More equal societies do better

[litechick]

Marry me.

That's it. I'm out of here. :leaving:

[Lyanna Stark]

If people really cared about elevating the masses, they would spend more time pondering how to create incentives for more rich people to behave like Bill Gates (Buffet, Winfrey, etc.) The fact that we're talking about brutishly wresting money away from people who don't 'deserve' it rather than encouraging them to jump on the charity bandwagon tells me all I need to know.

Don't you find it rather ridiculous that the "masses" should be "saved" by the graces of the super rich, as if they were some sort of demi-gods?

Taxing is not about taking money from people who don't deserve it, it is to create a more level playing field for everyone, which in the end has proven to create happier more content societies. The Ayn Rand philosphy is best left in the bin, where it belongs, by the way. I'd recommend the same for adding value statements to taxation.

I also find it really, really odd that you want the rich to willingly give and that this should somehow be better than taxes. It's better to create rich demi-gods who can choose to stomp on or elevate the poor willy nilly. Maybe we should all stand there, hats in our hands, hoping for salvation but fearing despair.

Luckily for me, I live in a more progressive reality.

[Galactus]

The basic problem with equalizing human beings is that you cannot create, you can only destroy. You do not have the power to make a person smart, you can only lobotomize the smart. You can't make a person beautiful you can only disfigure others.

Actually, that's wrong. You can educate, you can provide better incentives, you can try to make sure life for everyone (not just the middle-class) isn't a non-stop struggle for survival. (By whatever means, be it subsidizing public libraries, making sure everyone gets a minimum wage, or whatever)

The thing is, all of these things do cost money: The rich aren't taxed at a higher rate becuase of some desire to punish them: The rich are taxed at a higher rate becuase that's the most efficient way to get money for things society needs.

Incentivizing philanthropy has turned out to (historically speaking) being a really bad way of actually affecting society at large: Philanthropist can and do achieve great things, but very rarely on a society-wide level. (there are various reasons for this, not all of them based on philanthropers being secretly evil :P)

To quote ol' Per-Albin, twice:

"Socialism is not about ensuring everyone has an equal share of the cake, but that everyone has enough."

And:

"The good home knows no privilegied or excluded, no spoiled- or stepchildren. There one does not look down upon the other, there no one seeks to achieve advantage at the expense of the other, the strong does not oppress and plunder the weak. In the good home reigns equality, caring, cooperation and helpfulness. Implement on the great people's and citizen's home that would mean the breaking down of all social and economic boundaries that now separate citizens into privilegied and excluded, rulers and dependants, plunderers and plundered."

[Lyanna Stark]

Per-Albin knew his stuff :)

I love the old social democratic writings of the early 20s century. They're so full of hope and a belief that the world really can be changed for the better, if effort is applied.

[TerraPrime]

However, you might also want to give people credit for doing exactly what they want to do.

People get so upset about socio-economic class mobility as if people are desperately trying to climb to a higher station and just can't make it. Forget SEC, most people don't even move away from their home towns. If some magazine were to do a story on how close people stay to home, it wouldn't be 'OMG people are physically incapable of moving more than 100 miles from the place they grew up!' They wouldn't spin it like that because the most simple and logical explanation is that people want to stay near their friends and family. It would seem ridiculous to pose it as a problem which needed to be solved.

My poor, beloved father has been trying to figure out why I moved away for 15 years or so. Every once in a while he asks but he's never satisfied with my answer. The trouble is that the question he really wants to ask is "why don't you want the things I want you to have?"

Poverty and structural inequality in the system is more than just where you choose to live. I have a hard believing that the majority of those who fall into the bottom quintile of the income level in the U.S. would choose to stay that way. They may not want the suburbian exile of a quarter-acre lot with a house on it, but I'd imagine that they'd want the sense of security that comes with a higher income level, not to mention the material goods. Do you happen to have anecdotes or studies to show otherwise? I can believe that some of them may not choose a work-life balance, just as some in the higher SEC choose not to maintain that, but they would at least want the choice, I think.

It seems like someone here suggested that we could take away 90% of a super rich person's money and it would be OK because they would still have $XX to live on. The thing you never want to forget is that you have more money than most people in the world can dream of. You can only claim that thusandsuch wealth redistribution program is fair if you think it would be fair when applied to You.

I can't speak for others, but I have not once complained about the rate at which I'm taxed. My partner always voted to increase school funding (and so would I, if I could vote), even though we have no kids but we own property. I think we, at least, put our money where our mouths are. We do wish that the federal government would use a slightly different set of priority in terms of spending the money we send them, but in a general sense we have no problem with the rate at which we're being taxed. There's good quality of life in the U.S. for the middle class and we think it's worth the price. When we stop thinking that it's worth the price, we'd move. Similarly, I think the majority of people in other countries with heavier tax are quite satisfied with what those tax money buy them.

