In the Beginning, There Were Taxes | Hacker News Reader

In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

laphamsquarterly.org

27 pointsdiodorus74 comments

david cay johnston on the moral basis of progressive taxation (3 min)

What he's talking about (the wealthy people of Ancient Greece voluntarily giving away some money for the greater good) sounds more like a charity.

I believe he said the wealther you got, the bigger burden you owe to athens, because without Athens you wouldn't have gotten rich, and we want there to be rich people in the future in athens as well.

Probably worth noting that a flat tax system would fit that description, even though it's not "progressive". I'm curious what the specifics of Athenian taxations were.

You'll either pay the government or you'll pay a collection of security and infrastructure services that after sufficient consolidation... will become the government.

Also, taxes are money. Essentially, a government issues money to its (armed) servants. It also demands its citizens to pay a certain tax in form of that money. This forces the citizens to work for and sell to the government's servants to obtain that money. Servants are happy, government can continue to govern, citizens, well, who cares, right?

Its like the mafia coming to your door wanting a protection fee but instead the government is much bigger and even pays to punish people for wrong-think like on this site.

If you don't pay your taxes and fight back, the government will send its servants to kill you or beat you until money pops out.

If you don't like taxes why wouldn't you move to a country that doesn't have taxes like Somalia? Is it because taxes pay for security and things you use everyday like infrastructure?

Somalia has some other issues.

That being said, I would happily move to a country with 0% income tax, such as Monaco or Oman.

Alas these countries do not allow free movement of people through their borders.

It's a common strawman argument to paint the argument as black and white, that either you want taxes or you want zero taxes. When in reality there's many shades of grey. The majority of people that complain about taxes don't want zero taxation, they just want to be taxed fairly, with proper representation, and for the government to make proper use of the money they do take, with accountability, before demanding more from the citizens.

These are things that everyone want, they don't really distinguish those who complain about taxes from those who don't.

I'd propose, simplistically, that people who demand tax cuts have in common the following characteristics:

- they may be confused about the role(s) of taxation

- they may not have sat down with pen and paper to try and figure out how to work a government's finances

- they may not be aware that a lot of the information they're demanding is public, or may not know where to find it

- they may not have a clear idea of which services to cut, or might not fully appreciate the importance of the services they'd like to cut

Conversely, it is highly probable that the people who support tax hikes:

- have a clear understanding of at least some of the roles of taxation

- have a specific idea what budget item they would like to see it spent on

I think there's a non-trivial (and certainly non-zero) portion of the population who would specifically enjoy tax hikes on other people who have become, in their judgment, too successful.

Huge success is only possible in the context of systems and infrastructure that enable it. There are no billionaires in Mad Max because society has crumbled - you can't leverage an educated workforce to build your widgets or a working interstate highway system to move them around. Is it so much to ask that those that benefit the most from the legal, financial, law enforcement, and military infrastructure of a country contribute proportionally more of the fruits of their success back to the maintenance of those systems?

That's not even mentioning those that are successful and wealthy in part because of government subsidies and support (e.g. green credits for Tesla).

For your logic to be true there must be no billionaires in low tax countries. HK has billionaires and a very low tax rate - ergo, the amount of taxes needed to pay for “the system” to become rich are actually quite low.

>of a country contribute proportionally more of the fruits of their success back to the maintenance of those systems?

They already contribute more than proportionally. Proportionally is a flat tax rate and the rich already contribute far in excess of that.

This is the dilemma of living in a complex modern economy. We cooperate with a system that makes great wealth possible, not because that wealth is a right, but because of a social theory that the same system lets the rest of us live in relative security and decency.

We could pull the plug on that system, but only by driving ourselves into utter poverty, so in some sense we are hostages of the system that we created. On the other hand, if that system fails to serve an agreeable social purpose, it's our prerogative to moderate it.

Envy is a powerful force, to be sure.

On the other hand, the converse is even more plausible.

So the only possible position for an informed, intelligent person is “higher taxes”?

Let’s go for broke and make them 100% then?

That's not at all what I'm suggesting.

