The Rich Paying Fair Share?

[DaveD]

That's right, some rich people worked bloody hard to be born to rich parents.

[Coito ergo sum]

That's right, some rich people worked bloody hard to be born to rich parents.

In the US, that's not how most people get to make $200k or so. It takes hard work.

Those born to un-rich parents can certainly get there. They aren't guaranteed to get there. But, they can't get there without busting their ass to do it.

Adam Carolla is a prime example. That guy started out poor in a poor family, and he hustled in his chosen career. Tax him 80% for the privilege of having dedicated his life to something 110%?

[Seth]

Well, I sure have no empathy for the rich, and envious cunts will enventually messily massacre the jealous ones who're hoarding the riches they can't use anyway.

No they won't, they don't have any guns...

[Seth]

...is fucking stupid. After tax they are still getting vastly more than the majority below them...

Exactly.

These people claim that the amount of tax they have to pay shows they are unappreciated for their efforts and contributions (whatever the hell those may be), but if they're measuring "appreciation" in monetary terms then even after tax they are massively more "appreciated" then all those "scrounging" nurses and teachers - which is exactly the way they supposedly want it. So what the fuck are they complaining about?

They are complaining about having the fruits of their labor stolen from them to serve the needs of useless, dependent class fuckwads who contribute nothing to the economy but demand largess from the government because they think someone owes them a living.

If everyone you consider "dependent" on the super-rich were to disappear tomorrow, you'd learn a fairly hard sharp lesson on who's really the "dependent" ones...

Perhaps, but that's no excuse for confiscating the fruits of the labor of the productive class in order to support the dependent class.

[Seth]

Rich people whine about money, poor people whine about money. Why is one set of humans whining justified and another not?

Because one set has more money than they can actually use, and the other actually needs extra money to live comfortably?

The first set worked for that money, and the second set didn't, so the second set doesn't deserve to live comfortably. They need to be made uncomfortable in their poverty so that they will take advantage of the opportunities that capitalism provides to lift themselves out of poverty. Thus sayeth Ben Franklin.

[Ian]

Where's the poll?

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...Perhaps, but that's no excuse for confiscating the fruits of the labor of the productive class in order to support the dependent class.

Leaving aside your ridiculious ideas of who is "productive" and who is "dependent", you claimed in another thread that it's just tough shit that native Americans don't have the land they used to own because they fought wars and lost, and now you're claiming there's no "excuse" for taxing the rich?

You seem strangely inconsistent about when people need excuses for "confiscating" stuff and when they don't. It almost looks exactly like you don't in fact have any kind of morality at all, but just use the language of things being "right" or "wrong" to match whatever suits you.

[Beatsong]

What is wrong with Adam's argument?

Christ Coito, and I thought you were smart. This has got to be one of the worst "arguments" for low taxation I've ever seen. Do you really need to ask the question?

1. Nothing in the video gives any indication whatsoever of what he earns (and no, there ISN'T anything "implicit" in it suggesting that it's less than that of 48 schoolteachers. What rich people pay in tax is subject to all kinds of variables, like how they structure their business, what they run through their company, how they invest etc. We have absolutely no way of knowing ANYTHING from this about what he earns.)

So you're badgering people for a clear cut answer about what is the "fair share" of tax for somebody earning X dollars, where X is a completely unknown variable? And you can't see how silly that is?

2. The implicit assumption behind his rant is that the "fair" default starting point is everybody paying the same amount of tax. He talks about the "amount of road" that his tax pays for, compared to the amount that a teacher's pays for, clearly suggesting that we should assume they'd be roughly the same, so it's AMAZING that his is actually 48 times higher.

Now to anyone with half a brain, this is ridiculous. The idea of flat taxation with no reference to ability to pay is not only morally insupportable, it's financially ridiculous for anyone who wants a government able to do anything whatsoever. You would basically have to take what a guy on the lowest possible wage earns, work out the absolute maximum you can screw out of him without him starving to death, and then levy ONLY THAT MUCH on everyone up to Bill Gates. You'd then basically have no government. Seth would be happy, of course.

But that's not even so much the point - he doesn't after all actually advocate a flat tax, he just has it in the background and the assumed starting point that the actual tax regime should be measured against. What's really completely clueless is that his own "argument" doesn't even make sense in that respect. He says "I pay as much as 48 teachers; you're telling me I should pay as much as 51; but I think I could make a good argument that I should only pay as much as 45, and an objective judge would have to accept that." But these numbers are all equally meaningless. If he doesn't accept the principle of people being taxed differently according to ability to pay, then 45 is just as silly a number as 48 or 51. The only number that would be justifiable by that rationale would be 1. But then of course he knows full well that if he tries to argue that he should only pay the same as one teacher, he'd be laughed off the air, even in sociopathic America.

So where the fuck does he get 45 from? Out of his arse? And you're asking us what's wrong with his "argument"?

