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Comment by gwright | Hacker News Reader

Why are you framing the argument as if incomes are something that are owned by the government instead of the person who earned the money?

The notion that taxation should be predicated on whether the government or the person can 'better use' the person's money is damn scary.

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The notion that taxation should be predicated on whether the government or the person can 'better use' the person's money is damn scary.

Why is it scary? Your tax dollars go to the government because other citizens wish their tax dollars to go to the government, because they believe the government is the most efficient way to provide certain goods. Basically, they believe the government can spend their money better than they can, at least a certain amount of their money spent for certain purposes. Taxes aren't completely consensual, of course. They're government policy, and like any government policy, they can't depend on unanimous approval. However, the will of the people, as expressed through every democratic system on Earth, does support some degree of taxation and government spending. The natural question for a voter to ask when their vote affects taxation is whether it is more efficient to accomplish certain things through the government rather than through private spending -- essentially, whether the government can "better use" money for certain purposes than taxpayers can themselves. What's wrong with that?

Taxes are entirely not consensual. And that is the crux of the matter. Because they are not consensual there needs to be some sort of mechanism to limit the ability for the majority to simply appropriate money and property from the minority.

Suggesting that the only limiting factor is whether the government (even a democratically elected one) thinks it can use the money better than you can, really isn't a limit.

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. -- Benjamin Franklin

You're arguing the old maker versus taker canard, which doesn't reflect reality at all. Taxation would not exist without the consent of a large number of economically productive taxpayers. If you think politics in the United States is run by poor people, or by mysterious forces that somehow nullify and overcome the economic power of a preponderance of American taxpayers, you are kidding yourself. You'd be better off engaging with American taxpayers who want the government to play a certain role and want to pay for it than pretending we don't exist. If you persist in believing that government is a conspiracy by parasites against the productive, then you are going to be perpetually confused and disappointed by American politics. Warren Buffet is trying to help you out, to clue you in to the fact that the politics surrounding government spending and revenue are not determined by the economic divisions you think they are. Accept that a large number of prosperous Americans (such as Warren Buffet) are willing taxpayers who approve of many forms of government spending, and I promise you, things will become a lot clearer. You might even be able to frame your arguments in a form that a presidential candidate wouldn't have to apologize for repeating.

I don't think the majority of people who politically support the current tax code are currently making as most of their income and a sizable portion of net worth 50-500k/yr in wage income from non-government (direct or one level removed) sources, however.

(it's primarily retirees who are now a combination of state beneficiary and investment income earners, people who work for government or direct vendors to government, and is funded by people who make most of their money as capital gains or carried interest.)

This is true for both major parties, and has been true for at least 40 years, though.

Socially and intellectually, the people I mostly identify with are professionals and other middle to upper class wage earners (doctors, lawyers, engineers); the exception being startup equity. And the people who earn wages (vs. capital gains) in this bracket pay the highest marginal taxes of anyone.

If tech people weren't able to shift income into capital gains, 50%+ taxation would be a much bigger deal.

If you don't like the taxes, go somewhere else, or into the black market.

Really? You think that tax policy is some verboten topic that is outside the scope of public debate and that anyone who dares to question the 'government' should 'leave' (or become a criminal)?

Its not really scary at all because that is what governments have always done, unless you are an advocate for no government at all in which case you are damn scary.

That is a false dichotomy.

You want me to choose between anarchy or <insert your form of government here> where you've asserted that it doesn't matter what form of government I choose because they are all the same.

The whole point of my post is that progressive taxation is a question of which individuals pay what, not whether money stays with individuals or goes to the government. You appear to be caught up in the framing of political rhetoric.

As if 'framing' isn't an important part of communicating ideas? In this case you chose to frame the discussion in the form of the government 'giving' its money to the people. I'm rejecting that formulation. That doesn't mean I'm rejecting the idea of taxes or more specifically progressive taxes.

I offered a thought experiment, and using the example of "giving $1,000" is easier to think about than "not taking $1,000". As a thought experiment they are equivalent, with respect to the question: who utilizes resources most efficiently?

By introducing variability of how much the government takes total it adds another question that is being used to persistently distract from the question of progressivity. When people say "the wealthy should bear a larger portion of the burden" a typical response is "we should be spending less on government!" – which is no response at all, just a distraction.

You said: "The notion that taxation should be predicated on whether the government or the person can 'better use' the person's money is damn scary." – which is EXACTLY what I was pointedly NOT asking. The degree of progressivity in a system does not determine whether a person or the government has the person's money, but WHICH people have how much money.

OK, I'll accept that you weren't intending to suggest that the government has primary claim on your income but you seem unaware of how your framing has been used by others to actually make that claim.

I can accept theoretically that you can separate the progressive structure of the federal income tax from spending decisions but in reality it is pretty hard to solve our budget problems by simply taxing the 'rich'--at least if you use the $250,000 figure that is most commonly used.

Here is a nice calculator you can use to see the difficulty: http://splitwise.com/taxes/

Now we're demanding that progressivity must balance the budget too? This is car salesman accounting, muddling unrelated choices together to distract from individual choices that can be rationally considered.

You keep giving these pundit talking points – the talking points of pundits have been rehashed enough, we shouldn't be using them here, it's not a productive form of discussion. Are we men or are we pundits? I, sir, am a man! ;)

Huh? I'm not at all suggesting that the budget deficit can/should be solved by tweaking the progressivity of the federal tax system. In fact I'm saying the opposite--it is very hard to solve the budget deficit in that way because what we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

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