[slg]

Let’s say you are at a family reunion and want to play a game of baseball with everyone. Is it “fair” to have the same rules for the 6 year old child and the 25 year old who used to play on his high school baseball team? More likely you would tweak the rules a little or pitch a little slower to the kid so everyone has fun and can fully participate.

Sometimes fairness means leveling the playing field so everyone can compete equally.

[syshum]

Well your straw-man is completely weak and not relevant the conversation about government tax policy

We are not talking about a "family" but talking about government, that is something very different and it is very dangerous to view government as a "family" in the same way it dangerous to view a corporations or your employer as "family"

[slg]

It is an analogy. It doesn’t mean we are literally a family. If you want to use a tax analogy, let’s look at marginal tax rates. It is widely regarded by a majority of the population that a flat tax isn’t fair as it treats everyone the same. It is fine if you aren’t in that majority, but you can’t pretend that “fair” means treating everyone the same is some universal truth.

[syshum]

Well that is another bad analogy, and while I do find all income taxation to be unethical marginalize tax rates are not treating people differently, they are treating incomes differently.

To treat people differently you would have to start basing income tax rates on characteristics of a person, such as race, sexual identity, age or height (like in your previous analogy)

Saying all income from 0-50000 is tax X, and income from 50000-100000 is taxed Y is not treating PEOPLE differently, all PEOPLE are treated the same in that situation.

To be clear I am a supporter of replacing all Welfare programs with a Negative Income Tax. I would also be in favor of a UBI that was not funded with Income taxation.

I also support the abolishment of all Income based taxation replacing it with Georgism Single Tax System

[slg]

>To treat people differently you would have to start basing income tax rates on characteristics of a person, such as race, sexual identity, age or height (like in your previous analogy)

Characteristics like their marriage status, the number of children they have, the status of their home, their status as a student, or even the specific example you used of age which is tied to all sorts of taxation issues?

Although I'm not sure there is any point to continuing the conversation if you are going to nitpick any analogy and refuse to recognize that your views on taxation are an extreme minority opinion.

[syshum]

And I disagree with all of these. Government should not treat people differently based on age, martial status, how many kids they have, or age

[tacitusarc]

Absolutely it would be fair to have the same rules for everyone, regardless if they were 6 or 25 or 70 or a professional player, once the players are in the game. It might be _mean_ to treat the six year old like the 25 year old, but it would be fair. It would, however, potentially be unfair to put them in the same game in the first place, especially if there were alternatives.

Meanness and unfairness are two different things.

Especially in a family setting, sometimes niceness can Trump fairness.

[tacitusarc]

My phone apparently autocorrected trump and capitalized it, and I didn't notice. An unfortunate impact of the former administration.