If people really cared about elevating the masses, they would spend more time pondering how to create incentives for more rich people to behave like Bill Gates (Buffet, Winfrey, etc.) The fact that we're talking about brutishly wresting money away from people who don't 'deserve' it rather than encouraging them to jump on the charity bandwagon tells me all I need to know.

What? This makes no sense. It's like saying if people care about equality for women, they would find ways to induce men to behave better. How's about let's empower women first?

The basic problem with equalizing human beings is that you cannot create, you can only destroy. You do not have the power to make a person smart, you can only lobotomize the smart. You can't make a person beautiful you can only disfigure others.

I disagree completely. It's not about making people smart, or attractive, or otherwise successful. It's about our obligation to each other to ensure that in a capitalist structure that demands a class of poor people that we make it as easy as possible for those in the lowest SEC to move upwards. There will always be poor people, because our system depends on it. But what we can do is to make it so that there are exits out of that group.

[Jaime L]

Punitive Taxation. I have long maintained that there is a line to be crossed where taxation is not fair and necessary but simply a punishment to people who are perceived as having too much. Bill Gates has been used both as an example of someone with way too much money and someone who is philanthropic and responsible with the money/power he has.

If people really cared about elevating the masses, they would spend more time pondering how to create incentives for more rich people to behave like Bill Gates (Buffet, Winfrey, etc.) The fact that we're talking about brutishly wresting money away from people who don't 'deserve' it rather than encouraging them to jump on the charity bandwagon tells me all I need to know.

Y'know, as someone who works with taxes for a living I find it very odd when terms like "punitive taxation" and "brutishly wrestling money away" get thrown around with regard to taxing the rich a little more. What's odd about it to me is that taxes in this country are at their lowest level basically since the inception of the Income Tax in 1913. It's a very odd way to characterize the discussion of taxation as for the entire last century, we've all agreed it was necessary and a good thing for society.

And yet in our current debate, raising taxes has become tantamount to robbery. To taking from the haves and giving to the have nots. As though we're not all in this together. That we're not a country. That, really, it's every man for himself. And I'm not sure how we got to this point.

There's this idea people are being taxed out of their eyeballs, but the Effective Tax Rate in this country, the percent of income people actually pay in income taxes is about 10% at the moment. 10%. The most we can ever get out of the population in the boomiest of boom years is 20%. That's it. That's all the income tax is ever able to get from the American people.

People complain about their marginal rate of taxation 28% and 35%, but after you factor in all the deductions the average taxpayer is eligible for (and believe me, I work with deductions all day long every day), they generally pay far less. And in 2010 with no phase out in deductions for anyone, it's probably going down even more. But the biggest reason is that for the wealthiest among us they pay the lionshare of their income at capital gains rates of 15%. Is that exorbitant? Is that milking them for every last dollar they have?

There's not a developed nation on earth that taxes its citizens less than America does (corporations are a different story however), but I still hear terms like "punitive taxation" and "robbery" thrown around. Especially in this era that's a historical anomaly for taxation. Even when we talk about returning to Clinton era tax rates, y'know back when our government was adequately funded, these terms are used.

I feel like there's no sense of how our country has operated, and operated very successfully, for the last 100 years in the way the current debate is framed. When we're at a low water mark in taxation I really don't want to hear about how we're squeezing the rich. I really don't.

All my clients are probably in the top 10% of earners in this country. I like them and I want to see them and their businesses do well. But I don't have any sympathy to the argument that raising rates on them is any way, shape, or form robbery or punishment for their success.

[Lummel]

I also find it really, really odd that you want the rich to willingly give and that this should somehow be better than taxes. It's better to create rich demi-gods who can choose to stomp on or elevate the poor willy nilly. Maybe we should all stand there, hats in our hands, hoping for salvation but fearing despair.

Despite living in a less progressive reality I feel increasing uneasy about these wealthy chariteers. It's kind of the reverse of the old give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach the man to fish and he spends all day in a boat drinking beer, so instead we get teach a people to raise and collect taxes effectively, honestly & efficiently and they will learn to govern themselves but teach them to become dependant on large charitable donations and they will learn to greet you with a begging bowl, large smile and moist eyes.

