I initially dismissed your comment, but I think I'll counter it instead and see if you have any actual reasoning behind it.
I don't disagree with your first 2 statements. Here's my beef with "pay more taxes":
- The top 5% of earners already pay 53% of the nation's income tax revenue. The top 1% pay 33% of it. Exactly how much would you like it to be?
- Those in the top 5% are in a higher tax bracket already (usually 33 or 35%).
- 40-50% of americans pay no federal income tax (only payroll tax) and 10% receive more cash from the IRS than they contribute in federal income taxes and payroll taxes.
So, please, tell me what those in the top 1%/5% should be paying?
What you miss is that income taxes are a small fraction of the total for the non-rich, and almost everything for the rich. Total taxes as a fraction of income are fairly flat by quintile, dropping for the very rich (multi-millionaires and billionaires, who pay lawyers and acocunts to have income transmuted into capital gains, taxed at 15%). http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2010.pdf
You miss this point because the mendacity is useful to the very rich, who pay their henchmen in Congress and the Murdoch media companies to repeat it endlessly.
The top earners pay the majority because they're earning the vast vast majority of money and are increasing that majority share at a rapidly increasing rate. It's common sense that pretty much how ever you tax it, whoever controls 80% or more of the wealth will end up bearing the brunt of taxes as well.
Add the fact that most of the whales out there pay a much lower marginal rate than you or I makes it all the more impressive that they carry so much of the load. It's a stark sign of the disparity.
I'll take the slightly more extreme point of view (that will probably be shot down as "pinko-commie bullshit")
You should pay as much tax as is required to lift the rest of society to (or close to) your level (of lifestyle/income etc). (obviously "your level" will decrease as you pay more tax).
That's the IDEAL it is of course highly impractical. Most ideals are. :(
Just because you got given awesome opportunities (good school, good family, good race, good society, whatever) and even if you worked really hard, doesn't mean you deserve to hold disproportionate amounts of wealth compared to those that didn't get those things.
I'm actually with you more than you'd think ... but here's where I get hung up ...
I have a friend who is roughly the same age as me, same race (white), parents were the same class, and we grew up < 3 miles from each other. Yet he is the laziest eff'ing slob I know. His wife works part-time, he collects unemployment and makes no attempt to train or find a job. They live in subsidized housing and make ends meet via welfare and taking advantage of others' charity.
I'm curious how you argue that all of society (including people like this) should have their lifestyle increase in perpetuity.
I (being optimistic) would like to believe most people want to be productive. So as long as you make it 'easy' to be productive, then the problem should be minimal.
You can always find fringe cases where people are undeserving and insulting to a particular system. But the system shouldn't be defined by the few.
For every one person you find, who is a lazy slob, I bet I can find three people who want to work, want to make something of it but just don't have the means to get out of the rut they are in. (presumptuous I know, and I can't really back this up, but I'd like to believe it is true).
So basically you are basing your proposition of robbing the people who have made wealth for themselves on your really wanting to believe that most people would want to be productive? Isn't that, how shall I say it, rather strange? Because for your assertion that those who want to be productive outnumber slobs 3:1, I'll posit the exact opposite.
> ...robbing the people who have made the wealth wealth for themselves...
How about I flip that then, the wealthy robbed the people to generate their wealth, and then complain when they have to give (some of) it back.
It is very rare to find a company that isn't exploiting someone along the chain in order to generate that wealth. Of course capitalism renames it to "surplus value", but it is in fact exploitation (people being paid less than the value they add).
Do you really think an individual is responsible for all wealth they generate? So, if Steve Jobs was born in china, and lived through the cultural revolution, he would have still built Apple (or equivalent) and been the success he is today. Because society and the services around him had nothing to do with his success?
People don't generate wealth for themselves, they capitalise on opportunities provided to them. The U.S provided a lot of opportunities to a minority of people, who then capitalised on it. But their wealth wouldn't exist without the opportunities being available and thus they should pay tax (proportional to the amount of wealth they have generated) so that the U.S (government) can provide more opportunities to more people.
It's not a perfect system, but I'd rather subsidize a few bums like your friend and also subsidize people who really do need welfare / disability / unemployment.
The good news for is that a standout non-lazy person will raise much more revenue than a stand-out leach will be able to take.
If you believe theologically, ideologically, or otherwise that "all men (and women!) are created equal" then it follows they should pay equally. I would argue equally means normalizing their income against their position on the income scale so the taxes "hurt" them the same as it they "hurt" everyone else.
It is well known that 10% of the income of someone below the poverty line is a serious hardship, but 10% in the top 1% of earners is not (although it still hurts). If you normalize the taxes based on the income distribution you can cause the amount of economic "hurt" to be equalized across society. This means that the top %1 will pay much more in taxes than perhaps the bottom 90% or even 95%. However, the "hurt" they endure will be equal.
No, you misunderstand the 'created equally' argument. It doesn't mean everybody should get the same, it means that no legislation should discriminate between people. More technically, the 'created equally' refers to negative liberties and negative rights, not to somebody else's obligation to do something to create an artificial equality.
(note that this is not a matter of argument - this is quite clearly settled. Of course you could question if it should be like this, and if we shouldn't change the meaning of 'equal' into more positive rights ('affirmative action' etc); I'm not so much interested in debating that. I'm just pointing out that for broadly-accepted definitions of the terms you use, your argument is flawed).
First, I'm doubtful that a family at the poverty line ($22K for a family of 4) pays 10% in income tax. I could be wrong, however.
>> If you believe theologically, ideologically, or otherwise that "all men (and women!) are created equal" then it follows they should pay equally.
On this, I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion. I'm assuming (possibly wrongly) that you're referring to the DOI, which states:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
This seems to refer to equal starting points, equal liberties, and equal opportunities–not equal amounts of wealth or income throughout life. I think "pursuit" is a key word here. We should all be free to pursue what makes us happy, but there are no rights or guarantees that we will get it.
