Only the richest ancient Athenians paid taxes | Hacker News Reader

Only the richest ancient Athenians paid taxes

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81 pointssignor_bosco78 comments

After the Persian War, Greek city states were giving money to Athens to help provide for the common defense. Athens used that to build up a huge army and eventually starting making more demands of the other city-states. This led to the Peloponnesian War where Athens used the resources that were supposed to be used to defend Greece for a different purpose--to try to take over the rest of Greece.

So at least during the period after the Persian War and through the Peloponnesian War the article is missing the fact that most of the money flowing into the Athen's military wasn't coming from Athenians (rich or poor). They were getting it from other cities, first voluntarily and eventually through tribute.

The other classes still had to "pay," but primarily in the form of military service and purchase of their armor, weapons and other equipment.

Or with their labor and lives in the case of slaves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece

The system did not rely on honor alone to work. If a rich citizen was tapped to provide his services, he could either perform them or choose another, richer, citizen to fund the city. That citizen could either accept the honor, or swap wealth with the original citizen and pass back the honor.

That’s interesting. Did anyone actually choose to swap wealth? I can’t imagine why one would choose that option.

you might choose it to avoid the honor of doing a job you'd prefer not to do.

The headline is clickbait.

Much of [Athenian government] income came from publicly owned farmland and silver mines that were leased to the highest bidders, but Athens also taxed imports and exports and collected fees from immigrants and prostitutes as well as fines imposed on losers in many court cases. In general, there were no direct taxes on income or wealth.

This is a case of apples and oranges. Modern people expect more from their government than the Athenians so more people need to pay taxes to finance it. I agree that the more you earn the more you should pay in terms of percentage of income but the idea that only the rich need to pay taxes is unmaintainable. Also, when it comes to taxes no one is rich, just ask the high income people. There are plenty of people that earn 200k plus and feel that they don't have enough money left after taxes. And I'm sure there are many people in the million dollar plus club that feel the same. It's just human nature. No one likes to give away their stuff. It's better if someone else does it.

> the idea that only the rich need to pay taxes is unmaintainable

I'm not so sure.

Taxes are for lots of things, but one of them is making sure a power hungry psycopath doesn't set themself up as king. We might end up spending less of it on weapons that cost thousands of dollars every time you pull the trigger if we taxed the problem away before it could gain momentum.

High taxes historically result in revolts.

Even when they're only high for 1% of the population?

See the American Revolution.

Hmm touche.

Interesting - a similar argument is that if you removed the ability for governments to arbitrarily print money, and they actually had to tax citizens and explain to them what it was being spent on, wars would be way less popular and occur less often.

You seem to think the dangerous psychopath is the independently wealthy rich person. They may be a psychopath, but the true danger is the psychopath who also gains government power - that is the real danger, which the US Constitution wisely put limits on. I believe power often corrupts, and I'm way more afraid of the bureaucrat than the aristocrat.

Power is power. I'm not really trying to split hairs about what color it is. I'm just saying that we'd need to worry about the commons less (whether that's taxing the rich or putting a misbehaving government in check) if we were a bit more hygenic about how much power we allow to concentrate in the first place.

> if you removed the ability for governments to arbitrarily print money,

The money is the governments. You can't remove that power - they're the ones with the power over the money, by definition. If someone else does, they essentially become the government. That money has value because they print it, and enforce controls over it. You're just holding some of it for a while.

How you are expressing what you want is meaningless.

I agree that it's not phrased well. What are you going to do, revoke the ability to issue money... by fiat?

But the goal is a good one. Make the government afraid that if they abuse our trust, we'll turn our backs on their token and find ourselves a less problematic social contract to value.

Anyway, if your concern is quantitive easing, then your real problem should be with banks. Because of how loans work banks are creating 10x the money governments do.

Banks are the problem, not governments.

And frankly, once you make your own token, you're just a less trustworthy government.

uh, how do high taxes preclude a fascist takeover? I fail to see the connection.

I suppose it's possible that you could have a power hungry psycopath whose hunger only relates to institutional power. Somebody for whom limiting their economic power is not effective. So taxing the rich doesn't protect us from them. But I think we're talking about a pretty small group here.

The two people I think of when I hear "fascist takeover" were both embroiled in tax evasion scandal on their way to the top.

They were liable for military service though. Being forced to go die fighting Spartans may not have an easily assigned monetary value, but it's certainly a civic obligation at least on par with tax paying.

Weren't the rich Athenians similarly obligated?

Yes, but they could trade their wealth in exchange.

