[wolverine876]

Taxes are democratically controlled allocation of resources. We the people get together and decide what we want to do collectively. Wealthy people giving away their money is aristocracy or oligarchy, centering power in the wealthy - corrupt, and a threat to democracy and free markets.

[vecplane]

Democracy is two wolves and sheep voting on what's for dinner.

The voting majority does not necessarily have a right to my property because they said so.

[dane-pgp]

You only have "a right to [your] property" because the voting majority agreed that that right should exist.

Also, if democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, what do you think would happen in that situation if the wolves abandoned voting?

[vecplane]

Not so - property rights are a large part of human rights, inherent to being human.

Others may ignore your rights and abuse your freedoms, but that does not make it acceptable, and it doesn't mean those rights and freedoms don't exist.

The wolves and sheep are aggressors and prey. Your hypothetical is an analogy for theft - the majority 'taking' what it wants by disregarding the rights and freedoms of the minority.

[dane-pgp]

> property rights are a large part of human rights

"Human rights" isn't an excuse to not pay taxes, nor do they even forbid progressive tax policies.

> Your hypothetical is an analogy for theft

(For the avoidance of doubt, I am against theft and in favour of democracy, so I agree that my hypothetical of the wolves abandoning democracy was not something I thought would lead to a better societal outcome.)

A society which accepts the principle of private property might agree that certain "taking" is theft, but a society can equally decide that the "taking" of tax payments is not theft. Just because a group is a minority and strongly opposes what the majority want, doesn't make the minority's desire inherently more moral than that of the majority, even if they express their desire in terms of "rights and freedoms".

[wolverine876]

We have no right to taxation at all? What are you saying here?

[vecplane]

There's a sound argument for levying broad taxes on services that are widely distributed, that you can't easily opt-out of, and that are reasonably beneficial and necessary.

Roads, police, fire fighters, border security, armed forces, environment regulators, etc. I'm certainly open to debating what does and does not fall into this category for fair and acceptable taxation.

But to argue that 'we are taxing your wealth because you have too much' obviously falls outside of that category.

[dane-pgp]

How about "we are taxing your wealth because the money has to come from somewhere, and we can't take it from people who don't have any"? Given the diminishing marginal utility of income and wealth[0] it makes economic sense to tax the people who have a lot of wealth at a greater rate than those who have a little.

[0] https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/12309/concepts/diminishin...

[vecplane]

We don't tax wealth, we tax income, transactions (sales), and many places also tax real estate per year.

There's a big difference between those things and taxing your whole net worth every year.

[dane-pgp]

To try to fill in the blanks and steelman your position a little, I think that the most significant difference (and potential grounds for criticism) is that a wealth tax means the same money is taxed multiple times.

I'm not sure what essential philosophical or ethical objection there is to that, though, since money is constantly changing hands and being taxed (e.g. on the way in as income, and on the way out as consumption/sales tax). Moreover, as taxation changes incentives, it should be targeted to reduce socially negative actions, and arguably "wealth hoarding" is worse for society than "income", which is currently an accepted target for taxation.

I think the biggest "fairness" argument for a wealth tax, though, is that the average US household has a net worth of $120k, and pays $10k in total taxes per year, which is equivalent to an 8% wealth tax. (Of course it's true that if the household decided to not earn any money, it could greatly reduce its tax burden, but that's not really an option for most tax payers, whereas billionaires never have to work a day in their life).

So I would tie the wealth tax to be equivalent to the effective rate that the median household pays, but allow deductions for any other payments the wealthy person paid to the government or to charities. Also, for simplicity, the wealth tax should only apply to households above a certain wealth threshold, perhaps 10x or 100x of the median.

[wolverine876]

> But to argue that 'we are taxing your wealth because you have too much' obviously falls outside of that category.

Who says that?

[mistermann]

> Taxes are democratically controlled allocation of resources. We the people get together and decide what we want to do collectively.

I am not aware of these meetings, where is it that they take place?

[Dma54rhs]

Elections? Nothing stopping voting or running as a candidate with 0 tax agenda as far as I'm aware?

[mistermann]

In elections you put an X beside someone's name who has made promises that they most likely will not fulfill which is a far cry from getting together to decide what we want to do collectively.

I think it's rather bizarre that no grassroots movement has arisen to work towards the general public getting together to actually decide what we actually want to do collectively, it's genuinely a very good idea.

[wolverine876]

There are many, many such organizations. Just look around at political organizations of all stripes.

> who has made promises that they most likely will not fulfill

That's just your assertion. It hasn't been my experience, and they can always be voted out of office.

> In elections you put an X beside someone's name

You can do a lot more than that, if you use the power you have been given in a democracy. Having worked on many elections, I can say that it amazes me how much power the few people doing the work have. To stand on the outside and say you are powerless is bizarre - like standing on the shore of the ocean and insisting there are no fish.

[mistermann]

> There are many, many such organizations. Just look around at political organizations of all stripes.

I'm referring to this: "We the people get together and decide what we want to do collectively".

To me, "we the people" means the population of the country, rather than a tiny subset who actually engage in political organization - I'm thinking (for starters) of something as simple as fine-grained surveys on various issues and policy proposals. Of course, most opinions are going to be pretty uninformed, but then whose fault is that? The population as it is, is a product of the system we've constructed to raise people in.

> That's just your assertion.

Is it a genuine point of contention that there is a substantial delta between what politicians promise and what they can be observed trying to achieve after election campaigning is over?

> It hasn't been my experience, and they can always be voted out of office.

So the saying goes. The system runtime certainly supports it, but the degree to which it is actually possible if one takes into consideration the given system state and historic behaviors makes it seem rather uncertain to me. Technically, what is and is not ~pragmatically/realistically possible is unknown.

> You can do a lot more than that, if you use the power you have been given in a democracy. Having worked on many elections, I can say that it amazes me how much power the few people doing the work have. To stand on the outside and say you are powerless is bizarre - like standing on the shore of the ocean and insisting there are no fish.

I can agree that people have some more power than they often think...but acting individually, how likely is it that one person can make significant change? Do we have substantial examples demonstrating it is possible, and few that demonstrate difficulty? And then also: how would our current state look plotted on an absolute scale of what is possible in the runtime, as opposed to what is possible in the system we've built within the runtime?