Not only do removing tuition fees or enacting universal healthcare remove systemic inequalities, they actually make everyone wealthier. We will have a stronger economy if we take care of the social infrastructure we need. These measures lead to growth.
Imagine a world where a startup entrepreneur doesn't have to be terrified of their health insurance status - it's the same one where a working class family isn't bankrupted by illness. Imagine a more highly educated workforce with more potential hires domestically - it's the same one where a high school graduate can afford to be the first person in their family to get an education. The things that help the poorest in society help all of us. Even if you don't care about what happens to poorer members of your community, you can rest easy in the knowledge that these things benefit you. Social infrastructure works.
The only detrimental effect this would have is that the very richest people don't get to keep quite as much money, on the face of it. But they would make more money overall.
I would like to see a fairer America, where more people have opportunities, and fewer people are living harsh poverty conditions. It's exciting to see these topics finally get the air time they deserve.
If your goal is truly to see fewer people living in harsh poverty conditions, an absolutely noble goal, let the free market be. Capitalism will (and has, see the extreme poverty figures) bring far more people out of poverty than any bureaucrat could ever hope to.
I don't believe progressive taxation is discriminatory. The more you earn, the more the marginal utility of each additional dollar you earn is reduced. Progressive taxation recognizes this, and therefore eases survival burdens on lower income workers - who are necessary for any capitalist economy to function - while continuing to allow higher earners to become wealthy. It's a good system.
Life is better with worker safety regulations, child labor regulations, overtime regulations, regulations on being fired (which we in the US generally don't have), and so on.
The goal of "let the free market be" is what made life brutal for scores of workers throughout the first part of the industrial revolution--we moved away from that all with good cause.
But it won't. After generations of people like you persecuting those who make more money than you, they've learned to dodge the ever higher taxes you would levy against them for the crime of being good at business.
Even if the laws were passed to raise taxes on the 1%, they'd find a loophole.
Countries choose what they wish to pay for. Canada's choices are different than their southern neighbor.
Just tell the 1% that if they want the government to provide them security from the marauding masses (we're getting there), they need to pay up their fair share.
Unless, of course, you think more government spending is better than more private economic activity. As an extreme on what this sort of thing can lead to, see the 1937 capital strike (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike). At the other end, see the economic growth from JFK's and Reagan's tax rate cuts.
As for fair share, 1/3 is not enough? Its not like they're getting proportionate protection from the "marauding masses" for the money they're paying; in fact, the powers that be seem to have no problems with SEIU etc. direct action against their homes. Self-help is where that's at, which might have something to do with the unprecedented US civilian purchases of guns and ammo, continuing to this day (and with Hillary! now calling for mass confiscations...).
1/3 would probably be enough, but they're paying ~1/5.
I'm not saying we should or should not raise taxes on 1%'ers. But we should keep in mind that there is no free lunch. What we do has unintended consequences that we should keep in mind.
If you start taxing investments more, it's not like the rich will suddenly stop investing. You should hear Warren Buffet talk about this. No rich person is going to go like "Well... I could make money on this, but not going to do it because the state is going to tax it..." This is something that happens only in abstract economic models, not in the real world.
In fact, if you raise taxes rich people may be incentivized to work harder to find better investments with higher gains.
Utter bullshit, which has been reflected in actual US investment history since the Capital Strike of 1937. The perception of fairness goes both ways, you know.
Not to mention reflected in my father's (and others') economic behavior as the Reagan tax rate cuts took effect, and they put much less effort into sheltering income from very high tax rates (generally, something with a net vector sum of zero) and focused more on just, you know, running good businesses.
Then there's the minor detail that a tax increase can turn a profitable investment into a loss. The constant chaos of changing tax rates, or at least serious proposals to do so, also changes the nature of investments, for example favoring quick gains before the government might ruin it.
Money is supposed to be fungible, and the free market is supposed to allocate capital optimally. In any other case where we taxed one kind of thing at 30% and another at 15%, people would be crying foul about this crazy taxation regime that was distorting the market.
Now, if you want to talk about corporate taxes, that's a somewhat different story. Corporations owe their existence to the State (whether they should exist or not is a separate question) and since they derive benefits from the special status granted to them by the State, I can see a reasoned argument that they should pay for that special status. Of course there are potential, negative, unintended consequences to raising corporate taxes, but the concept is more palatable than the individual income tax (which needs to be completely eliminated).
