[zxspectrum1982]

"Benefit society"??? Pal, stop with the communist propaganda and start thinking for yourself.

One thing I can assure you: the moment you get a job, a house, a family, that's the moment you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes that end up eating 70% of your income. If you are not socialist when you are young, you haven't got a heart; if you are not conservative when you grow up, you haven't got a brain.

[halper]

I was right-leaning when I was young and then I saw where the policies of the last three decades have taken us and I do not like it. I have earned a top-percentile salary in a rich western country and paid lots in income tax, and I would happily give more away to make sure people who make different life choices are taken care of and get more chances in life. The rich need no more money.

[ath3nd]

Also, what good is it to have a great house, an expensive car, and private tutored kids, if the outside of your house is a slum, the roads are too bad for your car, and your kids risk being kidnapped for ransom any time they go to play outside?

The rich through times always have had the delusion that their wealth will protect them and isolate them from society, with their private armies, private healthcare, private tutors and expensive villas. But if anyone looks at history, it always ends up the same way. Based on that knowledge, it's the rich that should be actively supporting equality and progress in society as if their lives depend on it.

[InsideOutSanta]

"I just want everything to be the same it is now, except with no government that helps anyone else because I don't want to pay taxes, and I already have everything I need" is a pretty comfortable position. Until, inevitably, people run out of bread, and the guillotines come out.

I'm more than happy to pay my taxes and ensure everybody else has a good life, too. I don't want to find out first-hand how long a head survives without its body still attached to it.

[ath3nd]

> you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes that end up eating 70% of your income

Where does the water from your tap come from?

Where did you or your children go to study?

Did you make your own road, that you use to go to work?

Do you have a pension built up?

Do you fight your own fires and fight your own crime?

[ekianjo]

To be fair most of the taxes do not even go to what you describe and there is massive waste happening in the administrations.

[lores]

There is, unfortunately, in every large and small organisation. I can't say I've noticed any particular qualitative difference between the efficiencies of government departments and corps of equivalent size when I was working for them; if anything, the government employees were always conscious of the fact they were spending taxpayers' money that was not theirs, although I can't talk of the practical results.

If these organisations were private, waste would be equivalent, but they would lose the mentality of acting in the public interest, and there would be a profit margin taken off. I'm pretty sure it would not be an improvement overall, purely from a viewpoint of efficiency.

[ath3nd]

Better some waste happening in the public sector and a still a public road being built than a crypto bro buying a lambo from a windfall they made on a rug-pull from a meme coin.

If you don't artificially curb wealth accumulation with laws, taxes and wealth limits, you will always and inevitably end up having an accumulation of wealth that allows the rich to stay rich forever, and keep the rest perpetually in poverty. I have consistently been in the highest taxable bracket in my country, and am happy to contribute even a bigger % of my wealth towards the betterment of the living conditions of my country and city.

Sauce:

- https://ifs.org.uk/articles/inherited-wealth-course-be-much-...

- https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/08/moving-up-the-income...

> The gap was most pronounced in the US: less than 10% of sons with low-earning fathers made it into the richest 25% of the population, while almost 50% of those with top-earning fathers grew up to become high earners themselves

Talk about "self-made". History has shown again and again that this can only go on as long until the poor and oppressed rise up, seize the wealth, and in the process, harm their "oppressors".

[freejazz]

Because giving it to Amazon is making society better?

[InsideOutSanta]

>"Benefit society"??? Pal, stop with the communist propaganda and start thinking for yourself.

It's funny to me that you both think that "benefitting society" is "communist propaganda" and that others need to start thinking for themselves. Who are these communists spreading this duplicitous propaganda of considering the well-being of others and the betterment of our community? I need to find them to thank them for their service and also scold them for being bad at communism.

>One thing I can assure you: the moment you get a job, a house, a family, that's the moment you'll realize you are being systematically robbed by taxes

I have all that, and I still care for people other than myself and my family.

[lores]

I'm probably older than you, pal, and I'm happy to pay taxes as long as they help make society better. This is a considered, rational, and ethical decision. Just because I'm a highly-paid engineer doesn't mean I work harder or am a more deserving human being than a nurse or a Bangladeshi immigrant working two shifts a day at a fast-food. I'm not so selfless I want to give all my good luck away, but not so selfish I don't want life to be easier for others too, don't want the kids to get a good education, don't want the sick to get treated, don't want interesting art in the streets. I love dystopias, but only in books. I also am not so deluded as to think everything is reducible to money, and that what I achieved did not depend on having a society around me that made it possible.