Giving money to government is not compasssion, Helping people get food, shelter, healthcare,etc yourself is compassion. Voting for government to use guns to force people to pay what you have perceived as "their fair share" in order to provide those things to people is not compassion, it is self-righteous bullying.
Making public goods into voluntarist things like charities isn’t benevolence. Robber barons have no problem giving a pittance to the poor, I’m sure, as long as that keeps them from being “bullied”.
But me giving had a much, much smaller impact than me pushing for everyone to give.
It's not just about their fair share. Income inequality is a feedback loop that has a predictable and quite unpleasant outcome. I'd much rather introduce mechanisms to slow that feedback loop down.
The parent poster argued that "don't the wealthy know they'll get taxed more?" I'd propose that "don't the bottom 95% know they'll experience a steady decline of income and purchasing power if we don't tax the wealthy more?"
I don't think that's what syshum is talking about. You said, "Send the tax man to my house and all my peers. We can afford it just fine".
There is no need for the tax man to come to your house. Go to https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html. There's a link there, you can even use PayPal if you want. Figure out what the additional amount is that you think you should be paying in tax, and make the payment. You can do it this very minute.
Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
I invite you to consider:
If my stated goal is to increase the tax on wealthiest folks with the intent of distributing more to the lower class and reducing wealth inequality.
Should I:
a) Spend 100% of my surplus income on gifts to the tax authority
or
b) Spend 100% of my surplus income on organizations that will organize community efforts to achieve my goal.
It's a concept called the 'opportunity cost' -- option A is acting in the spirit of my goal, but does nothing to achieve my goal. If I am a rational player (and I'd like to believe I am), to achieve my goals it's considerably more effective for me to spend my money giving to charities that align with my objective.
Therefore, I spend my surplus income on community organizing, land trusts, and other efforts that will build support for my goals.
Edit:
This is the same reason why I don't ask people who care about the national debt to just open their pocketbooks. If that's a cause you care about, I'd expect you to advocate for it and give your time/money towards groups that make it happen. I happen to think it's a ludicrous thing to care about.
We can aggressively disagree about policies and still agree that we are acting in a rational way respective to our worldviews. There is room for both of our opinions here, but we should be able to discuss them without relying on these sorts of goofy strawmen.
That's not exactly "Send the tax man to my house" now is it?
You want the government to take my money and use it for your ideological purposes that I do not believe in, to implement socialism in America, that's what I think you're saying. Am I wrong here? Sending the tax man to your house vs. doing that, those are two very different things.
We can find common ground here, send the tax man to your house, we can agree on that at least can't we? And you can do that right now, this very minute, PayPal over what you think the correct amount is.
It’s around 3.2-3.5% of our budget. That we know of. That’s close to a trillion/year.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_S... : this is the United States federal budget. What is it that we couldn’t do with this much money can we do by increasing tax by a minuscule minuscule percentage that is nothing for the govt budget but makes such a massive dent for families, disposable income, consumer index, business development and investment.
Where is the accountability. The taxes are to run the govt. the job of the govt is not to manipulate taxes to impose laws to cancel inequalities. This is thuggery by taxation. Govt should be small and efficient. Big bloated govts with access to unlimited tax monies will only get bigger and bloatier. Until their expenses will explode like Mr.Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. It is that ‘wafer thin mint’ that was the last straw that broke the camels back resulting in the Silicon Valley exodus.
This is actually a tactic that climate change denialists push for (accuse people of not doing enough personally so they don't go after the real source of the problem and blame themselves instead)
It's a milquetoast argument intended to defend the status quo by attacking the people that want to change it.
The problem here is the fact you are not pushing for everyone to "give", giving is a voluntary act, taxation is compulsory done under the explicit threat of violence. It is not an act of "giving" it is an act of taking.
>"don't the bottom 95% know they'll experience a steady decline of income and purchasing power if we don't tax the wealthy more?"
History does not show this to be the case at all, The World is becoming a better place for everyone [1]
Driven predominantly by growth, which will taper off. We are an unusually explosive period of growth at the moment, and it's already starting to recede. Growth is fueled in many cases by population expansion which has almost completely stalled in many places.
For an introductory read on the topic, I recommend Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century.
> The problem here is the fact you are not pushing for everyone to "give", giving is a voluntary act, taxation is compulsory done under the explicit threat of violence. It is not an act of "giving" it is an act of taking.
I believe that the taxes you pay were never your money to begin with. I'm not giving the government my money, the government is ensuring that society has what it needs to care for everyone. The mechanism that it uses to do this needs to tap into either wealth or streams of finances, but neither is theft or taking from what I see. An analogy, salmon ladders in dams allow an important resource to flourish and don't generate power. You might call that 'theft' or 'taking' power from the dam. I see it as 'never the dams to begin with'. (In case it's not clear, the water is money, you are the dam. Are you entitled to all the water that flows to you? You say yes, I say no, we disagree but I don't think there's an objectively correct answer.)