Is there any information on the total tax burden to the economy? or even the defense budget as a percentage of estimated GDP?

I’m suspecting it was a much lower percentage overall, maybe 10% maximum. This crucial number is conveniently omitted in the article.

conveniently?

A basis for argument by low tax fanatics that think a modern Athenian state is possible, drugs, TV shows, VLSI and togas, all in with jets and retsina.

UK income tax was notoriously applied as a temporary expedient. The low tax fans want a return to the pre Victorian levels of poverty that went hand in hand with the non-welfare state.

I don't think so.

Low tax advocates want a more streamlined government that looks after core functions (managing trash, police, etc) rather than what it has taken on today (entire multimillion dollar agencies tasked with getting more women into high status jobs, regulation of the size and shape of cabbages, etc)

The idea that "people who want less tax than I do just crave widespread poverty" is a sign you have an ideological brainworm. No one thinks like that.

> The idea that "people who want less tax than I do just crave widespread poverty" is a sign you have an ideological brainworm. No one thinks like that.

Plenty of people think that. They might not admit it publicly (or even admit the full implications to themselves), but they still think it, and more importantly, try to act on it.

Kindly reread HN guidelines, particularly: Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Name three.

This is just something people believe in your imagination.

Without getting into a debate about what the government should or should not do, I just want to point out that it's disingenuous to argue that a relatively large portion of government spending has anything to do with "getting more women into high status jobs" or "regulation of the size and shape of cabbage." The vast majority of what "government has taken on today" (compared to 150 years ago) relates to the social safety net, education, and health care.

How large percentage of your tax bill do you think goes to getting more women into high status jobs, or regulating the size of cabbages? Whenever I see politicians actually try to lower expenses it always turns out that most money is used on healthcare, schools, police, military, and essential governmen services, and these things are the things that ends up beeing cut, just because that's where the big money goes. Remove all 'get women employed'-projects, and it would probably not make a visible change to your tax percentage at all.

While that may be the case, it is still evidence the government is ideologically captured by activists and willing to spend money on nonsense.

Hard to imagine healthcare is run on a lean, waste-free budget with that sort of stuff.

(Cue discussion about covid rationing involving "equity" considerations, etc)

Loving the "of cabbages and kings" ring to your comment.

In Capital and Ideology, Piketty calculates that 19th-century European states (such as France and the UK) collected about 7% of their national income in taxes (most of which was spent on defense, courts, infrastructure such as roads, etc). 19th-century European states did a lot more than ancient ones, so I think <5% of national income is a reasonable estimate. Suffice it to say that at such a low level of taxation you wouldn't expect many people to be taxed directly.

I don't really know how to put this into words, but the relationship that the Athenian rich had with the art of civilization and the "glory" of the Athenian city-state is nothing like the relationship that the modern U.S. rich have with the American federal government. It seems silly to compare their motivations for paying taxes to ours, but for some reason I can't find the words with which to explain why.

if you make under $50k-$70k a year do you not pay very little?

No?

Just plugging this in - with $70k income, you pay $8,142 in federal tax/withholding, a 14% effective tax rate.

this doesn’t factor in the $12k deduction and saving in a tax shielded 401k or IRA though which should both dramatically reduce adjusted income come tax time

plus tax advantages you get when you are married and have dependents

When you're making 50-70k / year you're probably not able to put money in a 401k, especially in the event you have a single income 3 or 4 person household.

This is also missing the point slightly. You shouldn't have to rely on tax day returns.

you will be able to claim deductions immediately and owe less taxes than a single person making the same. plus you get double the standard deduction. in that case you will really pay very few taxes even if you save very little in a 401k or IRA (though you still should even if you can’t max)

If you're a family of 4 making $70,000, you get $27,000 deduction off the bat. Your federal income tax is $4,890 or 6.9%.

I'd say that's pretty low considering it's median household income in the US.

This outlet is notorious for this sort of stuff. They basically just confirm upper-class left wing priors by any means necessary.

Scroll through and open a random sample of articles - you will quickly see they're basically a slightly higher-brow version of the "women have better sex under socialism" school of modern pseudojournalism.

Without delving into any moral or fairness arguments, it is probably fair to say that a US tax payer in the top 1% probably already pays 10x to 100x in taxes, in absolute terms, compared to the median tax payer. If I'm reading this [1] correctly, in 2020 about 99% of the population was responsible for 56% of individual taxes while 1% was responsible for the rest 44%.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-stat...

Wait till you do the math on how much money that 1% has relative to the 99%.

That doesn't matter. You don't get taxed on how much you have, you get taxed on every dollar as it comes in.