Property is a fiction made reality by government. Society agrees to let individuals have exclusive access to particular resources based on a system of rules. One of those rules is that people pay taxes. It is not "theft", because it's part of the property system. I could just as well insist the car in your drive is "mine" and call it "theft" when you try to drive it.
Presumably you have absolutely no issue with the government putting guns in other people's faces to stop them using "your" stuff. So don't complain when they try to stop you hoarding "their" stuff.
If you would prefer a different set of rules, then you're free to try and enforce them yourself.
That's close, but you're missing an essential point. To the extent that we can speak about "society" in an general sense, it would be more accurate to say that "society agrees to help you defend your property rights if you play by their rules". That doesn't mean that property is a fiction that requires government or society. And by the same token, there's no reason you couldn't construct a system where everybody helps everybody else defend their property simply in terms of "mutual aid". Taxation is not an inherent property of all systems for defending property. In fact, I will continue to argue that taxation is inherently inimical to the idea of property.
If you really are an island with no interaction with the outside world, fair enough. But then you have other problems.
That's irrelevant. It's robbery because your agency, your ability to choose is being taken from you. As a thought experiment, ask yourself this:
What if you were on your way to a local orphanage to give your last $100 to the orphanage, and halfway there, a robber with a gun steps from an alleyway, puts a gun in your face, and demands your money... then, after he gives it to you, he proceeds to the same orphanage and hands the money to them.
Would you still say you were robbed? The same end was achieved, so you really weren't, right? But yet, almost everybody will intuitively find something wrong about this scenario. That "wrongness" is the issue.
This is naive on two counts. You can't raise taxes without affecting people's behaviour. If someone's tax burden goes from 35% to 45%, they'll put more effort into avoiding taxes, and you're not going to see the increase that the obvious calculation says you will.
But let's ignore that for now. The highest number here is $276 billion. That's a bit less than 10% of the $3 trillion tax receipts collected in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#M...
That's a significant amount, but it's not really earth shattering unless you can use it effectively. And if you can use it effectively, you probably could have used the previous $3t effectively as well.
In reality, when you collect an extra $X billion, you don't get to go "oh great, we can spend $Y billion of that on paying for college tuition, $Z billion on a child tax credit, and the rest can reduce the national debt". What actually happens is the same thing that happened to the rest of your money. It goes to the military, it goes to subsidies for entrenched interests, it goes to pork barrels, and a fraction of it goes to actually improving things.
What could an extra $276 billion do? Surprisingly little.
> I trust wealthy individuals to invest that extra 10% into efforts that benefit society much more than I trust the government.
Those wealthy individuals can, in general, be trusted to do things that benefit themselves. Corruption be as it may, the government is still in the business of the greater good, however imperfect.
I see paying a high taxes as a privilege since I still get to keep much more then less fortunate, less talented, or lazier people. I say this as someone who is living in Europe, where I'm paying almost 50% of my income to taxes.
But it also really bothers me that it's just so arbitrary. I can't imagine the arrogance necessary to think that you know how much to tax a certain segment of society relative to another.
And if Hillary Clinton was serious about any of this, she would return donations from all of these people.
I would be in favor of this proposal if it could be demonstrated that college costs could actually stay somewhat stable (i.e. not increase faster than inflation) for even a relatively short period of time. Otherwise the cost of this could spiral out of control in short order.
How does one separate the politics from the rest?
Raising tax is one part of the people getting what they need. The other questions that are just as important are how to provide services as cost effectively as possible and is it worth the loss of investment in the economy. Also maybe is existing investment channeled effectively by the existing tax structures.
But the reality is capital flees whenever a country tries to impose higher taxes.
The solution is a global taxing regime - something that Thomas Picketty advocated.
Taxes fundamentally is an business expense - and likes all business expenses companies will try to reduce it as much as they can - naturally due to the freedom of the market - companies that do not have to pay higher taxes will produce cheaper goods while maintaining quality and destroying their competition.
Its a prisoner's dilemma problem. With countries playing off each other to welcome businesses in their countries - the UK, US, etc.
The solution is for all countries to co-operate and create a global system to keep a close eye on the flow of capital. A change in america might actually lead to it, since america is good at bullying other countries to get its way.
Btw the same thing happened with China - its not that the Chinese are somehow inherently more capable - its just that they did not have the same level of obligation to their workers - health, pension, etc - as industrialized nations.
This is why its important to create a even and common playing field before talking about the "magic of the free market".
