[ClHans]

One quick aside: all taxes redistribute wealth, and the consequences of doing so are well-known and positive. There's simply nothing wrong with the "redistribution of wealth" as you seem to suggest.

Now, onto the larger point. We care because unequal societies have a whole host of social ills: higher crime, lower social mobility, poorer health outcomes. There is, in fact, a wide and deep body of scientific literature about this. You are, of course, free to disagree with the science on income inequality, but that places the burden on you to say, "the science is wrong!", or to say, "high crime and poor health doesn't matter!"

Good luck with that.

[ClHans]

Downvoted for what? For pointing out that all taxes redistribute wealth, and with this redistributed wealth we buy roads, food safety, police and fire, public education, a largely functioning justice system, and in fact the safety and security of a generally-free market...in another word...civilization?

Or downvoted for pointing out that the observable evidence suggests that we, as a society, would be better off in a number of measurable ways (e.g. reduced crime rates, greater social mobility, better overall health), in a society with greater money equality?

It may be a challenging idea if all one's ever heard is, "don't take my slice, just grow the pie," but there is, unfortunately, no evidence--historical or contemporary--that "just grow the pie" actually works in the real world.

[functionoid]

Do rich people use more roads, public education, food safety?

What is your point in making rich people pay more for these services other than they worked hard for their money and you want to take a free ride?

[ClHans]

Whether rich people use roads, public education, or food safety is beside the point. (And, frankly speaking, I'd venture to guess that rich people do use roads more, because poor people are more likely to ride the bus or walk.)

They pay more because, if we taxed everyone at the same rate, we wouldn't have anywhere near enough money we needed to maintain even the somewhat shoddy state of civilization in the country.

You may not like the idea that the government has to pay for all of the things it does, and that's a fair response, but it doesn't really address the bigger picture: what kind of quality of life do we want in this country?

Just to play into the "low taxes for all" thought experiment, say we slash taxes across the board and have to cut a ton of stuff from our budget. Well, I can think of what I'd cut, and I'm sure you can do the same, and I'd bet there's some overlap, and some contention. But how would these cuts make life harder for your average American (who, mind you, is poor and sick and works their ass off week after week for very little wages)? If we don't care about them--if we throw them to the wolves of fate--is this the kind of country we want to live in, one we will take pride in? How would history view us, at the dawn of the 21st century?

And, to be wise students of history, and reflect on how we got here, rather than assume our forebears were idiots who didn't know what they were doing, why do we have the regulations on business that we do? Why do we have food safety? Why do we have regulations on overtime pay? (And whose bright idea was it to exempt IT workers from that?) Why do we have regulations on medicine, or laws that dictate how and where we drive our cars?

I'm not trying to ask a bunch of leading questions. I don't have the answers here. I just think it's useful to think more broadly than "a flat tax is a fair tax is a just tax is the right thing to do", both historically and ethically.

enjoy,

[vannevar]

Do rich people use more roads, public education, food safety?

Roads certainly, for commercial transportation. Public education and food safety, probably not. The military, definitely, to protect and procure economic assets abroad. And elements of law enforcement (I doubt that you or I could dial up the FBI to raid someone cheating us, but the MPAA and Luis Vitton can).

[functionoid]

There's simply nothing wrong with the "redistribution of wealth"

So you want free pie? which your neighbor baked?

[ClHans]

Actually, that's a rather severe simplification of "what taxes are," but for the sake of discussion, let's roll with it. (or roll it out..and shape it in a pan, and fill it with apples, and bake it..yum!)

Do I personally want free pie, which my neighbor baked? No, I don't think so, and I think that very few people engaged in our ongoing policy debates want that--just like I'd guess that very few people engaged in policy debates are actually advocating a zero-tax policy.

But.. that's not really what taxation is (taking your neighbor's pie for free, outside the confines of the larger social contract, for no purpose but your own greed and with no recompense). What I would propose for the pie-taking exercise, and what has generally been considered ethical, and within the confines of social contracts that do uphold human rights and dignity, takes on, I'd say, a different character:

I have a pie. My neighbor has a pie. There's about five or six more houses all around us, all with a pie. We need a road in front of our houses, so we can go visit the internet cafe, but none of us has the road-making expertise. So let's all take a slice of our pies and give them to the guy with the paving machine.

We also need to make sure the roads stay in good shape, so we've got to give him another slice of pie every year.

We also (and this, I think, is where it gets uncomfortable for some people) need a way to make sure we all always give up a slice of our pie, so we all give another small slice to the guy who's going to go around and make sure we all give some pie.

We saw what happened that one year when it was entirely voluntary, how everyone figured the others would chip in, and no one did, and the road fell into disrepair.

So we not only need to pay for things collectively that none of us could realistically pay for on our own (one big part of the social contract), we also need to account for human nature and hire an enforcer (another big part of the social contract, and the one that makes people uncomfortable) to keep everyone accountable to that same social contract.

Do I want your pie? No. Do I want us all to chip in and pay with our pies for necessary services? Yes.

Very few people, I think, would argue with the need to pay for necessary services collectively. What constitutes a necessary service changes over time, though, and that's why we have an ongoing political dialogue. If these problems were so simple to solve that the answers could fit on bumper stickers, we'd have solved them long ago. But they're not, and that's why we'll never stop having these discussions, and rolling these ideas around in our heads.

best,