chill's Journal: The Price of a Civilized Society 12
[Note: This is a cross-post of something I wrote on Google+]
In the past couple of weeks there were some high-profile calls by wealthier people -- Warren Buffet and Matt Damon (the actor), to name two -- to increase taxes on the rich. They *want* to pay more taxes.
My question is this. Why don't you do it yourself?
I mean, set up a 401(c)(3) tax-exempt charity that will accept donations from everyone, rich and not-so-rich alike. Those funds are then taken and distributed as taxes would be.
For example, taxes pay for our schools. There are no shortage of stories where teachers have to provide, out of their own pocket, extra supplies for their classes. Pay for those directly. Pay for school maintenance and repairs. Build buildings. Hell, give bonuses to teachers, administrators and staff as you feel needed. The first $15,000 of a gift to an individual annually is tax-exempt. I don't know one teacher that would refuse a $15k bonus.
A focused, dedicated group of private individuals should easily be able to reduce the needless bureaucracy and do this efficiently.
Don't stop with education. Provide private grants to needy people to subsidize power, heat and food. Build libraries. Set up public wireless networks.
Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. But the idea that government is the only one able to provide these types of services is harmful to society.
In 19th-Century French Philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville's book Democracy in America, the author explores what makes America different from Europe. One of the major points is the plethora of "fraternal societies" where individuals join and do what was once the function of only governments in Europe -- actively build and support civil society.
To sum up, it is not necessarily only the government's job to do these things. Fostering the notion that this is the exclusive domain of government is detrimental to a civilized society.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/mccain/fraternalorders/page1a.htm
Lots of reasons, idiot (Score:2)
They are concerned with more than financing governmental operation, but also supporting important stability enhancing funcitons like social mobility, and encouraging increased competition. Moreover, there's the extremely relevant point of fairness, in that you can ask a person making $20000 a year to pay a larger percentage of their total income in various taxes than someone making millions per year,
Let's start with social mobility, which has been decreasing significantly in the past 3 decades. Social mob
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I went to great pains to make sure I was talking about supplementing services provided by governments as opposed to replacing them.
I fully understand the need for government to provide a stable base of functions and support for society. I'm not arguing for eliminating government. It is when they keep raising that base unsustainably that I have issues.
Your "last point" exposes your own faulty premise. You are confusing income with wealth. The entire discussion going on is about raising income tax, which is o
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I was making no such conflation of wealth and income. In the US, sufficient wealth IS income. That's just how investments work. Investments grow faster than inflation. With enough captital, you can pay someone else to invest your money and do NO work, and earn more than those doing work.
Countries with healthy long-term economic growth goals tax wealth at brackets designed to discourage the creation of perpetual upper classes. Such taxes facilitate the selling of unused assets.
The current problems faced
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You *are* conflating wealth and income, from the perspective on increasing the income tax. I'm nit picking on this because of that.
I understand invested wealth creates income. My point is the tax increase is on the income only and not the base wealth. Thus, it isn't really a lot and won't be sufficient to address the problem.
Considering I was addressing your point of inherited wealth and the moral justification of people like Paris Hilton -- a current popular example -- this is a valid point.
You lose (Score:2)
My question is this. Why don't you do it yourself?
BZZt, wrong. You, like all the pundits did when this all first came out, keep missing the point. He's saying the system is fucked up if it's giving him the results he says he getting, yet all you come up with is chiding him to cough up some spare scratch. One has nothing to do with the other.
I love your little fantasy of tax-exempt charities, though. Simpler to just use their money and buy chunks of the government, not run some sort of magic fund. Whi
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This is an incorrect assumption in my case. From a fiscal and regulatory sense, I do not agree that we live in some of the most oppressive times ever. I do see a slide towards a privacy
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Well, if I run into any articles advocating that, by itself, with no other policy considerations, I'll let you know, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
moof (Score:1)
Because in practice that's likely too small a scale, or otherwise leaves too much up to chance.
Do it yourself (Score:2)
People *do* it themselves. Heard of the Gates Foundation ? They're funded to the tune of $37 billion and have close to a thousand employees working to distribute the funds according to the wishes of the founders. Many rich people give huge amounts to charity.
That is a good thing. But in no way does it negate the point that the rich should pay substantially higher fraction of their income in taxes than the poor should. There's several reasons that it doesn't add up to the same thing.
First, there's the freelo
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Yes. In fact, this is what I was thinking about when I commented. Just one with a focus on what they think extra taxes should be.
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Well, I screwed THAT tag up.
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You're right that the poor pays low or zero in income-taxes. Nevertheless one of the major differences between different tax-systems, is to which degree they're progressive.
(Notice that I consider health-insurance and suchlike to be part of the tax-system. Otherwise it becomes impossible to compare and contrast different tax-systems. When we're talking wealth-distribution, it's fairly irrelevant if you've got 30% taxes that includes health-insurance, or if you've got 17% taxes plus 13% for health-insurance.