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Taxation versus Robbery?
Jeffrey
Veteran
Currently there is a lot of calls from the right wing in the united states that taxation is equivalent to robbery. Specifically I am interested in how progressive taxation compares to robbery. Progressive taxation means higher income brackets pay a higher proportion of taxes. I would like to prepare for a discussion on my midwestern brewing forum which is a tough crowd, so I will have to have facts and good sound reasoning.
I have already firmly established that for me morals applies to real world situations rather than abstract categories. The example I gave was that lying to wife about dress is not the same as lying about an infedelity, because of cause and effect.
So what do the creative thinkers of the newbuddhist forum think. Try to make reasonable arguments interspersed with people piling on and humor. Counterarguments are also welcome.
Since I am trying to prepare with a discussion amongst non-buddhists try to articulate your logic in a secular modus.
I have already firmly established that for me morals applies to real world situations rather than abstract categories. The example I gave was that lying to wife about dress is not the same as lying about an infedelity, because of cause and effect.
So what do the creative thinkers of the newbuddhist forum think. Try to make reasonable arguments interspersed with people piling on and humor. Counterarguments are also welcome.
Since I am trying to prepare with a discussion amongst non-buddhists try to articulate your logic in a secular modus.
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Comments
Im not sure though about what you mean. Are they saying flat rate taxation is ok but progressive is stealing ? Or that any taxation is stealing ? Maybe you could repost the main topic.
Good question. Although in some ways, I have lessened my biases, in this respect I'm afraid that my bias will show though dramatically.
I'm not a huge fan of the following: free market, commercial gain, survival of the fittest or the share market. I believe that the world market has its basis in greed and due to the apparent operations of karma will always be subject to great loss. Business practises seems to be deteriorating now as companies get rid of experienced staff for cheap replacements and we are left with the blind leading the blind, all using accounting principles to run businesses that have little or no "core business" knowledge. This is a huge drain on the world as a whole.
What has this got to do with taxation?
For some reason the middle and upper levels of companies have managed, due to the typical skills of employees in these levels, to argue for higher and higher slices of the cake. Now it is not unreasonable to ask for a percentage of the takings of all productivity underneath you. Unfortunately, we end up with people who are absolutely great at self promoting and easily over-inflate their worth, and therefore salaries, accordingly for doubtful short term gains of the company.
So, back to taxation, in my above biased view, I have no qualms about increasing the taxation bracket for increasingly higher incomes. Of course this must be balanced by legislation to prevent excessive use of loop holes to avoid taxation. In this respect it helps achieve a small amount of balancing of the equation. Unfortunately, the lobbying power of those who earn large sums of money is great and can often prevent any meaningful changes.
As to taxation being equivalent to robbery, this is an unfortunate end result of years of tax minimisation through accounting. It is fair enough not to pay more than you are supposed to, but it is also fair to pay an appropriate amount of tax and not to try to pay no tax. Tax paying is something that should be considered worth doing, but then again it doesn't help when governments are known for wasting funds as this just feeds the righteous pay no tax groups and individuals.
A better fix to the above problem would be to somehow manage to pay managers appropriate amounts of pay, not a proportional amount of the productivity below them- as this gives the managers credit for the intellectual know how of the people who know the core business and generate the real income.
Im not sure though about what you mean. Are they saying flat rate taxation is ok but progressive is stealing ? Or that any taxation is stealing ? Maybe you could repost the main topic."
Well I think honestly we (the brewing forum guys) have not established that taxation is not crushing freedom. Freedom being a moral imperative. Remember that I have to support my arguments where possible. Whoknows I am not sure I would be able to establish what you suggest is occuring in corporations.
Good argument compassionate warrior. See how much we can add to the list of good things provided by taxes.
Other things taxes pay for: school lunch programs for the poor,Head Start programs, Social Security, which includes disability support and widow's benefits, state programs for rehabilitating the disabled so they can work, medicare, support for Public Television and other alternative media. With enough tax support we could have a national health insurance program. Federal taxes also fund the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Nat'l Endowment for the Arts, and scientific research. Federal taxes provide farm subsidies, which may or may not be a good thing.