You know that Microsoft made a lot of money by evading taxation right?

http://www.taxresear...ft-tax-avoider/

http://www.taxresear...transit-gloria/

[sarcasm] Awfully public spirited of old Bill to decide that legitimately mandated taxation was better off kept in his own hands afterall who knows what those feckless Irish would have done with the money! [/sarcasm]

And did you know IKEA is actually a charity?

http://www.economist...tory_id=6919139

And silly me, there I was thinking they were in the business of selling furniture & sundries. Oddly enough IKEA has been able to manage its tax affairs to keep it's profits and therefore the amount of tax it pays in Australia very low:

http://www.taxresear...5/more-on-ikea/

[sarcasm] But no worries! Those big hearted Aussies will happily dip into their own pockets to pay for reconstruction in Queensland, it's not as though the Australian government actually needs all that tax revenue! [/sarcasm]

[Swordfish]

Y'know, as someone who works with taxes for a living I find it very odd when terms like "punitive taxation" and "brutishly wrestling money away" get thrown around with regard to taxing the rich a little more. What's odd about it to me is that taxes in this country are at their lowest level basically since the inception of the Income Tax in 1913. It's a very odd way to characterize the discussion of taxation as for the entire last century, we've all agreed it was necessary and a good thing for society.

And yet in our current debate, raising taxes has become tantamount to robbery. To taking from the haves and giving to the have nots. As though we're not all in this together. That we're not a country. That, really, it's every man for himself. And I'm not sure how we got to this point.

We got to this point when people started openly floating ideas like 90% tax rates for the 'rich' and 100% inheritance tax rates, since they 'don't deserve it and usually didn't earn it'.

Both of which are clearly punitive, and not so much altruistic.

Despite living in a less progressive reality I feel increasing uneasy about these wealthy chariteers. It's kind of the reverse of the old give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach the man to fish and he spends all day in a boat drinking beer, so instead we get teach a people to raise and collect taxes effectively, honestly & efficiently and they will learn to govern themselves but teach them to become dependant on large charitable donations and they will learn to greet you with a begging bowl, large smile and moist eyes.

Because handouts from the government are much less like handouts and more like stipends to promote self government?

Is that really what you're trying to argue here?

Teach people to raise and collect taxes? What does that even mean? Money does not, last time i checked, grow on trees to be farmed in such a way.

[Lyanna Stark]

Kamprad is a nasty piece of work. For some reason a lot of Swedes revere him, but he really is a proper nasty piece of work in many ways. IKEA is still great, so I am having a bit of a moral conundrum to sort out since the company itself gives a lot of job opportunities to people and promotes Swedish stuff all over the world. But then we have Kamprad and yeah. Ugh. He's turned tax evasion into an art.

I completely agree with you as well Lummel that people standing there with the begging bowl is just not a society I can feel comfortable in.

We got to this point when people started openly floating ideas like 90% tax rates for the 'rich' and 100% inheritance tax rates, since they 'don't deserve it and usually didn't earn it'.

Both of which are clearly punitive, and not so much altruistic.

But none of that are what we are discussing here, nor are those tax rates actually in effect. Nobody here has mentioned that people "don't deserve their money".

[Galactus]

For some reason a lot of Swedes revere him

Really? If anything most people seems to despise him (It's the ex-Nazi thing) People shop at IKEA of course, but I've heard people say very few nice things about Kamprad.

Because handouts from the government are much less like handouts and more like stipends to promote self government?

Is that really what you're trying to argue here?

Teach people to raise and collect taxes? What does that even mean? Money does not, last time i checked, grow on trees to be farmed in such a way.

Yes. (It's an old liberal chestnut actually, check out John Stuart Mill) if people are involved in deciding the tax rate and how taxes are spent (as they are in a democracy) that's a whole different thing from getting money from a third party.

[McCracken]

Reminds me of Bono who criticised the Irish government for cutting its foraign aid after he has evaded paying irish taxes for last decade. Hypercrite doosh-bag

[Horza]

[sarcasm] But no worries! Those big hearted Aussies will happily dip into their own pockets to pay for reconstruction in Queensland, it's not as though the Australian government actually needs all that tax revenue! [/sarcasm]

Eh, the bill was 1.8bn after scrapping a few bn of dud environmental schemes - the levy only came in because the Gillard government has a huge bee in it's bonnet about getting into promised surplus in 2012-13 (even if by a rounding error) and thus didn't want to borrow.

[Lyanna Stark]

Really? If anything most people seems to despise him (It's the ex-Nazi thing) People shop at IKEA of course, but I've heard people say very few nice things about Kamprad.

Yeah, Uppdrag Granskning got slammed for reporting on how the IKEa foundation evades paying taxes. Despite his nazi connotations and tax evasion apparently he is still revered by quite a lot of people.

[Alexia]

Despite living in a less progressive reality I feel increasing uneasy about these wealthy chariteers. It's kind of the reverse of the old give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach the man to fish and he spends all day in a boat drinking beer, so instead we get teach a people to raise and collect taxes effectively, honestly & efficiently and they will learn to govern themselves but teach them to become dependant on large charitable donations and they will learn to greet you with a begging bowl, large smile and moist eyes.

