I'm by no means against taxes, I completely agree they're rightfully used to fund roads/police/fire/etc. My primary argument is that the richest government in the history of the world has more important things to prioritize than making the IRS more ruthless against the middle class. And I'm saying that if they end up collecting more tax money, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a net positive for society as a whole. Most of those tax benefits are reaped by big business, so in other words those benefits are reaped by the owners of those big businesses.
The low vs high tax debate is kind of a moot argument anyways since the US govt can pretty much print money as needed...which ends up being an indirect tax on the general public via inflation.
Give us an example of how higher taxes have benefited the low class. Maybe you could use a high tax haven like California?
I think you've made the mistaken assumption that government has your best interests at heart. Has the government trickled down that tax money to worthy causes? Do you expect that same government who gives these wealthy businessmen so much to suddenly invest MORE tax money wisely?
It seems to me that we have constant tax increases with no benefit except to pad elitists pockets in Washington.
High taxes are fine with me as long as I, and everyone else, also get a high level of services. In some sense it is understandable that middle-class Americans have a distaste for taxation since most of the tax money just ends up being funneled to the upper-class through corporate subsidies, grants, tax credits, and warfare.
That's nice to hear. I'm nowhere near the upper tax brackets at the moment, but I like to think that I would be okay (and even encouraging) of the taxes I did face in such a situation.
I know many people who make lots of money and are bitter about paying so much tax on it, but very few people who realize that the taxes they pay make a real difference in everyone's lives (especially the lives of those who are less fortunate). Or that the taxes they pay make possible all of the benefits the Federal, State, and local governments offer.
Sure, the government may not be the most efficient of entities, but I think it's difficult to make a serious argument that we would be better off without most of the services provided by the various levels of governments, or that they could easily be replaced. And none of these would be possible without some form of taxation (though how the taxes should be structured is up for reasonable debate).
While I believe that people should be fairly compensated for their hard work, and that we shouldn't penalize people for working harder, I also believe that it would benefit most people to stop and think about how much their taxes help to make this/any country a great place.
*disclaimer: this is mostly about the US, as this is my main experience, but I'd guess most of it applies to (at least some) other nations as well.
It's unlikely the OP is referencing your tax income, but rather corporations and billionaires.
I am certain spending could be better allocated, but should corporations and billionaires be getting a free ride when they are gaining so so much from society? What are the downsides to taxing them more?
Lowering taxes is counterproductive, though. The problem is sharing the burden with the wealthier. At some point, you can't really get something for nothing and we have to accept that if we want first-world services and infrastructure, we have to pay for them. And paying for them through taxes is way more efficient than just letting private companies extract their benefits from tolls and such.
I generally agree with you, but I think your reasoning is partially nonsense.
I haven't benefit very much from government infrastructure. Woo, we have roads now. Where multiple of my family members have died, and most of my family members have been traumatized by those deaths. The person who raised me nearly died in one, and it left us even further in the poverty trap than we otherwise would have been, because of millions of dollars in hospital bills, even with insurance, thirty years ago, that we spent decades paying off. Oh, internet? I had dial-up growing up in the 2000s because my local government sucked and the wider governments sucked.
Honestly, my education sucked. It was actively harmful to my development. Government incentives historically kept my family in poverty, leaving my societal background awful, and filled with terrible people. And, on top of all of that, every two years, there's a 50% chance that a government I despise becomes in charge. Even when a government I find tolerable is in charge, more goes to funding wars than anything I genuinely care about. "Billionaires aren't paying fair taxes!" becomes a campaign point, rather than anything that could genuinely help people, because no politician is interested in fixing things.
The one thing that is unambiguously good about the US government, the Postal Service, has been getting slowly dismantled and made inefficient over the last decades.
Evading taxes is the only morally correct thing to do in America. I'm not going to evade them, because I'm not a moral person and prefer the convenience of not being randomly investigated by the IRS.
We should tax billionaires and companies because billionaires and companies suck. That's the valid reason. Cloaking it in false-utilitarianism is nonsense. Taxation should be punitive.