Lee Iacocca wrote a great book about why the rich should be paying more taxes. It's really funny, but full of info and good arguments. Check it out. "Where Have All The Leaders Gone?", it's called.
I don't know that I can establish this either and is based on purely circumstantial evidence! I've been trying to moderate my view on this, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. I haven't worked out whether this view is flawed and wrong, or valid, or somewhere in between.
there should only be government fees. this means, that each fee is specific to a service (like building streets).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_A._El-Erian
1. All societies require tax funded social infrastructure, such as roads, armies, etc. Worse, due to the GFC, tax funds were required to bail out private industry to avoid another Great Depression. The GFC showed how crucial tax is
2. There are many economic theories about how economic crisis, including the Great Depression, is caused by too much money in the hands of the elites. This is bad for economies because excess wealth is not spent and not recirculated within an economy, where as lower income earners spend the majority, if not all, of their income. So for the rich to accept more of the tax burden and the poor to accept less improves the economy due to more spending
I found this whole video quite excellent & insightful.
:om:
Personally i think the problem is that while individuals pay up to 40% tax (i'm in Australia, not sure the current top rate in USA), corporations regularly get away with paying under 10% tax because of various loopholes and because they can afford the most expensive tax lawyers to help them beat the system.
So if you ask me, the people pay enough already. It's time for business to pay up.
I object to supporting an arms programme, for example.
First we have to vote for who we want to represent us, then lobby groups would need to advertise to make sure that people put their tax money into the appropriate category.
Self interest will lead to interesting outcomes:
Healthy people wouldn't bother with health spending, employed people wouldn't bother with welfare,....
Could be interesting, definitely worth some studies.
People say that the tax rates for the lower and middle class are too high and tax rates for the wealthy are too low. The proper solution is to lower the tax rates for the lower and middle class and stop spending money like it grows on trees. The government is not supposed to be operating like it has an unlimited amount of money...
You have no say at all what will happen to your money when you get robbed, if the person stealing decides it will become a 100% "investment" into cocaine, that is what will basically happen.
Problem is that such a system has its own flaws (democracy).
Lemme give an example what this would be:
Lets say once upon a time there lived 3 old people. They would vote on the position of a hospital. Now they live 50km apart (in a triangle), and any one of them can only walk 5km. If they vote for the hospital directly, it will be put in the middle of the triangle where none of them can reach it. So they choose to vote for a candidate. Lets say old person #1 and #2 are candidates, and #3 is not interested in politics enough to be a candidate. So #1 votes for the position next to its home, #2 for the position next to #2's home, and #3 votes for #1 because the candidate also promises reduced healthcare costs, but the two candidates are otherwise the same.
Now see what happens. The hospital gets positioned into the area of #1, where neither #2 or #3 can reach it. Common good anyone^^
The reason why tax the rich is practical. You simply can not take away from people who have little in the first place. The reason for bigger percentage on the rich would be that e.g. the poor person gets $100. If you take 10%, he will only have $90, thus possibly be $10 away from paying the lowest rent he could find, take loans, and apply for being financed in one way or another by the state if he wants to survive and get up on his feet again (thus costing the state pretty soon). Now the rich person has $1000000. If the state took $200000, he might buy a smaller house/boat/car, but probably won't be costing the state more in the future because of it. Basically taking the money from the poor is en expense for the state, taking from the rich is a missed opportunity. So they tend to choose the later.
It is true though that the rich person might be more likely to invest the money in e.g. a company with even more profit for him and the state in the long run, but the state sometimes just needs a certain amount of money to work with in the short run (this may actually be a bad point of having candidates be able to "rule" just for a short period of time; in monarchies when someone was pretty sure he would be there for a lifetime he might be more reluctant to do something that will cause problems 70yrs later when he's old and tired but still rules the country - just thought this might be interesting to think of).
