There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “the rich are not paying their fair share”.

Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough to be his fair share?

Is it reasonable for society, through taxes, to take more than half of what you earn? (e.g., in CA the top brackets out you at 37% federal + 12.3% State = 49.3% tax rate. And that’s before sales tax!)

(I wrote this comment as a _reaction_ to yours -- it turned out not to be a _response_ to it, so I apologise if I seem to put words in your mouth.)

I have this idea rummaging about that I have never quite seen articulated in these discussions.

The earnings of "rich friends" are often seen as a singular, isolated achievement, and fairness is then discussed as relative to that: "they earned it, so is it fair to take X%?"

It seems to me that society at large facilitates those earnings. The roads that their workers drive on, the water facility that supplies the school that their employees send their children to. The unemployment safety net that lets employees take risks and take the job of the industrialist... The list is endless.

All this is the net sum of what was _also_ given to (taken by?) the person that makes a billion dollars. In this context I think the "fairness" argument against taxation becomes weaker.

It doesn’t become weaker unless you can cogently express a limiting principle to your argument:

- Why isn’t it fair to take 99% of the highest earners’ income?

- Why isn’t it fair to take 50% of the median earner’s income? They, too, drive on roads and send their children to school.

Another good one: Why is it fair to take X% of earnings made over 2 years, but Y>X % if earned over 1 year, for the same total earnings?

Looking for fairness to me is a fools errand. It’s not even a real thing, nor is it something any 2 people will universally agree on.

Instead we should only look to what a taxation regime accomplishes.

> Looking for fairness to me is a fools errand. It’s not even a real thing, nor is it something any 2 people will universally agree on.

Maybe not from a distance, but there are ways for multiple people to come to a fair conclusion. The most basic example are two children who have to share something, where one cuts the thing to be shared, and the other is allowed choice of which half he wants.

The important thing is: incentives for unfairness must be removed. If someone can get ahead by being unfair, they will do so. The only way to get around this is to make sure the people deciding the rules do not know where they'll end up, so they must be as fair as possible to improve their own situation.

It didn’t go well for Obama when he made that argument publicly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that

Thanks for the link, the core idea of Warren presented there is exactly my sentiment. I am not at all surprised by the timeline of events on that page, though!

I liked this one:

> ... a humor website later commented on the fact that the stadium where the GOP hosted the "We Built It" theme at the convention was constructed using 62% taxpayer financing.

Sure as long as the society spends it on things that it deems important. Why is money made from money not taxed the same money made from labor? On the other hand, if money is considered free speech in the US, how can we even allow taxation at all? Isn’t taxation a form of censorship?

> There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept.

I disagree. There are models of economics that can project taxation rates that will have better outcomes for society. It's far from being primarily subjective.

That’s just you defining reasonable though. Others (few) would say any taxation at all is unreasonable. Still others (plenty more) would say taxes should apply at the same rate to all people to be reasonable. You’re saying “taxes should have a good societal outcome to be reasonable”.

Yours is the best in my opinion but it’s still subjective.

> That’s just you defining reasonable though.

I would say it is reasonable, period, per the dictionary definition. People can redefine words as they like, it doesn't mean anything.

It's not subjective when we are using objective standards and theory to produce a result with the goal of objectively leading to better quality of life for everyone.

If the only subjectivity that comes in is because people can define reasonable I don't think that makes it subjective at all.

> Others (few) would say any taxation at all is unreasonable.

Some people in society (possibly because of unfortunate mental health issues) like to stand in the streets and fling shit at others. We do not argue over the subjective reasonableness of shit-flinging, because as a civil society we are far past that point.

> Is it reasonable for society, through taxes, to take more than half of what you earn?

So long as you have more than enough to live on, absolutely. If you make a billion dollars, then the govt taking 501 million is the absolute minimum that should be expected. Better they take 999 million and leave you the million dollars, as you don't need more than that to survive.

Further, the only reason you made a billion was from not paying the workers a living wage. The government's job is to redistribute the money so that everyone gets a fair share.

The point of people being wealthy is that they get to take risks based on their judgement and we hope that benefits everyone. Without a reward nobody will take risks. Governments don't take political risks so you cannot expect them to be the sole chance takers in the economy.

What we obviously don't want is people who find a way to dump risk on everyone else so that they cannot fail. Not paying a living wage is a way to do that for example.

Yup. $1M/yr (the example I provided above) is a massive reward, so taxation in this way (leaving the risk taker huge rewards) is a great way to encourage entrepreneurship while ensuring a better society by using the extra money (taxed) to give him better streets, lower crime, and a better educated workforce/neighbours.

That prevents a person from taking their next bigger risk e.g. building a factory and hoping that the products it makes will sell. If we only had better streets we'd be a bit like the Romans - bogged down trying to satisfy everyone with centuries old technology.

Rich friends used to settle the whole tab, no questions asked. Generosity was a value.

A rich friend arguing over the details of a tab is just an asshole.

There are many assholes.

Also, many are generous to their peers and social circles but malicious anyone they consider beneath them and on the “outside”.

