Who is proposing to make the rich poor?
The most anyone here seems to be proposing is to make the rich less rich but still rich.
This is backwards. Not sure why this should even be done. And why does this have to end at an individual? Why should some countries be so economically powerful and others not? Will it be ok if wealth from developed nations were transferred to poor nations, every year?
You make poor people rich, you make the sick and malnourished healthy, you make the illiterate literate. You don't make the rich less rich, or the healthy less healthy or the literate less read.
Progress happens in the forward direction, not by pulling people down to make your failure look good.
There is a irrational fear here somehow equating wealth and evil. Not sure why people even think that way.
It will, and it happens; think the rich Western European countries putting money into Europe, which they pay out to the economically less developed countries in the east and south. It's what allowed Greece to not go bankrupt. There's also basic relief coming from the UN, and of course taking in Syrian refugees.
> There is a irrational fear here somehow equating wealth and evil. Not sure why people even think that way.
Because money buys power, and if, say, someone wants to build a wall to keep Mexicans or Canadians out, enough money will buy enough power to do that. Corruption. Second, the rich in the US got rich at the expense of the now nearly non-existent middle class and the poor, and the relatively rich country isn't putting its money into basic services like decent, affordable health care, basic income, or decent jobs (something above a McJob that doesn't require a university degree).
It's not the rich that are the problem, it's the fact the middle class is going extinct because of them or their businesses. It's the companies like Amazon that offer low prices due to low-paid but hard-working employees (that will soon be replaced by robots), or the food companies with dollar menus (whose employees are also being replaced by robots / computer screens). There's no real higher-level jobs becoming available for those people - also because higher-level educations have to either be paid out of pocket, or paid out of various grants (like the ones that will pay your education if you happen to be good at sports or chess or whatever).
[/rant. Probably wrong. But, perceptions]
Only because I copied your phrasing.
I dare say there are people around who want to tax rich people just because they don't like wealth, but that's not what's being proposed by the OP and it's not what most people advocating higher taxation are calling for. E.g., from the OP: "So by taxing the wealthy and spending it on services, we can better ensure that the level playing field you allude to continues to exist." (In case it isn't clear from that quotation, the "level playing field" isn't about equalizing wealth or income, it's about providing public services to everyone.)
> equating wealth and evil
Who's doing that? Here's the OP again: "No one believes that there should not be rich people." "No one wants to take the money you have away." You may think the OP is insincere, but he is very plainly not equating wealth and evil. I don't see anyone here equating wealth and evil, implicitly or explicitly. I'm afraid I think you're just imagining it.
Here are arguments I see actually being made by people in this discussion advocating more tax. I have italicized the only one of these arguments that is on the same continent as the ballpark of "equating wealth and evil", and it's still a fair way away. Governments can allocate capital more effectively than most billionaires. Taxation may incentivize wealthy people to invest more. Taxes are low right now compared with what they have historically been, so raising them might be a good idea. Inequality itself causes social problems. No single person can really be so much more productive than others as to justify billions in wealth; so if someone is that wealthy, they got that way on account of others' work, so they don't deserve it. Economists are saying we need to reduce inequality to avoid disaster.
> Will it be ok if wealth from developed nations were transferred to poor nations, every year?
Yes, that would probably be a good thing. Is it supposed to be obviously not? Most developed nations do in fact transfer some of their wealth to poor nations every year. So do citizens of those developed nations. We call the first of those "aid" and the second "charity" and while it's possible to argue about how effective they are it's certainly not obvious that they're a bad idea.
Read this thread over again. There is a sad sentiment regarding Elon Musk's Mansion.
>>Governments can allocate capital more effectively than most billionaires.
Demonstrably wrong. See wars in history.
>>Inequality itself causes social problems.
Like what? Your USSR, North Koreas, Venezuelas of the world. In fact every failed communist nation in the past century falsifies this claim.
>>No single person can really be so much more productive than others as to justify billions in wealth; so if someone is that wealthy, they got that way on account of others' work, so they don't deserve it. Economists are saying we need to reduce inequality to avoid disaster.
Appreciable sentiment if you till the land with a shovel in your hand. Increase of productivity is not always measured through human effort alone. But also through tools which humans invent to amplify their productivity through automation of some kind. There are kinds of effort, one where you do all the work alone. One where you work to invent a tool that does that the job for you. Latter is also commonly known as 'progress'.
