Is it ethical to make rich pay more taxes?

by Lore 98 Replies latest jw friends

  • botchtowersociety
    botchtowersociety

    Plundering peoples earnings to compensate for the greed and corruption in politics and banking is theft. Most taxes come from ordinary working people because there are so many of them. If this tax raid goes on people will be no better off than communists, making people work for nothing while paying their utility bills and giving them pocket money.

    They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. They're feeding our people that Government Cheese

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZVPv9B-ZlM

  • Curtains
    Curtains

    of course it is ethical for the rich to pay more taxes. One simple reason is that we all pay the same for the necessities upon which our lives depend.

    a simple Siberian proverb comes to mind - possession is donation

  • botchtowersociety
    botchtowersociety

    I'm curious Lore, why do you think Adam Smith disagreed with you? Did he just not have a well developed sense of "fairness"?

    Adam Smith never proposed progressive taxation on income.

  • pedal power
    pedal power

    Your premise in my not so humble opinion ,should be based on, what type of society do we want to live in ? should the rich pay more taxes than the poor ? it really depends upon what type of society you want to live in. USA, massive disparity in wealth, no health care, insane polorised society, massive Armed forces,massive polluter, massive amount of obese peope, massive immigration, and more importantly MASSIVE DEBT,massive prison population, massive murder rates, taxes almost seem to be an irrelevence in light of the problems your country is facing, what do you think ? would it be better to have a more equitable society via the tax system, than the one you currently live in, it really depends on the society you want to live in ,do you want the statuus quo, or do you want a better society, a more equal society, taxation is an important factor in realising that ambition

  • simon17
    simon17

    Another way to look at it is that rich people have

    a) More to lose &

    b) More means to exploit opportunities

    So perhaps they owe more to the government that protects and serves them then someone living in the inner cities with nothing in the bank account and really no means of taking advantage of all that America has to offer.

    A third reason is, and this may not necessarily be ethical, but poor people NEED their money more. Maybe they don't deserve it per se, but taking an extra 10% from a rich person, where that say $100,000 is going to mean they can't buy a new ferrari vs. taking 10% from a poor person where that $3,000 means they cant pay their rent is a major difference.

  • Lore
    Lore
    I'm curious Lore, why do you think Adam Smith disagreed with you? Did he just not have a well developed sense of "fairness"?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

  • SixofNine
    SixofNine

    Quote BTS: "Adam Smith never proposed progressive taxation on income"

    Your dishonesty knows no bounds, BTS. Seriously, you thought you could make that adequately truthful by adding "on income" to the end of it? "Adequately truthful" for you is "governing body style dishonesty" for the rest of us.


    "The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."<108>
    Moreover, in this passage Smith goes on to specify progressive, not flat, taxation:
    "The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion"<109>
    Smith even specifically named taxes that he thought should be required by the state among them luxury goods taxes and tax on rent. He believed that tax laws should be as transparent as possible and that each individual should pay a "certain amount, and not arbitrary," in addition to paying this tax at the time "most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it".<108> Smith goes on to state that:
    "Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty."[110

  • SixofNine
    SixofNine

    Just answer the question Lore. Why do you think Adam Smith disagreed with you? Surely you've thought about this, yes? Since you've done your homework and all ;)

    Oh wait, you didn't know that the man known as the "father of capitalism" doesn't share your autistically motivated view of "fair" taxation?

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Did it ever occur to us that Smith could very well have been wrong?

  • botchtowersociety
    botchtowersociety
    Just answer the question Lore. Why do you think Adam Smith disagreed with you? Surely you've thought about this, yes? Since you've done your homework and all ;)
    Oh wait, you didn't know that the man known as the "father of capitalism" doesn't share your autistically motivated view of "fair" taxation?

    SixOfNine needs to stop running its ignorant mouth until it does some homework and knows what it is talking about.

    Did it ever occur to us that Smith could very well have been wrong?

    Smith was wrong about a number of things, like his labor theory of value (he should have read more from the Salamanca School from the Late Middle Ages), but a progressive income tax is not among them.

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