What I'm saying is that when applying first-order thinking, it sounds like "more tax" would hurt. Therefore people who ask for more tax are most likely thinking a bit farther than the tip of their nose.

On behalf of all us low-tax simpletons, I must ask if you have considered that there might be undesirable second-order effects of high tax rates.

But perhaps that idea is further than the tip of one’s nose.

> Conversely, it is highly probable that the people who support tax hikes:

There is no evidence supporting this assertion. A massive swath of people currently support raising taxes on the wealthy solely to take their money away (“reducing income equality”) without having a particularly sound way to spend it or one that even makes mathematical sense.

https://twitter.com/iamscottenglish/status/12358062448179159...

We have plenty of ways to spend money: housing, food, healthcare, infrastructure, public transportation, even jobs. Providing the above for free could be a thing.

Every penny is useful.

Having a list of shit you want the government to spend every spare penny on does not make you informed or particularly intelligent. That’s just a grown-up version of a Christmas wish-list.

The government randomly spending money in bits here in there is not productive.

>even jobs

The last thing you want is the government to add 10 million jobs for only 12 weeks during normal employment.

> infrastructure

Expanding infrastructure that isn’t needed is just more maintenance cost and a waste of money. You need concrete plans for infrastructure that isn’t just a maintenance burden.

> public transportation

Again, this needs actual plans and should provide value. You want HSR from Ely, NV to Portland, OR?

Vague hand-waving of “the government should just spend X billion on Y” is just a perfect way to promote boondoggles.

Income inequality is a destabilizing force. One of the purposes of taxation is wealth redistribution, and that can be "mathematically" quite useful if you like your system to have an equilibrium state.

There's a way to look at this non-vindictively.

Our governments are empires that have had democracy patched into them. Yes taxes pay for security and infrastructure, but this isn't why taxes are collected, taxes are collected because government is a self sustaining system largely populated by self serving individuals drawn to power. Unlike my anarchist and libertarian friends, I don't think there is a better strategy than iterating on what we have, so we really don't have a better alternative that continuing to fix what we have, but that doesn't require us to pretend that our current systems are the benevolent commonwealths we would like the to be. (let's see how mars works out)

Somolia has taxes. If you don't want to pay (income) tax there is Monaco, UAE, Bermuda, Bahamas, etc. Somehow they manage to have roads and firemen.

Those countries all have various forms of (non-income) taxation.

Could you please elaborate a bit?

Because on the surface it looks like USA also has non-income taxation, such as sales tax (in lieu of VAT), property tax and so on.

Sales and property tax don’t go to the federal government.

You do realize as an American you have to pay US taxes whatever you live in the world so simple moving wouldn't help.

You could drop your citizenship but you will need another. No country with little or no taxes will give you a citizenship.

Your best bet is to stay in the US and complain to get policies changed. Or live in the woods/desert. The average person has no real path to a tax free life but the rich can use loops.

Do the wealthy need the government's services, financed through taxes, as much as "the average person".

What if a US citizen obtainins citizenship in a country that does not tax non-residents, relinquishes her US citizenship and then moves to a country that has little or no taxes.

Yes, even moreso than the rest of us. The wealthy need things like corporate and financial regulation, the tort system, and other economic infrastructure that the poor aren't even aware of.

If the hypothetical wealthy citizen moves to a country without functioning government infrastructure, it's a safe bet that their first priority upon landing will be to figure out a way to move their assets into instruments that are valued in dollars or euro's.

"Yes, even moreso than the rest of us."

But, generally, the wealthy do not pay more in taxes than the non-wealthy. They generally pay less.

I like using the non-resident loophole angle. It could be possible.

The rich use more of the system than the average person. The area of law, finace, education and property. They receive money/credit for investment in local communities.

Somalia has taxes in the form of warlords taking whatever they want. And Somalia is always trotted out as an example of Anarchy (or more uncharitably as an example of Libertarianism) by people ignorant of its history, often willfully so. Somalia is just another failed Socialist state:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Revolutionary_Sociali...

