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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

> Everyone wants taxes to go up on everyone making more than them, and for their own taxes to go down.

That's not true at all. I make a good salary as a software engineer, I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.

I believe this attitude is pretty common in many parts of the world.

That being said, I do think the extremes of wealth (there is a big difference between a millionaire and a billionaire) have a particularly detrimental effect on society by completely distorting our economic system (there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).

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>...I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.

The federal government does have a system to accept gifts which you might want to check out: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html

Whether your gift will make a better society, I can't know - much like your taxes you have very little control over what the money is going to be used for.

>...(there can be no such thing as a free market when such a small number of individuals control such a large proportion of the spending power).

A free market is generally considered a system where there are voluntary exchanges between buyers and sellers based on mutual benefit. It seems odd to claim that since there are some very wealthy people in the country that somehow a consumer can't buy bread from a baker, etc. Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.

> Maybe you can expand a bit on how you are defining free market.

Not OP, but just look at a company town as an example in a bottle.

When the rich and powerful control the means of production so completely that they are the only people one can buy what one needs from, then in what way can the exchanges still be called "voluntary" and in what way is "mutual benefit" achieved vs the lesser of two evils: "perpetual debtorship that one must endlessly toil to slow the progress of" vs "abject starvation"?

At the end of the day consent and free will are actually really complicated topics, and they can be surprisingly easy to pervert by unequal power dynamics. The market cannot be free whenever feudalism forms to take its place.

I'm curious about your thoughts on voluntarily donating the excess wages that you perceive earning.. and perhaps not directly to the US government (which is — to put it simply — not in a healthy state of mind at the moment), but instead to charity organizations that you can vet and trust?

Obviously actually vetting these organizations to make sure that your dollar accomplishes what you wish of it remains a Very Hard Problem, but at least while making baby steps from where we are right now (with our dystopian government) increases in taxation would not constitute a small step in the right direction.

EG: a better environment might look like a healthy government being supported by higher taxes than we see today, but without that first "healthy government" component the latter cannot be a net positive.

Here you go: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/voluntary-payments-donations-to-...

> That's not true at all. I make a good salary as a software engineer, I absolutely think I ought to be taxed a little more than I am, and would gladly pay that money to live in the better society I believe that would create.

This confusion is precisely why the middle class has less power than ever before. You and many others have been sold a meme that your tax dollars are in service to a greater good, and you are a bad person if you recognize this to be a scam.

At an individual level, for each person in the middle class, 90% of the social programs they pay for are negative EV for them personally. It would be better for each of them if they just kept what they earned, and didn't expect to get it back "later" or "when they really need it" whenever that is. This is an empirical, testable claim, and the math will be slightly different for each person. You should check for yourself.

If everyone turned off the news, and totally ignored the messaging around taxes and government programs and just looked at their own cash inflows and outflows to/from the government, the middle class would retain far more power than they do.

> At an individual level, for each person in the middle class, 90% of the social programs they pay for are negative EV for them personally. It would be better for each of them if they just kept what they earned, and didn't expect to get it back "later" or "when they really need it" whenever that is. This is an empirical, testable claim, and the math will be slightly different for each person. You should check for yourself.

This whole "expected value" concept when taken to the extreme is just rationalist patter. It's a useful exercise when you're running a business, but there is more to life than fiscal efficiency. Empiricism, when taken to an extreme, is as dystopian as anything else.

90% of those social programs are what keep us from being killed in the street for our watches and jewelry. They keep people less fortunate than us from becoming desperate. They level the playing field so our children aren't all victims of the circumstances of their birth. By those metrics, which are my preferred metrics and not the size of my paycheck, they are a huge benefit.

Also one could argue that the US military is the world's largest social service program in that it provides jobs for a large part of the country that otherwise has no prospects for a good life.

> If everyone turned off the news, and totally ignored the messaging around taxes and government programs and just looked at their own cash inflows and outflows to/from the government, the middle class would retain far more power than they do.

Are you only counting material benefit that you personally get from the government rather than the benefit that other less well off people get in your calculations? Because if my tax dollars enable otherwise less well off people to live a lifestyle closer to my own, then I would consider that a benefit to me and a large part of the intended outcome of that taxation.

> Because if my tax dollars enable otherwise less well off people to live a lifestyle closer to my own

That's a very big 'if'. Less well off people have to pay taxes too, such as payroll taxes on their labor income, or sales taxes on essential purchases that amount to a large fraction of what they spend money on. And government redistribution is extremely inefficient. They'd be far better off if most of these taxes were done away with for lower-income folks, letting them keep far more of what they earn from their work.

> They'd be far better off if most of these taxes were done away with for lower-income folks, letting them keep far more of what they earn from their work.

Well I'd certainly be in favour of a more progressive taxation system that taxes higher earners more and lower earners less, and puts more emphasis on wealth and income (incl. capita gains) taxes and less on sales taxes.

But I'm also realistic that as a software engineer, my salary is above the average, and thus in such a setup I'd likely end up paying more.

This is where the Rawlsian veil of ignorance must be applied. What's the EV if you turn off all the tax programs and you don't know which class you're in? If it's negative, cut that program. If not, keep it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

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