Okay, but I don't regard you as an sort of moral actor for that: you intentionally don't do something you readily admit would make the situation better, out of your emotional needs, while politicking to force everyone to do the thing you're not actually willing to do yourself.

So no, I simply don't believe you: I don't think you believe you should pay higher taxes, I think you believe other people in your income bracket should, to run society the way you envision. If somehow that didn't apply to you, but applied to every one, well that would be just fine wouldn't it?

I originally didn't agree with GP, but the posts like yours trying to refute it are actually bringing me around to that position -- because they're deeply morally compromised, full of special pleading, and so on.

..you're not actually willing to do yourself."

That should be:

...you're not actually willing to do solely by yourself.

As I said, what does it matter if I'm a hypocrite? My belief that taxes should be higher for people like me is true or false independent of my hypocrisy. The question of taxation levels should not be determined or influenced by the level of my own personal hypocrisy.

I don't think you believe you should pay higher taxes, I think you believe other people in your income bracket should,..

You inserted other. This is wrong. I believe all people in my income bracket should pay more in taxes. This includes me. I do believe that government should tax me more. I'm also not going to donate more to the government if it isn't forced. Free rider problem and all that.

There's no special pleading in my position and I don't claim that my position on taxation levels is some sort of moral action on my part. All I've said is the following 2 things:

1. Taxes should higher for people in my income bracket.

2. I'm not going donate more to the government than what is required.

Make of this what you will. I'm a hypocrite. But I still think taxes should be higher for people in my income bracket and this obviously includes myself.

I still believe tax rates are too low for people in my income bracket. Also one should ponder that the marginal effect of donations to the government by me are neglible but when done on the scale of millions of people they end up not being negligible. I don’t think me paying an extra $x thousand will actually help anyone. I do think that millions of people paying $x thousands more will. In this case, size matters.

Then by the same logic, doing so when other people pay won’t actually help anyone either.

Replace the word other in your comment with everyong in the tax bracket I’m in and you’ll see that your conclusion is wrong. Consider this analogy. Me pooping in the local lake isn’t going to adversely affect the lake’s ecology. A million people doing so will.

It sounds like you think government waste implies $1000 is meaningless. Certainly $1000 in some private folks' pockets will materially help them.

We're talking about marginal returns here, i.e. whether or not the author should donate that extra $1,000 to the government. Donating that extra $1,000 when other people don't will help just as much, if not more, as when other people do.

You are consistently confusing marginal effect and aggregate effect in your posts. You are consistently misunderstanding that there is a huge difference in effectiveness in everyone in a tax bracket having increased taxes versus a single person paying the increase in taxes. There’s big difference in me wanting to pay $1,000 more in taxes versus wanting everyone in my tax bracket to pay $1,000 more in taxes.

What I’m discussing is precisely marginal effects and not aggregate effects. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18836313. Read more carefully next time.

Your emphasis on marginal vs. aggregate is why you are wrong and why your statements are wrong.

Nowhere did I make that claim.

> Your emphasis on marginal vs. aggregate is why you are wrong and why your statements are wrong.

No. You just can't read, apparently.

That's not what they said, at all. You appear to think everyone is maximally selfish and short-sighted:

you believe others should pay...if that somehow didn't apply to you...that'd be just fine

That is not the case. Not everyone thinks like this.

Having thought about this a bit more, the idea of "not being taxed enough" is not necessarily about raising revenue for the government. They don't need to take your money to tax you, they can just print money and tax everyone with inflation. The point of taxing the "rich" more is to level the playing field. It is prevent power from concentrating in people who are not democratically accountable. So in that case, donating your estate will not achieve that goal.

Whether or not taxes should be raised is independent of whatever level of hypocrisy I possess.

"I want to pay more taxes" is obviously a stand-in for "tax rates should be higher", not because we love taxes, but because they help us achieve national priorities. Individual action doesn't do that, which is precisely why they're national priorities.

It's all great in theory, but every single developed country wastes billions in taxpayers money every year on all sorts of irrelevant things. Politician pet projects. Projects going massively wrong and overrunning in cost at inflated prices. Inefficiencies. Etc..

I'd rather donate a healthy amount of money to a nonprofit of my choice (and yes, take the tax deduction for doing that -- can donate almost twice as much!). Those charities generally will be able to allocate said resources much more efficiently.

You do realize that people do seemingly contradictory things, right? And sometimes have overtly contradictory beliefs relative to their actions. As Saint Paul referenced; the thorn in his side.

My beliefs versus my actions in this instance is an aspect of the free rider problem. Look it up.

I don't know anyone who is hungry so I can't directly give food to the hungry. One can seek out an organization to provides food for the hungry. I believe that the organization best suited to do this government. Besides, there is more to the proper running of a society than just feeding hungry people.

We need roads, sewers, clean water, a legal system, police, teachers, etc. The umbrella organization that we give money to in order to provide these things is the government.

Empirically speaking, government is one of the least suited and efficient organizations to do this [1].

“[Government] income redistribution agencies are estimated to absorb about two-thirds of each dollar budgeted to them in overhead costs, and in some cases as much as three-quarters of each dollar. Using government data, Robert L. Woodson (1989, p. 63) calculated that, on average, 70 cents of each dollar budgeted for government assistance goes not to the poor, but to the members of the welfare bureaucracy and others serving the poor. Michael Tanner (1996, p. 136 n. 18) cites regional studies supporting this 70/30 split.

“In contrast, administrative and other operating costs in private charities absorb, on average, only one-third or less of each dollar donated, leaving the other two-thirds (or more) to be delivered to recipients. Charity Navigator, www.charitynavigator.org the newest of several private sector organizations that rate charities by various criteria and supply that information to the public on their web sites, found that, as of 2004, 70 percent of charities they rated spent at least 75 percent of their budgets on the programs and services they exist to provide, and 90 percent spent at least 65 percent. The median administrative expense among all charities in their sample was only 10.3 percent.”

[1] http://mises.org/journals/jls/21_2/21_2_1.pdf

Thus it is safe to say that government is much more efficient at accomplishing these goals than charity. Charity is much more efficient at the margins. It’s great for the fringe cases once the majority of the problem has been addressed.