By failed you mean the government was couped, right? And it being called socialist is a bit of a funny thing, with encouraging private investment and high degree of authoritarianism, even totalitarianism.

This is not the same thing at all.

>And it being called socialist is a bit of a funny thing, with encouraging private investment and high degree of authoritarianism, even totalitarianism.

Yes, like every other failed Socialist and Communist state, they made promises of economic inequality and instead becane authoritarian genocidal maniacs.

Black Somalia would have to raise to taxes to defend itself against white countries that bomb it.

If you like taxes why don’t you move to the country with the highest tax rate? What a stupid argument.

If I was as passionate about it as the parent, I would. For me, there are other factors to where I live besides taxes. Also, it's hard migrate to countries with high taxes, because they are deseriable places to live. It's not hard to migrate to Somalia. It's also not deseriable to live there. That's the point.

They are trivial to relocate to if you have money and would be the one actually paying the high taxes (top half of middle-class income and above).

There is a reason people making 6 figure+ salaries aren’t clamoring to move to France/Portugal/Brazil/Sweden. They aren’t actually all that desirable if you are the one paying the brunt of the taxes.

If you’re actually “passionate about taxes” and you don’t make good money, you would be happy to relocate to the country with the highest taxes for low income... Swaziland. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/highest-t...

Both you and the parent aren’t actually fans of high taxes it sounds like. Instead you just like social programs paid for by someone else.

Are there more rich people in Somalia or "France/Portugal/Brazil/Sweden". It's almost like everyone including rich people benefit from a society where government is properly funded. It's also seems properly funded governments generate more capable people(see incomes over 6 fig).

Obviously you can over-do it, but parent compared taxes to protection money from the mafia and that is ridiculous.

Also people who are “passionate about taxes” think that rich people benefit more from a properly funded society then more poor people, so they should pay more. So as the parent says "what a stupid argument" Also, of course we are my passionate about high taxes. We are passionate about the society that high taxes provide.

All of your arguments seen quite disengenious.

> Are there more rich people in Somalia or "France/Portugal/Brazil/Sweden".

Are there more rich people in the US or those countries?

> It's almost like everyone including rich people benefit from a society where government is properly funded. It's also seems properly funded governments generate more capable people(see incomes over 6 fig).

It’s almost like the high taxation levels of France/Sweden/Portugal/etc have no advantage over the US for “everyone benefitting”, at least not monetarily.

> All of your arguments seen quite disengenious.

I don’t think you’re using that word correctly or you’re not understanding. I’m being quite genuine when I say it’s ridiculous to “be a fan of taxation” and when most people say that they are just generally a fan of some level of government services.

You need to discuss which government services you like socialized to have any meaningful discussion. Otherwise it’s just “I love the government taking money from the people”.

God is love. Love is blind.

Ray Charles is blind. Ray Charles is God.

Ray Charles is dead, ergo...

I see no flaw in your conclusion.

Tired: the government is like the mafia

Wired: the mafia is like the government

Inspired: mafernment

I learned this theory from David Graeber's Debt.

You are a ruler with an army. That army has to be fed. It can just violently take what it needs from the population. But that is disorderly and makes people mad at you.

So, instead, you issue money to the soldiers. By why would the population take this money in exchange for food? Even if it's made out of a precious metal, what does a peasant want with gold, when nobody else wants it either (unless maybe they want to make something out of gold, but who can afford that). Well, you say they need to pay you taxes in this money you have issued. Now they've got to get some of it, and the soldiers are the ones with the supply. So you give them food in exchange.

I haven't read that account of the origin of money anywhere else (and I'm not sure how much consensus there is around it among relevant ancient historians), but I have read that taxation originates generally from the need/want to maintain large/standing armies. Not just that you have an army for the purpose of exracting tribute by force; but that you had an army for some other reason (conquering "someone else's" land or defending "yours"), and now you need to extract resources from "your" population to maintain it. This idea is referenced a bit in OP in the context of Europe: "But from around the late fifteenth century, war became more expensive… "

the social function of money far predates states: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/

This is an interesting idea but seems simplistic.