So basically, that is how i see it^^
If you don't have taxation, progressive taxation in particular. You end up with an aristocracy where the wealth is handed down from generation to generation and the "common" people don't have the schools and opportunities to climb socially.
I don't think the solution is in either the extreme of laissez faire capitalism or command and control communism but in "the middle way" of a mixed economy, which is what we really have. Its not a matter of adhering to some economic idealogy but we need to use wisdom to skillfully adjust the tax rate to changing needs of the times. Though using the terms wisdom and skillfully in politics seems like a bit of an oxymoron.
Until Reagan began rolling back taxes for the rich, the highest tax rate in the US was 90%. This was for the very rich, like the Rockefellers, Bill Gates, etc. Now the top rate is under 50%. So you can see why the US is in dire economic straights, with such a huge change in tax rate. It's those high taxes that created a relatively wealthy society with universal education and higher education available to all, through government-sponsored scholarships. Now much of that scholarship money is gone, and students take out loans for higher education, with the result that they have crushing debt after getting their degree. It's a big risk to take on such debt, especially in a shrinking job market, so many are unwilling to take the risk. Higher education turns out to be mainly for those whose parents can afford tuition. The US isn't spending money like it grows on trees, except to finance wars, and that money doesn't come from taxes, it comes from increasing debt, it comes from borrowed money. In the last 8 years, the US has slashed public services and benefits, like welfare, and now it has cut the amount of federal money going to states, so that state governments are cutting jobs, requiring unpaid furloughs monthly for the remaining state employees, and are cutting medicaid and unemployment benefits. Infrastructure is decaying for lack of funds for maintenance, let alone improvements and expansion. There is virtually no money available for projects like high-speed rail to keep us competitive with other nations (California being an exception), or for investment in renewable energy sources and manufacturing and export of renewable energy equipment, said to be one of Obama's priorities for helping the manufacturing sector recover. And yet, there are still people who say we're taxed too much (with the lowest tax rate in the developed world), and who want public services, including a national health insurance plan, without paying for them via taxes. You can't get something for nothing. The key, as already noted by others here, is to make the tax structure equitable.
Jeffrey, I don't know if we're still on-topic or not, but it's been a fun ride.
Just see how the privatization of penetenciaries has caused an increase in prisoners. Look at the mess that healthcare is in the US. Once you get sick they work really hard to get deny you coverage. Its like two monsters that we have to live with and they are always fighting each other. The trick is not to let one become to powerful.
I remember years ago having to go to court when I was sued for a traffic accident (I won). But at the courthouse I noted all the marble and granite and rich hardwoods used to make the courthouse...all for a place dedicated to punishing the guilty.
Then I went back to the school where I was Principal and noted our luxurious cinder block, pine doors, and vinyl tile floors. And I thought, something is wrong here. We treat our children worse than we treat our legal offenders.
Should we fully support schools? Yes. Should we fully support our legal system? Yes. But there is something faulty in the way in which we make our decisions and priorities.
Again, what I think it points out is that we need to rethink how we set our priorities.
Are there examples of renewable energy that are both lucrative and good for the environment? Most of the brewing forum guys don't care about the environment and it is hard to argue with them not seeing the big picture.
For example has someone been successful with solar? Wind? Water?
Is there evidence to suggest that less higher education or higher debt is a negative thing? I feel the brewing forum is just going to say, "well I saw that college was for eggheads so I learned how to lay concrete. I now am living my dream." "We have to many arts libtards and gummity gummity government workers and useless people who went to higher educaton"
Tough crowd.
If governments incur the necessary expenditure required to create a civilised (harmonious) society then the budget will always tend towards deficit.
Therefore, as the spending needs will always be greater than the taxation revenue, it is only logical the wealthly contribute more because the average person cannot afford to do so.
