robertthull23

Correct, once the labor pool is expanded to include those people, the value of the work is re-adjusted, since value is relative to all options available.

I did mention income being a rough approximation, implicitly acknowledging unpaid work. Yes, I agree that open-source contributions should be counted as charity donations in regards to taxes.

Why do you frame work as a reward and not a chore?

Yes, contributers are better than freeloaders.

By your logic, a dog walker is equivalent to a doctor, and given only enough resources to save one of their lives, we should toss a coin.

?woH

That's an insightful way to think about it. I just realized we're operating under large scale Feudalism?

Poor people work 1 day/week (or so inefficiently that it should be considered 1 day/week), and therefore should be paying a 100 tax. Exactly what I was saying.

Yes, those are choices.

Continued:

Poor person: "I don't buy from McDonalds because it's unfair their prices as a percentage of income are higher for me than for rich people."

That's how retarded it sounds to me hearing people talk about taxes as percent of income. Yet that's somehow the dominate narrative.

Focusing on the percent of income paid in taxes is a trick to convince poor people to vote to raise taxes.

Income = Rough approximation of your contribution to society.

Income Taxes = Penalty for contributing, but also another contribution to society.

Not only are poor people not contributing (by definition of being poor), they're also convinced their tax contribution is too high.

Poor person: "My taxes are too high, I contributed a whole $20 to society through a 20% tax on my $100 income. That's not fair, the guy who contributed $100k through tax only gave 10%."

If I'm being radical, I'd propose a flat tax amount (not flat rate). Everyone pays $20k/year. Don't have $20k? Take out a loan and get another job.