The fault in your logic here is that in your metaphor joe ate the same as everyone else at the restaurant.

The benefits of society as a whole are not equally shared. The wealthiest in society benefit the most from a functioning and stable federal bureaucracy.

> in your metaphor joe ate the same as everyone else at the restaurant.

That's not anywhere in my metaphor.

> The benefits of society as a whole are not equally shared.

This is true but not relevant to my point.

> The wealthiest in society benefit the most from a functioning and stable federal bureaucracy.

This is less likely to be true and also not relevant to my point.

If you’re going to be that pedantic about it, you also never stated that joe ate anything at all, maybe joe paid for apps and just sat there while everyone else ate.

At this point I’m not sure what your point is if its truly your assertion that none of my assumptions were valid. (My assumptions being that we are talking about who assumes responsibility for paying for the benefits of society/governance)

> we are talking about who assumes responsibility for paying for the benefits of society/governance

This has essentially already been decided. The topic is tax avoidance, which I compared to skipping out on a bill that ought to be paid.

It's a pretty standard free rider problem. It doesn't change the problem to point out that the free rider benefits from the ride (which, of course they do) or that they benefit more from it than others, or that they paid unrelated bills.

You’re making a pretty strong assumption that these statistics are a result of tax avoidance. I find it extremely implausible that majority of people who don’t pay income tax are doing so as a result of complex financial schemes. Taking the standard deduction or simply claiming straightforward deductions like the mortgages interest deduction is not tax avoidance when done in the spirit of the law, which, anecdotally, is the case for most middle to low income filers.

I’d need to see some proof before assuming the statistic is a matter of avoidance rather than of explicit tax policy. If you’re claiming people who are in alignment with official tax government policy (again in the spirit not just the letter of the law) are free riders, then we are back to who should assume the responsibility for paying. As stated in my previous post.

> If you’re claiming people who are in alignment with official tax government policy (again in the spirit not just the letter of the law) are free riders, then we are back to who should assume the responsibility for paying. As stated in my previous post.

Sure, I agree with this assessment up to first order. But this is a bit slippery because of second order effects where you can pay to have a favorable tax code created (or at least pay to substantially increase the odds of such a policy being created).

> Taking the standard deduction or simply claiming straightforward deductions like the mortgages interest deduction is not tax avoidance when done in the spirit of the law, which, anecdotally, is the case for most middle to low income filers.

I agree with this.

> I find it extremely implausible that majority of people who don’t pay income tax are doing so as a result of complex financial schemes.

For the short-term Covid-related spike of people not paying due to unemployment and temporary tax credits, sure I agree. In general case, though, the schemes don't have to be very complex and you can just pay people to set them up for you.

Also, the number or percentage of people who don't pay income tax is an indicator of how easy tax avoidance has gotten. That's why that number is quoted. But since the distribution of wealth is so skewed, what really matters in the free rider context is the amount of money not paid into the system.

And for this I don't think it's at all implausible (and is in fact consistent with what we know) to say that the wealthiest Americans pay extremely low income tax rates because of tax avoidance. (Here I am including the creation of favorable tax policy as tax avoidance if it's contrary to the spirit of the US's policy of progressive income tax.)

I guess what’s confusing for me is that the “63% of people don’t pay income taxes” line is usually trotted out to say that the rich are the only ones who pay taxes and everyone is just a welfare queen or something. But it sounds like you are trying to say that it shows that tax avoidance is a real problem and that this a primarily a symptom of the rich being able to hire tax evasion specialists.

If that’s the case then there’s no disagreement from me.

Ah okay, that makes sense then. Sorry about my confusion.

I don't know the motives of the original poster. Since the article was about how the top 10% own ~ 90% of the stock, I assumed the relevance of the income tax figure was that it was related to its impact on wealth inequality.

Perfect response!

Your profile is blank. If you’re up for it. Look at mine and send me an email. Every other comment I saw where I knew the comment was not logically sound but couldn’t quite word it right. You were there already having written a great response.

Thank you for your comment! I’m going to consider reaching out, but I also like keeping my account pseudonymous so I’ll have to figure some things out.

Of course, understand your concern.

I haven’t updated my HN in forever. It is updated now.

If you ever reach out as someone who discovered the community I co-founded or even just try it out. I nor any one else would ever know you are this current handle. Since there’s a few inquires a week and they range a lot.