I saw this firsthand in my workplace (after hours)—a company that heavily promotes diversity, etc.—and it left me distraught for a few weeks.

These assholes are the hardest to spot.

Not just rich friends, some cultures have a big thing for paying for your friends as a celebratory act. You take turns though after many years which averages out anyways though. It helps those in temporary bad times, too.

Further, my rich friend just made enough on his/her investments to cover the entire meal before we were even seated at the table, ha ha.

Your analogy is too simplistic, so it misrepesents today’s situation

A better analogy of today’s would be so: - Your rich friend and his 19 employees order 20 steaks

- Somehow and out of sight the rich friend takes 19 of the steaks, takes 9/10th of each steak for himself, and then replaces them with 19 derived kiddie meals containing 1/10th the steak.

- Your rich friend then points out that he and his employees only should pay for 2.9 steaks.

- The bill and cost remains the same (100 steaks), so the remaining 80 people foot the bill for 97.1 steaks.

After I had my morning beverage, I realized “steak appetizer” would’ve been better than “kiddie meal”.

For a single person, you'll hit that tax bracket after more than $500,000 in income. This is an absolutely enormous amount of money - roughly 10x the median income. I have absolutely zero problem with income beyond this amount being taxed at 50%.

I make around $600,000. My effective federal tax rate is in the low-mid 20s. I'd have to make way way way more money for my effective federal + state rates to approach 50%.

What about sales tax, VAT, fuel levies, consumption taxes, gift taxes, inheritance taxes, etc. Your state or country may not have all of the above. But they are all there to tax you to ridiculous amounts but not at the "start". Same goes for withholding or "Pay as you earn" taxes which serve to not let you see how much taxes you are paying.

No one will be happy if more than half their labour is taken from then. We can talk feel good and helping the community and needy all you want, but once you cross that threshold it will be very obvious to a lot of people that they have no choice in the matter and that it's a few steps away from slavery.

> What about sales tax, VAT, fuel levies, consumption taxes, gift taxes, inheritance taxes, etc. Your state or country may not have all of the above.

Sales tax adds less than 1% to my overall effective tax rate. Sales taxes are disproportionately low for high earners because high earners save larger portions of their income rather than spending it.

Gift and inheritance taxes don't start until eight figures. Not exactly something I'm especially worried about.

> Same goes for withholding or "Pay as you earn" taxes which serve to not let you see how much taxes you are paying.

???

You can adjust your W4. The very wealthy also have considerably more flexibility with withholding since less of their income is W2 income from an employer.

> No one will be happy if more than half their labour is taken from then.

If I made the 7+ figures annually or whatever I needed to approach 50% effective taxation I'd be pretty damn happy. If my taxes were raised considerably without a change in my income it wouldn't really change my life either. I'd just retire early a little bit later.

> it's a few steps away from slavery

Extremely high earners who have very high effective tax rates have some options available to them. They can change careers or work less to reduce their income. They'd just earn an income that was more comparable to the typical worker. Or they could stop working entirely - extremely high earners have plenty of opportunity to save enough money that they could live off a typical budget indefinitely using their savings. Or they can advocate politically for policies they prefer - even by spending their money to influence elections via nearly unlimited and unbounded political contributions.

Slaves can be arrested, tortured, and murdered for fleeing their captors. Heck, they can be tortured and murdered pretty much for no reason whatsoever. They can be raped and forced to bear their children of their captors. Their children (whether conceived through consent or through rape) can be permanently taken from them and also forced into slavery. They can have literacy denied to them. They can be worked to the bone in extreme conditions. And all this for a fat zero dollars in income over their entire lives.

So I'd say that there are more than "a few steps" between these things.

Good one. People making half a million dollars every year are just a few steps away from slavery because they're paying 50% in taxes.

In my context, I live in a different country. Here the real middle-class is taxed way more strictly than in America, due to the high level of inequality skewing the stats.

I'm no where near "well off" or "wealthy", but comfortable middle-class here, and I'm already at the 41% bracket on income only. Effective tax-rate I'm sitting somewhere around 35%, probably higher. And that extra 15% to get us to 50% is easy to arrive to if I take in to account all the various VAT, import taxes, sin taxes, property taxes, etc that are extracted from me by government. E.g. 2% of all my income goes to tax on my modest home, poof.

And that's not even taking in to account all the "public" services I should be getting according to that "social contract" but instead paying the private sector for because they don't exist. Lovely things like fire, health, road maintenance, security, schooling, ambulance services, unemployment, social security for retirement, and who knows what else at this point.

But sure, discard my overall point by making it seem like I said rich people are slaves.

I get that 50% is a nice round number, but what's the moral or reasonable significance of that?

Meanwhile, you're looking at top marginal rates. That's not the total rate. A single person making $500k a year has a total tax rate (federal plus state) of 41%. It gots up to 46% at $1,000,000/yr.

And the rate goes down if they marry, have kids, etc.

> It’s no better than saying “the rich are not paying their fair share”.

We (the people) want certain services of the government we elect — services that cost money.