What they have is post-tax. You can't just eye up what they have left over as if it has never been taxed.

> What they have is post-tax.

What? No. Net worth amounts are quoted in approximate pre-tax amounts. The vast bulk of which, for the 1%, are deferred capital gains taxes. The rest of us don’t get the ability to defer taxes until we feel like it, and capital gains are taxed at a lower rate too because… just because.

You can defer taxes with 401ks, IRAs, Roth IRAs, and investing in stocks, a house, anything you have that appreciates in value.

40% of Americans have investments in stocks, it is hardly confined to 1%.

Contributions to a Roth IRA are not tax-deductible and early withdrawals are both taxed and penalized. You don’t just pay taxes as normal income when you take an early withdrawal from a 401k they also tack on a 10% penalty making such investments unusually risky.

Untaxed capital gains on the other hand is just a free zero interest loan.

Anyway, having stocks is irrelevant here. What matters is for tax burden is what percentage of people’s income comes from capital gains.

Interestingly, that's not true in Canada's version of the Roth, the TSFA (tax-free savings account). There, you can make early withdrawals without being taxed, but that counts as a penalty towards future contributions. The total contribution amount is added to each year.

The capital gains you’re talking about are not “untaxed”, they simply don’t exist. An unrealized capital gain is one that hasn’t occurred. It’s very intellectually dishonest to pretend that unrealized gains are real, and extremely so to pretend that they are income.

Okay - but said “unrealized gain” could have dividend payments or be used as collateral for a loan.

Dividends are taxable income my dude… kinda showing how well you understand the topic here.

I notice you ignore the collateral on a loan argument that points to just how real these gains are.

His point was these Dividends payments exist due to unrealized gains.

A better example is zero-coupon investors must report a pro-rated portion of interest each year, as income, even though interest hasn’t been paid out. Aka you own a bond and haven’t been paid yet but you still owe money due to the increase in value.

So to be clear simply owning a bond can be a taxable event while stocks are given an interest free loan on their gains.

Zero-Coupons do have a peculiar tax obligation. But they also have a face value and a maturity date. Something stocks, and most other classes of asset don’t have.

There is no interest free loan on stock. Capital gains and income derived from trading securities is fully taxed. What you’re arguing for is a wealth tax, a completely seperate category of tax from income tax. But you’re making this argument using highly deceptive language, and what seems to be a rather poor understanding of how the existing tax system works.

Houses are taxed based on unrealized gains, so such gains are real enough.

Houses are not taxed based on any gains at all. Houses are taxed based on a government issued current valuation. People complain about the accuracy of these valuations all the time, but the taxation has nothing to do with capital gains. If it was a tax on capital gains, then you’d only be paying a tax on the difference in valuation from year to year. Which isn’t how it works at all. It’s more of a wealth tax.

I said unrealized gains not capital gains.

The government doesn’t limit it’s valuation of the house to a demonstrated sales price but instead uses an estimate for the market price. Doing the same with stock is easy, they just hand out a tax break instead.

> I said unrealized gains not capital gains.

Unrealized (capital) gains…

In California, home valuation increases are capped to 2% per year via Proposition 13 and decreases follow the market. If your house doubles in value, most of that growth is still unrealized until you decide to sell.

That’s still unrealized gains even if it’s not the fair market price.

Agreed.

How could a pre-tax quote be what a person has, if legally they can't have it all? I know clickbait articles love equating those, but we can do better.

Not "just because", there are l ok Ng and detailed reasons why, which is why various wealthy and well-run countries do it.

Also, just because you eye up their holdings before they sell and incur a tax liability, does not mean that they have tax-free wealth.

Paper wealth is empty. That's why Musk "lost $200,000,000,000" but you can't name who he lost it to - it didn't go anywhere because it effectively never existed.

It's only when he sells that it is realised - and taxed - and that's when he gains access to it.

You can eye it up all you like before he sells, but it's not real money.

The forms of taxation vary significantly with income, the important comparison is tax burden. The top income earners pay a higher percentage in income taxes but payroll and gas taxes etc effectively cap out. Net result America has a surprisingly flat tax curve that only drops for ultra high or ultra low income earners.

Critically the definitions get warped so stock appreciation for example doesn’t count unless you sell it. And when you finally do capital gains isn’t taxed as normal income. You can even give stock away without ever paying any form of income taxes on these gains.

