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0 pointsbenwerd10y ago0 comments

That's a very libertarian point of view. Has it been shown to work in practice over an extended time? I know that in the US growth was stronger with higher taxation.

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.

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thadd10y ago· 1 in thread

I understand your point, but I think you're being too abstract. End of the day, someone is being taxed (fined by the government) more than another, simply because they are wealthier. That doesn't sit right with me.

As far as growth being stronger with higher tax rates, I assume you're talking about post ww2 era? If so, then I think that was probably more to do with the fact that the rest of the world was destroyed rather than due to our tax code.

hga10y ago

And it was a short lived thing, by the mid-late '50s things were sputtering, and the top tax rate was 91% ("We like Ike?"). JFK-LBJ reduced that to 77% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964) to great economic effects (unfortunately, the increased tax revenues were not so much that LBJ couldn't do a guns and butter budget that almost bankrupted the nation, leading to a decade and a half of malaise).

Frondo10y ago

"Has it been shown to work in practice over an extended time?"

Depends on what you mean by "work"--this is what things looked like in the late 1800s, early 1900s, in the US. Conditions for workers were bad enough that it led to the union movement, federal workplace regulation, etc.

For most people, you'd have a hard time saying it "worked", but for the handful of people who got rich during that time, sure, it "worked".

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