Quote:
Originally Posted by smooth
maybe you mean, shouldn't have the right to redistribute wealth rather than doesn't have the right, because the government certainly does have the right to do so. and contrary to some posts, it's not your personal wealth. you do realize that the greenbacks in your wallet are owned by the government that prints them?
amend the claim to, "the government should not have the right to distribute wealth I've earned" and the argument starts to gain traction as an ideal. but the claim that the government does not have the right to do what it wants with your personal wealth is factually wrong on both counts.
|
I would also point (though I believe it was mentioned above) that ALL taxation is a redistribution of wealth. The conservative philosophy, generally, is one of "fairness" - that each person should have an equivalent portion of their wealth redistributed. That the conservative method is to claim that non-conservatives are the only ones who desire redistribution is simply disingenuous.
To the point of redistributing wealth less from those that presently have more redistributed (i.e. lowering taxes on the wealthy) as an issue of restoring "fairness", my question is: why is that fair? What is the determination of fairness when it comes to tax brackets (flat, progressive or regressive)? Often a conservative will point to the figures which demonstrate (and I'm paraphrasing them here) that the top 1% pay 50% of the taxes collected as evidence that they are treated unfairly. I fail to see the congruency between that statistic and the definition of fairness. Why is 75% not the fair amount? Or 90%?
Do wealthy people not benefit more from a well funded military, public infrastructure, police, fire fighters, etc. vs. non-wealthy people? Wealthy people have more to lose, for one thing. For another, without a stable and far reaching society wealthy people acquire less - less means of distribution equals less sales. To loosely capture this in a sound bite: it takes money to make money.
Since wealthy people benefit the most from society and have the most to lose, "fairness" would indicate they should pay the lion's share of costs of maintaining society which is, by extension, their own collection of wealth and the ability to collect it.