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Originally Posted by Galt
Telling the wealthy that they owe a larger chunk of their lives to the government than their less successful peers is abusive and immoral, regardless of how much property they are left with after the looting.
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No it's not. The wealthy have more than just more money - they have power that wealth affords.
If you can suggest an effective method of balancing power without taking more money from the upper class, by all means - share it. Until there is a better option, progressive taxation is a requirement. It isn't the perfect solution to the power imbalance, but there rarely are perfect solutions to anything. I'm open to alternate suggestions - but until you start thinking of the overall power imbalance and not just the money factor, you're not going to have anything to suggest that is going to be better than progressive taxation.
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Instead of raising the tax rate of the poor, we should lower the tax rate of the wealthy.
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As soon as the gov't isn't bankrupt and in debt, we can lower taxes, equally, for everyone.
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Originally Posted by Galt
Explain to me why they unproductive have a right to food paid for by someone else.
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Who's unproductive? Very few people have zero productivity - so let's use the correct description: people who are not deemed worthy of higher wages. Then your question becomes:
Explain to me why people who are not deemed worthy of higher wages have a right to food paid for by someone else.
And the answer is: Simply because society assigns priorities of value to work does not mean those priorities are beneficial to the well being of society. We have government to enable us to make laws by which society must conform based on our perceptions of what society needs to do to function properly. We don't leave every decision up to the natural progression of society, we force society to function as we see fit. If we didn't do this, if we just let society run rampant, we'd have zero need for gov't and society would be nothing more than the survival of the fittest.
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I'd say that society is benefits far more from the wealthy than from the poor. It would be far more crippling for society if the wealthy disappeared than if the poor were to vanish from the face of the earth. Not only would their be far less tax revenue, but the poor would be easier to replace from an employment standpoint. Anybody can clean a toilet or rake leaves. How many people can perform heart surgery, program a computer, run a corporation or practice law?
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This is a silly direction to take Yakk's comments. A direction taken right out of
Atlas Shrugged, no less (an interesting work of pulp fiction - far inferior to
The Fountainhead). It is impossible to conceive of removing one class from society - you're simply describing an impossibility - we might as well talk about Unicorns and the economic impact they would have on the sale of Pony's to little girls.
Yakk's comment is within the realm of reality, however. The upper class benefits greatly from the progress of society and the lower class benefits less so. And we know this is true because the upper class owns most things so when the economics of society perform well, that ownership increases in value.
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I'd also say that the poor benefit far more from society than do the wealthy. Let's pretend for a moment that "society" suddenly went away; no more public education, no more public transportation, no more "free" medical and dental care for the poor, no more food stamps, etc. Who would be hurt more by this; the wealthy or the poor?
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Another discussion of an impossibility.
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I'm guessing the answer you're looking for would be those who benefit a lot, which would actually be the poor.
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You have not demonstrated how the poor benefit more than the rich, you have simply described impossible realities, so your conclusions are based on nothing at this point.