[reaperducer]

why?

Because as a society, we decided long ago that everyone should be treated as equally as possible.

We don't throw people into the garbage dump because they're not as good at certain things as others.

We've encoded this into our laws, our norms, our education, and our society as a whole. We've even fought world wars because of it.

That you could even ask the question makes me think that you're just being provocative.

[Throwawayaerlei]

"Because as a society, we decided long ago that everyone should be treated as equally as possible."

That we have a progressive instead of flat personal tax rate system shows this is a pretty lie.

[rswail]

Everyone should have equality of opportunity, the fact that we have a progressive tax rate system is deliberately to redistribute wealth across the population fairly to help provide that equality of opportunity.

The fact that people have got to the point of personal selfishness that they think that only "money talks" is a measure of their societal contribution is a sad indictment of the past 30-40 years of Thatcher/Reaganite nonsense.

The purpose of money is to aid in trade and that very creation and distribution of wealth.

Billionaires should be taxed at 100% for all of their liquid wealth over that $1B. If they have it invested into productive and useful wealth creation, then leave it there, otherwise, take it and do something productive with it.

[avmich]

No, progressive tax rate is actually equalizer, rather than what you think.

[robertlagrant]

I think the point is it's not treating everyone equally.

[camgunz]

It is treating everyone equally if you don't interpret "equal" under kindergarten "everyone gets the same candy bar" rules. Progressive tax systems try to reduce societal inequality by sharing resources more equally. They recognize that often times high wealth and income come from chance and circumstance, rather than merit or hard work, and seek to rebalance the system.

[robertlagrant]

You're talking about equality of opportunity (which is treating everyone equally) Vs equality of outcome (which is treating people unequally to engineer an outcome.

Why not just say, 'I don't believe in treating everyone equally"? If you have a different position then say so. Why try and redefine things? What's the goal?

[camgunz]

Generally I'm not wild about the equality of opportunity/outcome framing. I think to really advocate for equality of opportunity you have to account for the vagaries of life, like:

- If you're born into a wealthy family, how should we handicap you or boost others to give everyone "equality of opportunity"

- Or, should we outlaw wealthy families (maybe this is a 100% tax on wealth > $1m), assuming we could actually do this

- If you're born into a normal family, but one of your parents dies when you're 17, how should we compensate you, or handicap everyone else?

- If you get thyroid cancer at age 33, how should we compensate you, or handicap everyone else?

- How would we even quantify these opportunity gaps? The way we currently do it is by comparing lifetime earnings and try to ceteris paribus everything else, but as we start compensating, we're disturbing the experiment. Also, where does the money come from?

I'd love to hear a set of policies that deals with life's basic unfairness, but I bet it would look a lot like progressive taxation, a strong social safety net, and heavily subsidized education, and the people who support equality of opportunity definitely don't support those things. Mostly their position distills down to "don't tax us to subsidize low income/wealth people", and the best you can say about that is it doesn't reckon with the unfairness issue.

So I reject the premise. But, I also think that "equality" is actually a complex concept. Is a society that allows super wealthy people alongside homeless people equal? Is a society that puts a 100% tax on wealth > $1m but a 0% tax on income < $12,950 equal? What about a society that gives women 6 months paid leave for birth and early childhood, but men 6 weeks? What about a society that subsidizes insulin but not L-dopamine for Parkinson's sufferers?

My ideal would be that we treat people with "equal regard" for their needs and situation. Maybe that sounds like bullshit, or the idea of the government deciding what your needs are/should be is worrying, or you're skeptical we could ever really quantify it, and I would mostly agree. But I also can't come up with a better or more reasonable goal, even though we might not ever practically achieve it.

[avmich]

> Why not just say, 'I don't believe in treating everyone equally"?

Because that's not what I mean. I'm not redefining things - progressive tax was invented way back.