Samira wrote:
Flat taxes demonstrably hurt the lower and middle tax payers far more than the wealthy. Everyone understands this.
Except according to you, they would all be harmed exactly the same. So clearly "everyone" understands that taxes don't harm people in direct proportion to their earnings or wealth. I spy an inconsistency there.
Once you drop the concept of "relative harm" and accept that every dollar harms equally, but that out of necessity we must harm some more than others in order to generate tax revenue, this inconsistency vanishes. But again, it's harder to justify yet more taxes on "the rich" if we acknowledge that those taxes harm them (and thus by extension we're trading harm to one group for help to another). It's all about making it easier to justify an unequal tax system. What's funny is that I'm not even arguing that a progressive tax scheme is the way to go. I'm just asking that we be honest about the fact that we are, in fact, imposing a much greater tax burden, both in real and relative dollars, on the wealthy.
Why is it so hard to simply say "we're hurting rich people to help poor people because rich people can afford the hurt and poor people need the help"? That would at least be an honest start. But that would require mentally balancing the harm of taxes with the help of government programs funded by those taxes. And that might just lead people to be more cautious about how they spend that money. Can't have that, can we?
Quote:
Remember the story of the widow and her two mites? Not even pennies, fractions of pennies; but they were all she had. In the parable, Jesus commended her for giving everything she had, even though it was such a small amount that Rand Paul wouldn't bother to pick it up off the sidewalk.
Sure. But he didn't require that the rich give everything though. There's a difference between charity and taxation. A difference that seems lost on some people, but a difference nonetheless.