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Comment by DC1350 | Hacker News Reader

Good. High income people get almost nothing for the amount that they have to pay. Some day we’ll have flat fee city states for remote workers who will only have to pay for what they use. How can you justify taking so much when a person’s customers, education, employer, etc. are all located outside of the region that they live in? What is so special about the people living nearby that makes them deserving of another guy’s money even if their lives are entirely independent? It makes no sense...

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Because their lives aren't independent. They're all connected through the economy and social interactions. Would Jeff bezos be worth as much if millions of people didn't throw money at his company and he didn't squeeze as much productivity out of his employees whole paying most of them as little as possible? Probably not.

>High income people get almost nothing for the amount that they have to pay.

The whole environment that made it possible for them to have a high income and keep, from instracture to law, and from defense to consumer markets, has been paid almost entirely by others.

They get a functioning, stable society which continues to build them wealth in return.

>There’s a pretty weak economic connection between me and the locals, so how is it justified?

It's the price for the locals to accept an otherwise freeloader with no ties to the place, to live in the country they've built.

But by definition, they've been getting that for what they're paying already, so the avoidance isn't hurting anything.

> High income people get almost nothing ...

They get high incomes.

I think they meant get from the government (unless you believe in an extreme collectivist view of the economy and think all wealth fundamentally belongs to the government, not the person who received it through voluntary transactions with other people).

> think all wealth fundamentally belongs to the government

Not the government, no.

One of the only convincing rebuttals to the statement "taxation is theft" I've heard relies on the fact that the government is the entity that bootstraps the very concept of private property as we know it. Without this guarantee of private property, there is no way to accumulate wealth for an individual in the first place.

The main problem with that argument is that it's based on false "facts". Private property predates government; it wasn't created by government. People have to actually have stuff worth taking before the predatory protection rackets will appear to prey on them.

Afaik governments emerged during the transition from hunter gathering to agriculture. Hunter gatherers have some concept of private property, but it's in no way the same extent as in modern society. For one, hunter gatherers wouldn't really even think about owning land or animals.

Robbers can take stuff from you or governments can take stuff from you and build public goods with the money.

The government created the systems (the markets, the laws, etc) that allowed that person to acquire their wealth. Fundamentally there is no way they would acquire it without this government. Most rich people's wealth is stored in legal fictions back-propped by the legal system they live in.

That’s why I singled out remote workers. The governments who created the systems that allow people to acquire wealth are different from the ones that collect taxes. The government that allows my employer to exist could invade the one I pay taxes to.

Here's a thought: paying to live in a functioning society where people less privileged than us don't die destitute serving us... might mean they don't have to guillotine us to survive when it comes to that. Just, you know, keep it in perspective if you don't have a moral compass about what you "get" living in a society where other people besides you are safe and healthy.

Almost everyone in the world who provides anything for us already lives in terrible conditions and makes a few dollars a day. The people nearby are even less deserving since they’re so much less cost efficient to help.

Honestly... I wish I could wish the same on you when you inevitably need to depend on others, but I don’t have it in me. I’m not even mad, I’m just amazed that people who think this way are so unthreatened they think they can say it outloud without consequence.

"Almost everyone in the world who provides anything for us already lives in terrible conditions and makes a few dollars a day."

Tim Cook only makes a few dollar a day and lives in a ghetto?

Surely you jest.

I don’t need nor want servants.

Neither do I, for what it’s worth. My approach to this subject is probably too brash, but it comes from a time when I was among the servants and being priced out of the place I would live to continue that work.

Social security by and large is intended to keep society secure against desperately poor people.

How’s that working out?

In my country, pretty well.

Obviously it'll depend on your actual implementation.

That is a half-decent practical argument for those with means to donate to charity, though it presumes that the "less privileged" are inherently irrational. Guillotining the rich (or just taking their money and turning them out on the street) isn't likely to do much at all to aid their survival. Barring some regrettable but ultimately trivial examples of conspicuous consumption, the mostly-paper wealth of the rich is tied up in capital investments aided at producing goods desired by the masses. Liquidate that and you have a bunch of useless cash and no goods to purchase with it.

It isn't in any sense a moral justification for taxes.

You are getting downvoted, but I feel you (tax bill is approaching here...). The reality is, you need to strike a balance somewhere: Taxes are a matter of supply/demand. If you increase the taxes, at some point people are going to move somewhere else. If you reduce the services, you have to reduce the tax bill otherwise people and business will feel ripped off.

Most people here are either 1. employees who can't evade taxes because of how the system is setup, or 2. Entrepreneurs who are virtue signalling because of the magic internet Karma or 3. Simply have no money and think somebody else should pay for stuff. In reality, pretty much everyone will try to avoid taxes if he gets the chance (isn't that what the article is about?).

For one, they get to live in safe and civilized countries. That's a price MANY wealthy people are willing pay.

But truth be told, there are many wealthy people that have grown up rich, in those safe countries, or have grown complacent.

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