Whatever they’re paying, it’s not enough, because inequality is increasing. In other words, they’re paying an outrageous amount of the taxes because they make an extraordinarily amount of the income (and wealth). I’m not talking about someone who got a bunch of RSUs and paid 50% on their $2m payday, it’s the billionaires like Trump who treat tax evasion as a game because the consequences are lower than the expected rewards.

I will speculate there is a completely different mechanism for inequality than taxation policies. Let’s call it crony capitalism and specifically originating within the financial system. Federal reserve policies and bailouts and socialized losses with privatized gains are what cause inequities, imho.

I can give a few specific examples that might help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Lane_Transactions

https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/programs-archive/large-sc...

Central banks engage in civilization level money laundering and cause the inequality increases. These programs are crony capitalism that is specifically directed to an established globalist western oligarchy. That’s not capitalism even remotely, it’s global oligarchy.

$80B/month was regular dispensed in exchange for collateral which was worth significantly less. That’s 80 modern skyscrapers per month.

It will be interesting if censorship can be successfully reigned in and someone more articulate and with public credibility can attempt to explain the outright theft mechanism that was and continues to be obfuscate by jargon and games and corruption.

Of course The Fed is a generator of inequality, but if taxes were set properly, it could be counterbalanced. We can see this in European countries with much lower rates of inequality because of high taxes on excessive wealth and income. They also have central banks printing money at insanely low interest rates (or even negative rates)… until recently… perhaps they have raised their rates in tandem with the US.

There was an analysis which showed that lower european inequality vs the US is attributable to immigration at both the bottom end and the top end. No European nation has even remotely similar levels of poor and rich immigrants. The analysis showed if you exclude those populations the US inequality is lower.

I can’t find the paper done on US data but this is one discussing similar idea:

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cag...

But we can’t exclude those populations. They’re here regardless of whether they’re convenient for our Gini coefficient, and the immense inequality is leading to structural problems with our society. We spend a lot more on health care for much worse overall results, for example.

Anyway I’m under no illusion that inequality can be fixed with tax policies alone… but let’s at least try to do better. What Trump got away with shouldn’t be possible. It’s not like he was a sneaky mastermind, he was vulgar and brazen and open about it. God only knows what actual clever wealthy people are getting away with.

Maybe for a start, we don’t change any tax policy. Instead, we make all tax returns public, or at least any returns involving seven figures or more. Watch the roaches scatter in the sunlight.

Inequality is not a great target alone. Look at inequity measures - it tends to improve during recession because equity holders (which makes up much of the wealth of the rich) takes a massive hit.

Can anyone really claim that the lower income people are better off when inequality drop during a recession?

My argument was that in absolute terms, the 1% already pays ~100x more than the median tax payer, which seems pretty close to stating that the median tax payer reaps the benefits of modern civilization essentially for free.

Regarding inequality, this can't be the metric for taxation policy. Would you rather the 1% pay all taxes but inequality be 100x worse ? Are you optimizing for a better standard of living for the median, or for imposing the psychotherapeutic sentiment of "if I can't make that much money, nobody should" ?

Capitalism has been around for a long time. The argument of "whatever they’re paying, it’s not enough [..]" has already been played out. In the 70s UK, investment income was taxed at a rate of 98% (after an inflation-adjusted income of 221k). It didn't work.

Thatcher had famously summarized the inequality argument here: [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/pdR7WW3XR9c

That covers federal income tax, which is only one of many forms of taxation. It isn't even the only federal tax on income (FICA is not included).

Little bit smaller government and so a lot less to pay for.

"Little" being ironically applied. Serfdom, short lifespan, and no Antibiotics research alongside massive amounts of routine child abuse and women as a subclass. Great!

I would venture the features you apply above would amount to less than 20% of the US budget. Particularly if you exclude social security and Medicare, which both have their own taxes and surtaxes even.

I looked at the article for numbers, and the closest I could find was that a trirarch paid many multiples of a laborer's yearly salary. That could mean the benefactor was shouldering a large burden, or that the benefactors were stupendously wealthy compared to the average laborer and the financial obligation was not heavy for them. I don't know what the case was.

I could find no estimates of total tax burden, which at this point would be mostly conjecture but better than nothing.

Compared to a modern-day country like Belgium or France, where the tax burden is about 44-46% of GDP, I would wager that the Athenian tax burden was very low as a fraction of the economy. To achieve modern levels of taxation you need a bureaucracy which did not exist in classical Athens.

I speculated about the tax burden in another post, but levels of inequality were much higher in the ancient world then they are today. Putting aside that TFA doesn't really define "average laborer," 20 years of a "skilled" salary sounds like a relatively small amount of money to the wealthiest 1%.

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