Those with the most to lose benefit the most from having a just and civil society, but that realization never seems to percolate through.

A just and civil society being one where the harder I work, the more taxes I pay? Where stores are closing right and left because theft isn’t prosecuted but I have to pay $7,000 to get a bathroom permitted while an RV on the street outside my house is considered a home and gets to dump shit on the street with no repercussions?

Sucks that some people have no better choice than to live in an RV and dump their shit on the street.

Sorry about the cost of your bathroom addition though.

If you ask around here in Seattle, many of them will tell you they came here for the free stuff. They do have a choice.

> A just and civil society being one where the harder I work, the more taxes I pay?

How about: a just and civil economic system is one where the more utility I produce the higher quality of life I can achieve?

This is very different from what you implied (being punished for creating value). Taxes and UBI aren't in opposition to this. It still rewards production and those that create value. It also recognizes that hard work isn't always valuable (digging a tunnel with a spoon is harder than with heavy machinery. But the latter provides more value). Maybe we should frame things this way instead. Progressive taxes do not result in situations where a raise in pay causes a decrease in take-home money. It does instead address the issue that money is sticky and the mere existence of capital passively generates capital (which actually means you generate wealth without doing work). Fine at certain levels but clearly can get out of control (generate wealth for retirement vs generational/perpetual wealth where your children end up wealthier than you passively).

Again, nothing to do with whether UBI is fair. I accept progressive income taxation isn't fair and in fact I'd rather we did look for better ways to structure how tax is collected. An ideal economy wouldn't tax income at all - why discourage people from earning money? And if a UBI could do better job of reducing extreme and destabilizing levels of inequality, we could probably do away with income tax, and tax things there's a reason to discourage instead.

uh? the rich don't want a just society, they just want to remain rich…

Only a--reasonably and relatively; no society is perfect--just and civil society provides (over a sufficiently long time horizon) the kind of stability and structure that allows the rich to stay rich. Which doesn't mean that you can't get rich in other societies, of course. But, broadly and historically speaking, having to expend those riches directly on men who will harm and kill for you has something of an expiration date, usually around when they realize they can just take more than you'd be paying them.

That's to say that functional courts and a state that acts as the only legitimate applicator of force tends to be a lot better for the rich, and those too fall (or themselves turn on the rich, too) when they stray too far from the line.

> we all have the same access to government provided services and infrastructure regardless of how much income tax we pay

Bullshit, at least in the USA. I make too much money to get EBT, the same free phone we issue to illegal aliens, etc.