3. The whole question of what tax rates are "fair" is impossible to consider separately from that of which aspects of capitalism as a whole are "fair" and which aren't. The fairness or otherwise of how each person's life plays out in our society is a result of the total set of economic factors they are subject to. It's ridiculous to take one of those in isolation and think you can arrive at some idea of "fairness" that ignores all the others.

Truly one of the worst I have ever seen. Come on man, you've read books and stuff. You can do better than that.

[Beatsong]

Capitalism is a fundamentally unfair system. The idea that people who happen to have done exceedingly well out of it can then complain:

"why are we being punished, why do we have to pay so much, it's not fair"

I would submit that socialism is a fundamentally unfair system since it posits that one ought not be able to benefit by working harder than someone else.

No it doesn't. You need to go and find out what socialism is before making such silly strawman statements about it.

I never said they should pay less. I just asked if the top 5% paying more than 50% of the taxes was enough, or if it needed to be more to be "fair."

OK, I'll answer that question. Yes, it needs to be more fair.

[Seth]

...Perhaps, but that's no excuse for confiscating the fruits of the labor of the productive class in order to support the dependent class.

Leaving aside your ridiculious ideas of who is "productive" and who is "dependent", you claimed in another thread that it's just tough shit that native Americans don't have the land they used to own because they fought wars and lost, and now you're claiming there's no "excuse" for taxing the rich?

You seem strangely inconsistent about when people need excuses for "confiscating" stuff and when they don't. It almost looks exactly like you don't in fact have any kind of morality at all, but just use the language of things being "right" or "wrong" to match whatever suits you.

Tut, tut, play nice now.

[Beatsong]

Nobody is talking about giving them a tax cut here. The question was -- are they paying their fair share NOW when the top 5% pay more than 50% of the entire tax burden? If not, how much of the entire tax burden SHOULD the top 5% pay? I mean -- 60%? 70% 100% of the tax burden so the top 5% would be the only taxpayers?

Why is this question so hard for folks in the "they're not paying their fair share" camp to answer? Nobody has yet answered it.

Someone said "80% of their income if they make over $200,000" -- but, that's still not answering the question -- is it fucking their fair share to pay more than 50% of the taxes paid? Or, should they fucking pay more? If so, HOW MUCH MORE? What percentage of the total tax burden SHOULD the top 5% pay?

It's a stupid question because tax rates are not worked out starting from an idea of an arbitrary percentage of the population paying a "fair" porportion of the whole. Neither the morality of social organisation nor the pragmatics of government finances are determined by that starting point.

But what's noticeable here is that for all your disbelief that noone can answer your meaningless question, you haven't given any indication of what YOU consider "fair". As I pointed out above, the rant in the OP is stupid because it rests on the assumption that you can't justify substantially multiplying absolute tax differences far above what a flat tax would be. But it then goes on to pluck arbitrary numbers and say "it should be this, not that", with no indication why even those numbers are justifiable.

So what do you think Coito? What percentage of the entire tax burden would it be "fair" for the top 5% of the population to pay? And from what definition of "fairness" do you derive your number?

[Seth]

...Perhaps, but that's no excuse for confiscating the fruits of the labor of the productive class in order to support the dependent class.

Leaving aside your ridiculious ideas of who is "productive" and who is "dependent"

If you take money from the government, which money is taken from other taxpayers, to pay for your financial needs, you're a member of the dependent class, not a member of the productive class. To any rational person that should be obvious.

[Seth]

Capitalism is a fundamentally unfair system. The idea that people who happen to have done exceedingly well out of it can then complain:

"why are we being punished, why do we have to pay so much, it's not fair"

I would submit that socialism is a fundamentally unfair system since it posits that one ought not be able to benefit by working harder than someone else.

No it doesn't. You need to go and find out what socialism is before making such silly strawman statements about it.

We know exactly what socialism is and CES has precisely identified the fundamental flaw of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Stupid. Abysmally, incontrovertably, irredeemably stupid.

I never said they should pay less. I just asked if the top 5% paying more than 50% of the taxes was enough, or if it needed to be more to be "fair."

OK, I'll answer that question. Yes, it needs to be more fair.

What do you mean by "fair?"

[Beatsong]

...Perhaps, but that's no excuse for confiscating the fruits of the labor of the productive class in order to support the dependent class.

Leaving aside your ridiculious ideas of who is "productive" and who is "dependent", you claimed in another thread that it's just tough shit that native Americans don't have the land they used to own because they fought wars and lost, and now you're claiming there's no "excuse" for taxing the rich?

You seem strangely inconsistent about when people need excuses for "confiscating" stuff and when they don't. It almost looks exactly like you don't in fact have any kind of morality at all, but just use the language of things being "right" or "wrong" to match whatever suits you.

Bingo.

The entire Seth mythology in a nutshell.

[Tero]

But he's got a contract, Seth, so he must have the law on his side every time.