Counter to the opinion that taxes are theft, I believe that austerity is theft. We can agree to disagree here if you'd like.
Money is not a resource like water, money is a medium of value exchange. In the case of income money is the medium where I exchange my Time, Knowledge, and labor for a given quantity of money which I then use for trade to obtain things others have used their time, money and knowledge to create
It is a simpler and more abstract instead of me having to grow wheat to exchange with a baker for bread
Given this, I do 100% believe I am entitled to 100% of my Labor, time and knowledge. You seem to have the belief that I am a subject or property of the government, as this the only conclusion one can draw in order for your world view to square with what money really is.
I believe it is unethical to take by force or taxation a persons labor, and thus by extension it is unethical to take a person income by theft or taxation
> Given this, I do 100% believe I am entitled to 100% of my Labor, time and knowledge.
If you produce a profit for your employer, you are not earning 100% of your labor, time, and knowledge.
Realistically, your labor produces some value X. The government AND your employer expect a certain percentage of X.
We both want the same ideal -- maximize worker wealth -- it's just that I see us getting there by decreasing employer percentages and accepting some taxes. You want to get there by decreasing taxes and accepting some loss of value to your employer.
I assume here you are implying I get something of value from my tax dollars, but this does not make it any less of a theft. If I come to your home, mow your grass then "tax" your car from you as payment for my services you would still call that theft. and rightly so.
Simply because the government "gave" me services I neither asked for nor consented to does not mean their taking of my labor / money is ceases to be theft
>If you produce a profit for your employer, you are not earning 100% of your labor, time, and knowledge.
This is false thinking, given your clear bias to socialism I can understand why you think that but it never the less false
My employer accepts my labor (at the agreed rate), then combines my labor with the labor of others, and their own capital investment / or other assets (like a brand) where by that is repackaged by them to be sold as goods and services on the market.
True the total value of the end product sold has to be greater than their purchase cost, that is how businesses work, and how a Value Add economy functions, that however does not mean I did not get 100% of the value of my labor, on the contrary.
I will ignore the attempt the slide in the government as a valid and ethical actor in the transaction, they are not. A market transaction consists of the buyer and seller that is all, the government is an unethical 3rd party leech on the system
Keep in mind I am not opposed to all government finance, at the end of the day I would even support a UBI, in fact I would support a UBI over all other forms of welfare. I however would implement such a system using Georgism Single Tax model on natural resources, not on income, wealth or labor.
Well, such is the price of citizenship. You certainly are free to exercise your freedom of exit to move to a country where the government behaves otherwise.
This is aside from the fact that is a clear logical fallacy [1]
So indeed, you can’t leave- because unless you move to no man’s land and set up your own government, you will always be betrayed by your own principle, no matter what country you live under.
No, I just do not accept the idea that the terms of the "Social Contract" can be changed on the whims of a Majority / democracy, or worse on the whims of an elected officials
I believe in the Lockean principle of natural rights, on which I believe the terms of said social contract are written and are unchangeable
I believe what Authoritarian Democrats and Republicans call the "social contract" is a complete perversion of the concept in order to justify their own unethical power driven political ends.
IMO, this is a false equivalence -- governments are uniquely different from other entities.
> This is false thinking, given your clear bias to socialism I can understand why you think that but it never the less false
I don't see how you can say that this is objectively false. It's ok to say you disagree and you see it differently, but just telling someone their opinion is false isn't going to further a constructive dialog.
I suspect our end goals probably align in many ways. I also support a UBI (though I think some forms of welfare may still be required. For example, to assist people who may need help getting access to their UBI, and to provide some mechanisms for collectively bargaining for things like health care if we keep it private.)
This is another difference on our world view. I do not believe they should be. The foundation of the American style of governance is "For the people by the people".
The government is the common organization of individual natural rights. Any legitimate force the government has comes from the common organization of the natural and individual right of self defense. We the people ordain and establish governments to protect our individual rights. As such the common force is to only do what the individuals have the natural and lawful right to do, to protect our rights.
So if it would be unlawful or unethical for me to enter your property, mow your yard and take our car as compensation it should also be unlawful / unethical for the government to do the same
Granting government special powers is how government abuse occurs. Just look at all the police abuse, this occurs because we have given the police immunities, protections and powers not afforded to the general public. This power will, is, and always will be abused by those that hold it
This was the fundamental problem with the Monarch system we revolted from over 250 years ago, and as we granted the government ever increasing levels of power far above what a normal citizen could ever dream of the resulting problems are clear, evident and predictable. Including the resulting Wealth inequality which I can and have made a case is cause by government regulations not by capitalism or lack of regulations