What frustrates me about income taxes (and really taxes in general) is that proponents often automatically presume that a larger amount of money flowing into the government is a wholly beneficial effect. I trust current US government officials to effectively use my tax dollars about as far as I can throw it. Entirely too much money is squandered on things that do no benefit whatsoever to those who pay into it, rich or poor. It's a deal-breaker for me, without even going into the problem of tax evasion available to the obscenely rich.
I think you and I fundamentally disagree on what a tax is. You seem to view it as punishment or a burden. I view it as the method for paying for things that help the collective good. Not a punishment but rather a duty for those with the means. If we aren't using taxes to collectively protect society (e.g. military, police, courts), help the less fortunate, etc then why collect them at all? The richer the entity (individual or business), the more means they have and the more they actually benefit from those taxes even if they have to pay them.
EDIT
Just to add, if you agree we need taxation to have functioning society, why wouldn't we get the money from the richest? Why wouldn't we put the burden on the richest? In terms of people inside rich organizations, it is only the already rich, owners and investors, which would feel the burden. Supply and demand will continue to give consumers high quality and low prices. Employees will still get their market-rate wages or minimum wage for low-skill jobs.
This is exactly my point. Paying "high" taxes if you're getting something good for your money can be worth doing.
Call me a pacifist, but I don't like paying taxes for military equipment that the military leaders themselves have said is not useful for them. But Congress keeps doing it because Boeing and Lockheed keep paying them to do it. I would MUCH rather a good percent of my "defense contribution" go toward lowering education costs for ALL Americans.
Regarding all the taxes you mention, those really are regressive taxes. They make up a greater percentage of poor people's incomes than they do rich people's. Back when gas in the US was over $4/gal, the poor people suffered immensely. The rich people already were able to choose Tahoes with 13mpg and not care, so the extra gasoline bill was not something that affected them. But poor people suddenly had to choose whether they drove to work (to earn minimum wage), or whether they replaced a shoe with a hole in it.
I firmly believe that the reason we get less quality in return for our taxes is because of the absolute corporate control over the majority of Congress. And since elections are driven almost entirely by money, to win a seat you have to accept corporate money and then return the favor (else you're out next election).
The IRS collects more money by collecting the money people actually owe but did not pay. Taxes could be reduced by as much as 10% if the IRS was able to collect the underpaid taxes. I don't know why you're against that.
For your final selfish argument, it's debatable to say it's better for you that others spend their money on taxes rather than less on taxes and spending it however they please.
The IRS doesn't determine tax rates or tax laws, it just enforces them. And to note, all of the infrastructure that pays for the road the delivery company used the deliver the couch, and the forests which provided the lumber for the couch's frame, and the ease of contract which made all of these transactions...were all made possible by the taxes collected and paid by all of these people.
Tax is a vital part of the economy. It's the price (fee) you pay for the government services that underpin everything else.
"... better than feeding the bloated government bureaucracies."
I think this is probably the core of most of these disagreements. If you approach taxation with the assumption that it's mostly just money going to waste, then yeah, you're not going to be very supportive of taxation, especially high tax rates for high income, high net-worth people.
But even if you come at it from that point of view, it has to be acknowledged that there are certain kinds of services which are almost impossible to deliver other than via the government. The private sector will not give you healthcare for all, or any meaningful mass transit (much less HSR), or properly maintained roads and bridges, or a military, or any of a thousand other things that your multiple levels of government spend money on. Yes there is some waste due to corruption or bad decisions, but for most people that is an accepted cost to getting the services that can't be had any other way.
Taxes don’t really have to be fair or just. In German, the noun for „tax“ is the same as the verb for „steering“ even!
In Order for our societies to work in practice, taxes are needed. What to tax and by how much is up to political debate…
But there is evidence that high taxes combined with a great welfare state and some redistribution allows even capitalist societies to thrive. It even gets better when you specifically use taxes to reduce the difference between rich and poor.
There might be less billionaires in such situations, but everyone else is MUCH happier and well off.
So, from a consequentialist standpoint, more taxes, especially if progressive and hard enforced, are better.