I am going to deeply object to this characterization of nonprofit philanthropy. The point of many of these nonprofits that receive charitable funds is to teach these people how to fish for themselves. There are organizations to promote literacy, to help impoverished people get set up with starter work clothes so that they can get that first job, job training programs, etc. In the United States, at least, charitable organizations that receive funding from the wealthy philanthropists of whom you speak generally carry out the programs that I suspect may be handled by government agencies across the seas.

Of course its ridiculous that IKEA is considered a charity (really? :stunned: ) but your overall argument sounds to me fairly similar to those who say that if the government strengthens its anti-poverty programs it will be met by those "professional welfare recipients" with their begging bowl in hand. And how on Earth does one teach someone to raise and collect taxes so that they will learn to govern themselves? How do you get from Point A to Point B here?

[MinDonner]

Yes. (It's an old liberal chestnut actually, check out John Stuart Mill) if people are involved in deciding the tax rate and how taxes are spent (as they are in a democracy) that's a whole different thing from getting money from a third party.

Indeed. Contributing to a common pot is a far different matter than relying on the munificence of the generous rich. Not to mention the fact that charity donations do not necessarily go to where they are most needed by society. Look no further than the Cats Protection League that can afford gold-plated dialysis machines (or whatever) for those poor ickle kitties while councils are having to close down bus services for disabled schoolkids. As much as we can't always trust the government to get its spending priorities right, at least they are accountable for their decisions.

[Lyanna Stark]

Of course its ridiculous that IKEA is considered a charity (really? :stunned: ) but your overall argument sounds to me fairly similar to those who say that if the government strengthens its anti-poverty programs it will be met by those "professional welfare recipients" with their begging bowl in hand. And how on Earth does one teach someone to raise and collect taxes so that they will learn to govern themselves? How do you get from Point A to Point B here?

Hm, I thought it was listed as a foundation, not a charity per se (but of course, the legalities may make it a charity). Its main owner is not a company in its own right though, it's got a different organisation.

[Swordfish]

Kamprad is a nasty piece of work. For some reason a lot of Swedes revere him, but he really is a proper nasty piece of work in many ways. IKEA is still great, so I am having a bit of a moral conundrum to sort out since the company itself gives a lot of job opportunities to people and promotes Swedish stuff all over the world. But then we have Kamprad and yeah. Ugh. He's turned tax evasion into an art.

I completely agree with you as well Lummel that people standing there with the begging bowl is just not a society I can feel comfortable in.

Isn't that exactly what's happening through federal entitlement programs though?

But none of that are what we are discussing here, nor are those tax rates actually in effect. Nobody here has mentioned that people "don't deserve their money".

Are you serious? Stuff like that is brought up all the time here.

The 'evil greedy rich' are vilified here and elsewhere more or less every day.

[Lyanna Stark]

Are you serious? Stuff like that is brought up all the time here.

The 'evil greedy rich' are vilified here and elsewhere more or less every day.

Really? where are they villified here? In this thread?

No, they're not, so maybe we can leave that sort of hyperbole where it belongs? (which would be "by the wayside") and focus on the discussion at hand instead.

Or maybe you feel that Kamprad is an example of one of those super rich we're ganging up on? As it happens, the man is friends with a professor in taxation law who've personally helped set up Kamprads organisations to avoid as much tax as possible. Clever ain't he?

Of course, he also hid it for a long time, so that even the highest executives within IKEa proper didn't know about the structure of ownership. All the while Kamprad is getting richer. Once it got out in the open, Kamprad went into rage too. He wants the cake (his image of being frugal, hard working and average) while also eating it (getting all that nice cash in hand).

[TerraPrime]

As much as we can't always trust the government to get its spending priorities right, at least they are accountable for their decisions.

That's the root of the problem. In the U.S., there's more distrust of the government from the general populace. That is despite the fact that I don't think the U.S. politicians are manifestably more corrupt or incompetent than the ones in, say, U.K. or France or Norway.

[Swordfish]

Really? where are they villified here? In this thread?

No, they're not, so maybe we can leave that sort of hyperbole where it belongs? (which would be "by the wayside") and focus on the discussion at hand instead.

Huh? We are not just talking about what is happening in this thread. That's an utterly ridiculous way of framing the conversation.

The conversation was about why taxation is so strongly resisted when it's clearly just about altruism. Suggesting only what's been discussed already in this thread is relevant to that question makes absolutely no sense.

I couldn't care less about Kamprad. I didn't even know who he was until a few minutes ago, and he hadn't, I don't think, even come up yet when i responded to Jaime's post.