If you tax the rich less, the poor and working class will therefore have to carry a larger burden. That seems pretty straightforward.

I think the people making the most money have benefited enormously from government largesse. Tax me more, please!

In the US, taxes are more that 40% of the entire country's GDP.

What do you think a reasonable level would be?

I don't know. Any answer I give would be worthless and based on feeling. It's a question for economists to answer. And there are good answers and things worth following, or at least trying, instead of letting tax rates be set by feeling which they largely are now.

What would an economist be trying to optimize?

My point is simply like a lot of other things, government financial policy should be set based on science and understanding, not by politicians in power who feel they know best.

at the end of the day, it is ultimately a subjective question.

Science and understanding cant decide what you want and how much of it, it can only help you decide how to get what you want.

> at the end of the day, it is ultimately a subjective question.

Disagree. It's the realm of philosophy at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean it is subjective. We have very good, very fleshed out reasoned arguments about what would be best for most people.

If it is agreed that there are universal human rights and country specific rights, which is something already agreed upon by society; as is the goal of ensuring rights be equally enforced for each person, that they be respected as they should be - just starting from that is a pretty solid base that would result in real changes and is already consistent with societies desires.

That is a very big if. We don't have commonly agreed upon rights and entitlements. There's broad disagreement in society about what people are entitled to, what their rights are, and what to do about rights when they come into conflict with each other.

If we had the universal alignment you would talk about, sure we could just put the mathematicians and being counters on the job, but that's not the case.

> We don't have commonly agreed upon rights and entitlements

You keep moving the goal posts. We have enough of a starting point with the UN charter of rights and freedoms.

> If we had the universal alignment you would talk about, sure we could just put the mathematicians and being counters on the job, but that's not the case.

It's the case that for a lot of things we know the best policies for many things. More competent government would go by what they suggest, will of the people be damned.

I don't think I'm moving the goal posts, just addressing points as you introduce them to the conversation.

To be honest, I don't really understand your position. It seemed like you were claiming that Society has already decided what's best and now you say that the will of the people be damned. Who is the 'we' that knows what's best and how do you contrast that with the will of the people.

>We have very good, very fleshed out reasoned arguments about what would be best for most people.

>If it is agreed that there are universal human rights and country specific rights which is something already agreed upon by society

The only way that I can make sense of it is that the 'we' you talk about is simply people that hold your belief system. It seems like you're saying that a competent government would simply do what you want and steamroll anyone who doesn't agree with you.

I get that the idea of a tyrannical government that supports your personal views sounds attractive. You might even think you know what's best for other people. The conceit with this approach is that you don't actually know what other people want, just what you want.

> I don't think I'm moving the goal posts, just addressing points as you introduce them to the conversation.

Those things are not mutually exclusive. You absolutely seem to be moving the goalposts. You say your introducing points but each response is "what about the next issue down the line" i.e. moving the goalposts.

> To be honest, I don't really understand your position.

That there are best practices for every field of government, and they should be followed instead of politicians going by what they feel.

You're focusing on semantics and being for example "well define best", and I just don't see that as being a particularly productive avenue of conservation.

You want to try and make the point that everything is subjective, I guess, but it isn't. Again, there are best practices. Best as in the dictionary definition of the word. Context would be, as said, ensuring the UN charter of rights and freedoms is being implemented correctly (should I expect a request to define "correctly"?) It wouldn't be tyranny for a government to rule according to expert advice and suggestion, it would be competence.

If you really want to take the discussion into arguing about different people's definitions for best (or 'reasonable', or whichever word quote me saying), then we don't have anything further to discuss. It's not a discussion I find value in or have an interest in having.

>>You say your introducing points but each response is "what about the next issue down the line" i.e. moving the goalposts.

This is generally how conversations or debates go, when people don't immediately agree with you. Asking what about X? Moving the goalposts is quite different. If I said I will believe you if you if you gave an example of Y, then when you showed me Y, asked for Y+Z. In this conversation, I havent set any goals, just asked questions and made counterpoints.

In general think maybe you are misunderstanding me, I absolutely agree there is a best way to go about a given thing. I dont see how you can think what goverment should be doing isnt particularly relevant.

I personally think that many articles of the UN declaration of human rights are garbage, and would oppose my government implementing it in practice.

Again, government competence depends on what you want the government to do.

My fundamental point was people don't agree on what the government should do. It sounds like you have walked this back, so I dont think we have much left to talk about.

We aren't going to hash out an agreement of what governments Should do over HN.

> In general think maybe you are misunderstanding me

I'm not, I just don't see value in the way you're approaching this.

I'm just going to leave it at that.

Cheers.

Nope, they've been brainwashed to think it's "reasonable taxation" and the solution is always to be taxed more despite massive waste, fraud and corruption.

I mean, the grand poster is literally citing marxism.

People also don't seem to learn from successful examples in history. Islam requires a 2.5% almsgiving/charitable contribution that is calculated on certain categories of wealth, but it seems that no western country is interested in implementing something that is proven to work, and much cheaper for everyone.