Every counter argument to that seems to construct some reasoning from pure egoism and assuming someone is not a product of his environment - and ignoring the very first thing I said - taxes don’t have to be fair or just
Is that really the general consensus? If anything, so much of taxation goes to waste on bureaucracy and inane or downright criminal nonsense in the US. I live in Canada, and I basically consider it to be theft that my taxes that are taken from me forcefully go to places such as giant corporations, and military applications that I do not want to happen.
OTOH, I think that taxation is important, and I'm happy that my taxes go to health services, something that Canada does relatively well, even though I don't necessarily benefit in the same way compared to people less fortunate than I am. Same for social services, for example.
My point is that I don't think such feelings can be boiled down to "my money is going to people who don't deserve it". It's a complex topic and complex feelings which should be treated as such
Taxes are not punishment. It's not meant to impoverish individual rich people. It's meant to get some money into the state coffers which pays for the infrastructure they use.
The outrage seems reasonable, not ironic or hypocritical. I want to pay higher taxes (and I do donate money to charities and NGOs), but I do not want my taxes to be used to cover for the tax breaks of the super rich. We are in this all together, and we should all work to make our world better.
You can argue that the government is bad at spending that money, but this is a completely separate complaint.
The argument for rich people paying more tax isn't because we don't like them, it's because government is expensive and we can't afford it without rich people subsidizing everyone else.
Keep in mind that rich people also have more of a vested interest in maintaining the system, so it's not entirely unfair to them, either.
- It makes sense for governments to provide healthcare, education, police, the military, welfare for the elderly/poor/disabled, basic infrastructure like electricity, water, etc. These things don't tend to work well when privatized, and humanity has advanced to the point where we have sufficient productivity/technological advances that we can (and should) provide these things for everyone
- These things are expensive, extensive taxes are required to pay for them
- I believe progressive taxation is the most reasonable way to pay for these things. The poor pay next to no taxes, and as you get wealthier, a greater percentage of that wealth gets taxed, because you get less marginal benefit from it anyways. Jeff Bezos has a net worth of ~$180 billion. Apple has a cash reserves of ~$250 billion. Take $100 billion from either of them, and there's virtually no impact on the person or corporation. Raise those same taxes from ONE MILLION middle class individuals and small business ($100,000 each), and you utterly destroy those MILLION individuals/small-businesses. Tax revenue must come from somewhere, more of it should come from the uber-wealthy
- There are many forms of taxes, but ultimately they're almost all paid by individuals and businesses. For the lower, middle, and "normal" upper classes, as well as small to reasonably large businesses, progressive taxation is a reality. Those with the ability to pay more, do pay more
- However, for the uber-wealthy individuals and businesses, those with almost unimaginable wealth, they have the power and influence to literally alter the law for their own benefit. They use this power/influence to pay near-zero tax. But the services of government still need to be paid for, so it comes from everyone else, for whom taxes are actually a big deal, instead of the insanely wealthy, who could easily afford to pay massive taxes with basically no impact, but prefer to be even more insanely wealthy
When the altering of laws to favour the uber-wealthy happens through pure corruption (like literally paying off lawmakers, behind closed doors), it's obviously unethical. When it happens through more legalized corruption, like making big donations to political candidates, then using your position of influence to change laws, I think most agree this is still unethical. It's a bit more arguable when it happens via one country enabling gaping tax evasion, for the benefit of that country, at the cost of all other countries. From my point of view, it's nearly as bad - you're helping the richest of the rich evade taxes, normal people and smaller businesses are burdened with higher tax load to make up for it, and it's done for the good of a few over the good of the many. The scale is different, one-country vs. all-other-countries, instead of few-citizens vs. all-other-citizens, or few-businesses vs. all-other-businesses, but the impact is similar. The selfishness of a few leads to tax loopholes for the richest of the rich, and everyone else pays for it.
Obviously, the fight to close tax loopholes for the uber-wealthy is a tough one - they're so powerful, and they only have to win over a handful of lawmakers to evade taxes. But it's a fight worth fighting, IMO. The status quo, where the uber-wealthy pay minimal taxes, and the tax burden falls on everyone else, is leading to excessive wealth inequality, that is only growing over time.
The low vs high tax debate is kind of a moot argument anyways since the US govt can pretty much print money as needed...which ends up being an indirect tax on the general public via inflation.
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