Progressive taxation is also a recognition that most of anybody's income is enabled by living in a modern, safe, resourceful, co-operative and free society. Without a modern society and without the benefit of all that have come before us, we'd all be subsistence farmers. Bill Gates may have been the most successful subsistence farmer ever, but that wouldn't have made him rich.
Taxation is not theft. Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut.
It's true that most of those who receive the money taken from you in taxes will not have 'earned' it either. Most of those that built the society that you're benefiting from are dead -- the scientists that enabled modern technology, the industrialists who built the economy, the soldiers and politicians who gave us our free society -- the most important work was done by those who came before us.
>Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut.
The "cut" society received is the benefit it gained that made it pay the person enough to make them wealthy.
>Progressive taxation is also a recognition that most of anybody's income is enabled by living in a modern, safe, resourceful, co-operative and free society. Without a modern society and without the benefit of all that have come before us, we'd all be subsistence farmers.
Are the citizens of Singapore, with it's 20% top tax bracket, subsistence farmers? Are all the people in the countries listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_f... subsistence farmers? There may be moral arguments for progressive taxation but they aren't economic ones; non-progressive taxation is perfectly capable of funding a modern society.
>It's true that most of those who receive the money taken from you in taxes will not have 'earned' it either. Most of those that built the society that you're benefiting from are dead -- the scientists that enabled modern technology, the industrialists who built the economy, the soldiers and politicians who gave us our free society -- the most important work was done by those who came before us.
These who came before us chose to do whatever they did. Someone being born didn't choose to be born, so it's not fair to suggest they have some kind of obligation to the previous generation. A contract to which one party did not consent is not a valid contract.
Given that Singapore is a medium-sized city providing financial services for an entire continent, it's probably not a model of fiscal sustainability the rest of the world can readily follow
And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe.
I didn't contract with the government to accept their jurisdiction over territory (though every tax I've ever paid has been due to a free and fair decision to do business and make purchases on their terms), but then I didn't contract with wealthy people to agree to their ownership of assets they claim rights to stop me using or charge me for using either...
Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist.
>And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe.
There's a big gap between "significantly poorer" and subsistence farmers. As in, an order of magnitude of GDP in many cases from that list (e.g. Russia).
>Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist.
The difference is that government necessarily involves force, due to requiring involuntary taxation (an entity funded by voluntary donations isn't generally considered a government, it's considered a charity), while it's possible for a group of people to agree to trade together and respect some notion of property (be it the strong capitalist notion of property or the weak anarchist notion of "possessions") without requiring force.
Russia certainly isn't a subsistence state, but I'd hesitate to call it a "modern society" too. It's also a petro-state that enjoys the luxury of deriving around a third of government revenues from oil and gas. Most of Western Europe has to make up that gap with additional taxes even before it starts to provide its citizens with more support.
You can have a perfectly harmonious society where everyone within it voluntarily respects each others' possessions, but you're still going to need force (or the implied threat of force) to prevent outsiders who aren't part of that particular social contract and don't particularly want to be from making use of that property. The possibility that someone might not voluntarily accept a social contract over the ownership of property is an existential threat to property rights which can only be resolved through [implied] force. Hence de jure and de facto the basis of all property and trade is the coercion that enforces its rules, whether that's by a government institution or a group of friends with big guns.
Not that I'm against progressive taxation, but I never understood how taxation not being theft tells us exactly how much Bill should pay. Theoretically if you have defined objectives you ought to wonder how much is the right amount getting you closest to these objectives. "We're all their heirs" could very well mean that Bill should give everyone in the world $10-20, so an equal share to everyone. This kind of thing does not work very well, however.
No libertarian beliefs that rich people do everything by themselfs without society. Bill Gates used a waste laber market, world trade system and much else.
I hope you agree with me that society does not equal government.
I do not beliefe taxation is theft, but your argument for taxes simple is not good either.
Our government's apparent interests and the interests of the population are only loosely correlated in most instances and diametrically opposed to the interests of the population in way too many instances. Consider: copyright and other IP laws, the current voting systems, the power of lobbyists, congressional insider trading, military contract approval, etc.
Additionally, the large majority of society's interactions happen outside of any democratic vote. The whole goal of the Constitution was to narrowly white list the functions of government so that the Civil Society could be left to operate as it saw fit thus maximizing individual liberty.
In general, not maintaining a clean separate abstractions for government and society is like having classes that try to have too many unrelated behaviors. They lead to unneeded coupling of functions and an inability to reason cleanly about the whole system.
Not my assumption. Well, our government doesn't function too badly as a democracy, but the US government is a corrupt mess where voter interests are mostly ignored.
The thing is, the moment you abandon the option of using the government as the tool by which society organizes itself, you abandon democracy. I'm not sure where else you can go from there, other than accept that you're never going to be free.
Progressive taxation is just negative feedback for earning more.
Most taxes are percentage based.
Let's assume tax level is 20%.
- one earns $1000 he will give $200 in taxes,
- one earns $10000 he will give $2000 in taxes.
Richer person already gives more to the society than the poor one, taxing the rich guy with higher taxes is just a way of making them guilty because they made it.
Progressive taxation here in Europe actually hits the middle class the most, as most of them are already in the highest tax tier (I'm not talking about the ridiculous French 75%) and as soon as you reach this level you are suddenly hit by a big tax. It makes you wonder, what you did wrong?
In Netherland, you have to be well above average to hit the highest tax bracket, and even then, most of your income will fall in the lower brackets. To have most of your income in the highest bracket, you're well beyond middle class.
"Richer person already gives more to the society than the poor one"
Richer person also received orders of magnitude more from society than the poor one.
"taxing the rich guy with higher taxes is just a way of making them guilty because they made it. "
It is not, at least to a sane person. If you're the type of person that believes that saying "Happy Holidays" is persecuting Christians, then you might think that.
Taxation is not theft. Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut.
It's true that most of those who receive the money taken from you in taxes will not have 'earned' it either. Most of those that built the society that you're benefiting from are dead -- the scientists that enabled modern technology, the industrialists who built the economy, the soldiers and politicians who gave us our free society -- the most important work was done by those who came before us.
We are all their heirs.