Yup. Cigars, Masons, Yacht clubs, Golf clubs, vacations to Ibiza. There's an endless list of rich only completely private locals. If people can just keep their damn mouths shut then it's all good.

And I would suppose that there's an acceleration with wealth, right? Like a cosmological constant of wealth gap, reset in some places every once in a very rare.

Isn't the extreme upper end of a progressive tax code essentially an understanding that "look, if you're making this many multiples of everyone else's income, you're probably doing something illegal. So help fund the military / social welfare and we won't prosecute you"?

Edit: I realized I didn't use the most accurate language. "... you're probably doing something unfair" would be a better characterization.

It doesn't even have to do with making a lot of money. Everyone breaks laws every single day. It isn't a question of 'if', it is a question of 'when'.

Did Bill Gates 'break the law' by essentially creating a monopoly? Technically yeah, but is that really a law anyone actually cares about?

Creating a monopoly is not illegal, it's illegal to use monopoly power to damage opponents.

> Creating a monopoly is not illegal

No, read section 2 of the Sherman Act.

> Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony

The only legal form of monopoly is one that comes into existence without anyone intentionally creating it.

I don't think that's the rationale behind the US tax code. The top bracket is less than $500k, and the real inherent unfairness in our system is that having money makes you more money.

That's about wealth and Capitol gain, not income.

Where are you getting this from?

No, it isn't.

If not, then what moral basis does a progressive tax code rest on? Or do you disagree with a progressive code?

Decreasing marginal utility of money plus "fairness" (everyone sacrificing an equal proportion of their utility).

Fairness is in quotes because it's a complicated word.

Added an edit onto my original because I realized I was using illegal as a proxy for fair (given the context of the article and SEC/Wall Street prosecutions).

I consider a progressive tax code to be justified by supporting the system which permits large gains.

There is also an argument about holding onto large amounts of wealth being difficult without expending some of your resources to protect it. If nothing else, taxes spread the burden of the security apparatus around. If you have more to lose, you pay more to protect it.

That's fair, and pretty earning-method-agnostic. Although resting strictly on that would seem to lack a justification for most tax-funded social welfare programs.

Does it need to rest on any moral basis?

>Or do you disagree with a progressive code?

Depends very much on the country, but in many cases yes. I believe that it can create a situation that disincentives paying taxes altogether.

In my case instead of paying almost 50% tax rate I've moved all of my income into a friendlier legal climate where I only have to pay a tenth of that (something a lot of people can do for only a few grand).

Although it's also worth noting that I've got ethical issues with financially supporting the Finnish government, and those have played no small part in my decision. I'll gladly expand on that if you want.

I'd love to hear about your ethical issues with the Finnish government.

Utter lack of accountability for government officials, no matter how badly or systemically you screw up you'll never face any consequences for it.

Actually, the justice system even actively rewards law enforcement for abusing their powers in a blatantly illegal manner. In this country we don't have the concept of "fruit of the poisonous tree", which in combination with police writing their own search "warrants" results in a perverse system where they can just march into anyones home. seize whatever they want and no matter what that'll be admissible in court.

Now, it might actually be possible for this system to actually work if there was some level of accountability here. But no, if a police officer straight up falsifies the reasoning behind a search warrant, they will not face any kind of repercussions for that. Why would they? It's a win for them. Only thing you'll get from suing them is a symbolic piece of paper that says that the police acted wrong, and maybe a few hundred euros in compensation.

Unsurprisingly, Finland has repeatedly lost cases relating to such searches in the ECHR. Very little has resulted from those losses.

Hey, I actually just today got a letter thats yet another example of this.

I got a notice from the government collections agency that they will start seizing two thirds of any transfers to my Finnish bank accounts to pay for a debt that was paid three years ago.

This has already been sorted out in the courts a year ago, a judge has confirmed that I did in fact pay said debt in 2013. Nevertheless, today the collections agency decided that it can just ignore the courts decision and start seizing my funds.

I just tried calling them, not once but four times. Each time I was given a different phone number to call, and each time nobody picked up. In fact two of the phone numbers had full voicemail boxes. Finally I managed to get an email address out of them.

This is the kind of incompetence that the Finnish government allows to thrive, I've been trying to sort this out for 3 years now and have received several acknowledgements that it's sorted out. I even had a court confirm this.

I feel that such incompetence simply shouldn't have a place in a civilised society.

Agreed. But for Political Correctness remove ", you're probably doing something illegal" and thats is probably the moral basis.

I've never been much of one for Political Correctness as long as my statement doesn't actively make an oppressed group feel worse about themselves. I added an edit to clarify the correlation I was trying to draw.

I'm sure the vast majority goes unpunished. But they do make an effort. It is relatively easy to find suspicious trades using statistical methods. Once the regulators decide to pursue a particular trade or event, they are quite exhaustive in establishing ties between insiders and the suspicious trading activity.

For example, as a young lawyer, I played a small part on an M&A deal where there was suspicious trading by some UK-based hedge funds. All the lawyers, bankers, and principals on the deal received a letter from the SEC asking for a list of every person who may have had knowledge of the deal, what they knew, and when they first knew it. That went as far as listing secretaries who were physically stationed near our office, whether or not they worked on the transaction. Nothing came of that investigation, which as far as I know may be the usual result. There are certainly stories where the SEC or DOJ have managed to establish amazingly tenuous connections between tippers and tippees. Presumably the badguy will not just volunteer "hey I give stock tips to my college buddy". But I think if the suspicion is high enough, the regulators can be quite systematic in tracking down leads.

It's pretty hard

One hacker group was trading ephemeral insider trading tips on snapchat.

They got busted because some old fart had an email of a screenshot of the tip.

"I don't get snapchat" use your imagination