effectively

That’s definitely an issue, but I would be happy with the government just spending less of it. Like less than is brought in as revenues. Excess can be rolled over with equivalent tax cuts or moved to an endowment or trust with an independent, non-partisan management structure that pays an annuity. Failure to stay under revenues would come directly out of public servant salaries, campaigns, benefits, and retirement programs.

>rich people effectively pay less tax than the middle class

That’s just not true. The top 1% of earners pay close to half of all income tax.

Which has been proven time and time again to be extremely disingenuous.

Furthermore, how do you account for the ones who don't "earn an income" and simply live off bank loans until they die?

https://www.businessinsider.com/american-billionaires-tax-av...

Anything having to do with revenues or budgets typically will not identify the way comparison operators are being used. Rick people typically pay a lower effective tax rate than middle class, because, as many have noted, increases to wealth come from capital gains, illiquid appreciation, and less from income. Middle class has nearly 100% of any increase come from taxable income. The total dollar amount paid by high earners is definitely higher, but as a percent of total income, it should be lower (if you’re doing it right).

As I’m sure many here know, as more wealth is accumulated, it becomes easier to accumulate wealth in ways middle income and lower just can’t access. Whether that’s through tax advantages accounts, tax structures, or even just capital gains growing faster than incomes. It’s also easier to get lower interest rates, fees, purchase at prices approaching wholesale, etc.

let that sink in for a moment.. even with all the legal tax evasion schemes the top 1% is still paying half of all income taxes with the measly amounts they actually register as income. the system is simply broken