Certainly the peasants also need to trade with each other, regardless of the presence of an army? Money facilitates that trade. You can barter chickens or goats or whatever but at some point nobody needs more of those either. Especially because chickens have to be fed.

When the thing being traded has only abstract value it becomes money, even if the tokens are chickens.

I think an argument could be made that armies are just a jobs program. In a way money necessities jobs because of the increased economic capabilities of that abstract trade token. With more efficient trade the peasants have less to do so they need ever more complex jobs. An army (and the military-industrial complex) provide those jobs.

Athenian field workers were not quite peasants from later ages, and a lot of trade was ran in kind. Early units of money were weights - usually of grain and equivalent. Money only made the exchanges a bit simpler.

What you describe is the "common sense" explanation of the origin of money that we hear a lot, "even peasants need to trade with each other, and maybe they don't always have what each other needs directly, they need an abstract unit of value." But it's unclear if it's actually based in any historical evidence or was just invented as something that "made sense". Graeber suggested it is not based in much historical evidence, and that there is evidence for other explanations.

I think Graeber's theory of the origin of money may not be universally accepted (not sure how accepted it is); but I think it's true that the 'common sense' theory isn't actually based on much historical evidence, but is just "an argument that can be made", as they say, which somehow became the "common sense". That's not a very reliable way to accurately describe history. All sorts of things that people in different times assumed "must be true because it just makes the most sense" turn out not to be. "seems simplistic" or "seems more plausible to me" is not a reliable guide for distinguishing truth from fiction, and what seems more plausible to me may not to you.

I’m not presenting an alternative origin of money. I’m arguing the issue is more complex than a single explanation.

Money is a natural consequence of trade in general.

Instead of getting plundered you pay taxes. The rulers learned the fear of plunder is enough.

taxes aren't just a way to raise money for federal and local governments, they are also an elegant way which society has to allocate social hatred. You need a corporate tax because people hate corporations, a wealth tax is being discussed and on the horizon because people hate the wealthy...and so forth

In this case, of course there was a tax on wine in ancient Egypt in order to represent the social hatred which ensued when somebody saw a wealthy person consume a luxury item such as wine

Taxes seem more of a form of "societal sculpture" in our day, as there are carve-outs to enhance this virtue or punish that vice.

Blows my mind how we can have truly great software architecture like, e.g. Netflix, and a tax system that remains a Byzantine trainwreck.

Or, as Jonah Goldberg notes: "Complexity is a subsidy."

This is an extraordinarily bad take.

In the US we tax the marginal middle class dollar of income about 3x higher than we do a marginal dollar of investment income. Do we hate the middle class more than wall street? We tax canadian steel more than chinese PCBs. Do we hate the Canadians more than the Chinese?

More broadly, this would seek to interpret the lowest-tax anarchies as the most tolerant and loving societies and the highest-tax liberal democracies as most hate-filled, which seems equally suspect.

Your point applies to sin taxes. And... basically nothing else. In general tax policy works by starting reasonably fair and then loosening the screws on whichever demographic lobbies the best. So in fact corporate taxes are lower than personal taxes and VATs almost everywhere, etc...

> In the US we tax the marginal middle class dollar of income about 3x higher than we do a marginal dollar of investment income.

Marginal income middle class tax rate [0]: 22%, some at 24%

Marginal capital gains rate for a fairly generous set of assumptions that benefit your argument: 15%.

24% is 60% higher, not 300% higher, than 15%. That's more or less taking the best-case for your argument. Add FICA contributions (which earn credits towards your own Social Security payouts, so it's unclear exactly how to allocate this in current costs) and it's still way less than 200% higher, let alone 300%.

Lots of investment income is taxed at 23.8% (20% + 3.8% surtax). 24% is 0.8% higher than 23.8%, not 300% higher.

[0] - I took the first hit I could find: Pew Research defines middle class as 2/3 to 2x the median income, $40K to $120K in 2018.

The parent has a fair point though: why would capital gains ever be taxes at a rate different from income?

