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by damnyou 2132 days ago
What you're saying is that critical thinking is required to determine morality. That is indeed true.

To oppose a wealth tax on majoritarian grounds you need to demonstrate that the wealthy are oppressed in some way. Simply saying "but majoritarianism" is not sufficient, and appealing to Jewish oppression is plain whataboutism.

I'm not advocating for guillotines or whatever. Simply that a small percentage of individual wealth over a certain amount (say $10MM) be redistributed to the rest of society. The end result of this is that individuals are still going to be able to hold $10MM even if the wealth tax redistributed 100% of the rest of their wealth. They will still be incredibly rich and not have any meaningful financial constraints on their lives.

Calling this oppression is absurd.

1 comments

> Calling this oppression is absurd.

I never used the word “oppression”. You did.

> To oppose a wealth tax on majoritarian grounds you need to demonstrate that the wealthy are oppressed in some way.

There are multiple ways in which this is wrong.

Firstly, the term “oppression” is overly charged here. I prefer a more general term, so I’ll use “injustice”.

Secondly, you are making a circular argument. In my opinion, confiscating people’s wealth on the basis that they have too much of it is unjust. You are pointing out that the wealthy aren’t, as a whole, subjected to any kind of injustice as it stands; but you’re doing that in the context of proposing to commit injustice against them.

The point that you’re missing is that the primary human motivation for injustice is to perceive a successful group of people as fortunate and privileged, and to resent them for it. So your test for majoritarianism actually fails almost every time that it is tested because, in the perceptions of most majoritarians themselves, they would pass your test.