Higher debt becomes a potential problem when the debt gets to the point that confidence in the economy among overseas investors (China, the Arab nations) begins to falter, and there's a risk of them suddenly cashing in their US treasury bills, etc., which the US wouldn't be able to honor, because it's so over-extended. We have reached the point where overseas investment markets have begun to reduce the rating of some US investment instruments because of astronomical runaway debt. The US is also borrowing from its own banks, which means money is tight for the internal market, loans are more difficult for citizens to get for any purpose. I'm not an economist, I'm sure there are more downsides.
You asked about renewable energy as a business. Mainly I was referring to the idea that the US could be exporting solar panels and other equipment, and that could create jobs, and help balance the trade imbalance (much more importing than exporting going on, which also undermines the economy). China now is the main manufacturer of solar energy equipment, is has invested heavily to create that industry, so the US is losing out on potential markets. Germany and Japan have also been making and exporting solar equipment for decades.
Really, Jeffrey, this is a huge research project, to put together a credible and persuasive report for your group. Like you said, tough crowd. And we can't hand you handy statistics and pie-charts and graphs. Did you see the book title I gave you up above? It's a great read. Good luck.
Jeff I will give you a prediction.
You will post, repost, counter, counter the counter and everyone will end up thinking the exact same thing they did before this all started.
Jeff I will give you a prediction.
You will post, repost, counter, counter the counter and everyone will end up thinking the exact same thing they did before this all started."
lol
I've already been occupied all day. I feel like Gary Kasparov playing multiple chess matches. I am actually contesting every paragraph or at least making a comment. Some of the posts are gigantic now.
This is a moral argument against taxes. I guess the obvious spike is that civilization would be impossible without violating peoples morals. But are there any other holes in this? So far I have asked how lying is theft... I am actually more curious to really examine this philosophy as opposed to refute it so I am looking for interesting or creative avenues.
>Infrastructure is decaying for lack of funds for maintenance, let alone improvements and expansion.
I disagree. The funds are there they are just being used for something else, namely building bombs to drop on foreign countries and groping people at the airport, etc.... None of which is necessary. The funds are there, they are just being used inappropriately. Start using the funds appropriately and you don't need to raise taxes on anyone.
>The US isn't spending money like it grows on trees, except to finance wars, and that money doesn't come from taxes, it comes from increasing debt, it comes from borrowed money.
Where is the money going to come from to repay that debt? From taxes...
I am in favor of paying my share of taxes and helping people less fortunate. Our general taxes in America are not as high as they rightfully should be. Roads and services cost money. Social Security and Medicare cost money.
But we are dealing with politicians whose only goal is to get re-elected. The best way to do this, is to constantly promise more and more government services while postponing the need for citizens to pay for it. It could be defense spending for the Iraq atrocity, or it could be some entitlement program. Either way, people from all ideological views want the government to do their bidding, but they do not like the consequence of it all, which is to actually PAY for it.
Taxation isn't robbing. But do you know what is robbery? Taking money from your children's pockets for the defense and entitlements you enjoy today.
One writer explained this--along with the recent budget fight to avoid shutdown--through the example below. Multiply each number here x100 million ($100,000,000):
"Suppose we have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family's income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year."
You want to know what robbery looks like? This is robbery of future generations, and it is inexcusable behavior. We need to reduce spending to responsible levels, and to tax ourselves at a rate that is high enough to responsibly pay for the things we claim to want so badly.
There's a number of reasons why progressive taxation is not robbery. I studied economics in college, so I'll start with that. There's a concept called decreasing marginal utility of income, which means that the more money you have, the less important an additional dollar is to you. If you earn $30,000/year, paying $5,000 in taxes hurts you more than if you earn $60,000/year and pay $15,000 in taxes. In the first case, you're left with $25,000/year, and in the second, $45,000/year. Obviously, a 20% tax hurts the first person more than the 25% tax hurts the second. From an economic point of view, a flat tax robs the poor.