An attempt incentivize desirable behavior - long-term investment.

If you invest short term it taxes like income.

...you're right. I was figuring a marginal tax rate of about 40% and dividing by 15%, then rounding up. In practice the number is closer to 2x, as you said.

Why does that change the analysis?

If the magnitude of the difference doesn't change the analysis, why mention it in the first place?

"Income tax is significantly higher than capital gains, and that clearly contradicts the contention that we preferentially tax things we hate."

Do you actually disagree with that statement? If the essence of the argument doesn't change, why argue with numbers in the first place?

The second half of that statement is purely argumentative and as stated can neither be falsified nor proven true.

The first half of the statement is also not obviously true to me, given the large amount of wage income that is federally marginally taxed at 22 or 24% and the large amount of long-term capital gains that are taxed at 23.8%.

Is some wage income taxed higher than some investment income? Obviously, yes. Is that done specifically to disincentivize work? I don’t think so. Are long-term capital gains and qualified dividends taxed lower in order to incentivize long-term investing? I think so. Do we conclude from that that politicians hate workers more than investors? Exploring that requires looking at facts not yet in evidence here.

> The second half of that statement is purely argumentative and as stated can neither be falsified nor proven true.

OMG. I was paraphrasing YOUR COMMENT! Precisely because it's irrefutable nonsense.

[And the fact that you came back after nine hours to edit your comment to make it look like you had more to say is just... <chef's kiss>]

The edit window for comments on HN is 2 hours, so I most certainly and provably did not do the thing you have accused me of doing.

> More broadly, this would seek to interpret the lowest-tax anarchies as the most tolerant and loving societies and the highest-tax liberal democracies as most hate-filled, which seems equally suspect.

The level of hate towards the elites and those who are doing better than the mean is the same, anarchies solely express such hatred with violence and violent repossession of the stuff and the status accumulated by the "elites".

liberal democracies etc. do it annually, subtly via taxation.

Public benefit, not hatred, is the primary motivation behind higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. These taxes were at their highest in America around WWII and following - the money was used to fund the war. These taxes are at historic lows in America thanks to waves of major tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy since the 80s. Social services have been defunded in parallel. Taxes are raised for corporations and the wealthy because people who push for those raises want to live in a fairer society where everybody's right to a decent life is more important than a handful of people and corporations' right to hoard far more private property and power than they have any use for. Extreme inequality destabilizes societies and progressive taxes are a lever for the government to use to try and prevent that. Europe was at its historically highest level of inequality just before the outbreak of WWI. Everyone who enjoys living in a relatively stable society should have an interest in preventing extreme inequality.

> Public benefit, not hatred, is the primary motivation behind higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy

All taxes are essentially a re-do or a refund at the socieatal level

Corporations sell a product or a service, citizens see such product/service and think they might use it to improve their lives.

Then they decide to exchange some social status (represented by their net worth in USD) for the quality of life provided by that product or service.

Then they collectively realize that everybody had the same idea and that the corporation and its owners accumulated so much social status in the form of net worth flowing out of citizens and into the corporation/owners coffins.

Now they want all want a re-do/refund even though they voluntarily agreed to exchange part of their social status for quality of life and the corporation delivered on that.

What pushes people to claim a refund is :

1) They regret that everybody had the same idea as themselves and that they contributed to socially elevate that person so much

2) Hedonistic treadmill kicks in so the quality of life provided by that product/service doesn't feel as good as the first day you used it...so you are now even more regretful that you purchased it.

Witnessing the social elevation of somebody other than self (and having contributed to such social elevation) plus the hedonistic treadmill which makes the product/service not feel like something that is so special anymore compels people to come together and claim a refund in the form of taxation against those who were socially elevated

Instead of looking at tax rates, look at how much the government actually collected as a % of GDP. It's fairly flat.

That doesn't even make sense. Why would you "need" taxes to "represent" social hatred?

To avoid violent fighting. People hate those who are doing better than themselves and thus they come together to bring those anomalies down.

Back in the days it was all done violently, nowadays it's done subtly via taxation

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