This was my reply to a discussion about whether taxes should be structured to make the wealthy pay a larger percentage of their income.

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I don’t know if there’s a good logical justification for either side of the argument (if there is one I’d like to hear it.) This always seems to come down to an emotional level.

Personally, I feel it’s justified because we live in a society – which, by definition, includes more people than myself. Societies also usually have a goal of trying to further themselves in some way. I’ve always found it strange why some people think they are so above society that they wish to reap the benefits of said society but not add to it to further its goals. It’s a very strange argument – the existence of the structures of society enable the gathering of wealth. But once people have wealth they often want to horde it and not help maintain the society that created it. I don’t understand it and have always figured that greed increases with the size of the horde.

It seems like the ideal world for the horders would be to gather all the money amongst a small percentage of the population, buy up all land and assets themselves, hire mercenary armies and disolve the government so there’s no one to tax their money. This would have the added benefit of no one being around to police their treatment of their workers. Hmmm… I think we’ve seen this before, and it worked out real well :)

However, since there hasn’t been a tax revolt here in the recent past, maybe most people really don’t mind paying taxes. Further, if it’s true that money does buy happiness, then all those rich people should have very little to bitch about. But everyone wants something to bitch about, right? So why not bitch about taxes? :)

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Comments?