From a social point of view, all property rights are socially constructed. Society, through political institutions, creates things like patent rights, copyrights, the right to the money in your bank account, the right to a share of the profits in a joint stock company, etc. It creates a right to own land, and maintains records of ownership so that someone else can't take possession of your land without some sort of legal process. The wealthy own their wealth because society decided that they own it, not because God gave it to them. Society has the right to decide how much they have to pay back. The process that created the laws that make wealth possible is the same process that decides how people are taxed. Claiming that progressive taxation is theft is, philosophically, the same as claiming that all property is theft. In either case you are denying the legitimacy of the social process that creates property rights.
And finally there's a moral argument. The wealthy received more from society than other people, and have an obligation to give more back. The wealthy can pay a 70% income tax and still be wealthy. No matter how little the poor pay, they will still be poor.
There are a number of problems with our (USA) tax system, but robbery of the rich isn't one of them.
Anyway, most of the time, the rich don't see their tax dollars as benefitting them, that's why they consider taxation to be robbery. So when you have a tough crowd like yours to deal with, it becomes a tricky argument. And they don't get (or want to get) the argument that bringing a measure or prosperity to everyone benefits the rich by assuring political stability and reducing crime. They think all they have to do is build big walls around their houses with spikes on top and automatic gates--home as fortress. Why lose sleep over crime?
Who is your target audience? They don't sound like the typical white-collar "rich". They sound like working-class people who happen to make good money at what they do. They'd have a different outlook, I would think. You'd have to tailor the talk to their unique experience and perspective.
Good luck.
The opposite, and equally partisan position is also not true in its orthodox form, namely the idea from the right wing that since wealth is infinite and boundless, then poverty is entirely voluntary. No matter how boundless wealth is in theory, in practice wealth naturally seeks extremes (high income and low income). Hence there is always a probability--even in a theoretical world of perfect economic opportunity and equity--for plenty of people to starve and suffer in a world entirely void of some mode of redistribution. Thus, a modicum amount of re-distribution is necessary, but this has absolutely noting to do with marginal utility of a given person's income.
As far as taxation "hurting" people, that depends on the value one receives in return for public goods. If we had the right economic infrastructure to allow universal health care for example, who is to say high taxes would "hurt"? This is an impossible determination to make responsibly. The state of Arkansas has low taxes and a low cost of living, but comparatively speaking, it also has shitty public goods and services compared to NYC. So the notion that person "A" has a moral obligation to pay for at some portion of person B's enjoyment of public goods by merit of his/her income differential is again, a concept of political dogma. The person in Kansas never receives more public services or value for the extra money that the New Yorker shelled out allegedly on his behalf!
The only truly equitable tax is a flat tax rate, pure and simple, and it doesn't have to "hurt" anyone unequally. Imagine (hypothetically of course, and using an arbitrary figure to make a point), that the first $40,000 of income that you, me, and Bill Gates earns in a year is 100% Tax free. Every dollar above that, from the $40,001st dollar and up is taxed at ___%. So Mr. Bill Gates is still going to pay millions in taxes, whereas you and I are going to pay a pittance by comparison, but it is fair because the system taxes everyone's income at the same rate. This eliminates the unnecessary and rather bogus distinction of punishing abundance of income not only as a matter of total taxes paid (which if the rich actually paid that full amount, would be sufficient), but by also levying a additional premium percentage rate on top of it as a politically motivated punishment.
The real crime then is our tax code, and not our tax rates, which should fluctuate anyway to balance our actual 12 trailing months federal spending. The tax code is how so many millionaires and billionaires end up paying next to nothing in taxes! Democrats whine about tax brackets and work to get their base up in a fluster over how big the tax bracket should be for the richest earners (the "class warfare" distinction), when the real theft is happening out the back door via our 17,000+ page Byzantine tax code with its endless loopholes that intentionally and unfairly favor the rich.
In order to somewhat swing this toward the dhamma at least a tiny bit (LOL!), it has always struck me that the three poisons (greed, delusion, and hate) are in plentiful supply on both sides of the political aisle.