I suggest you take your vast wealth that you don't want to share with anyone undeserving and buy a desert island. That way you get all the benefits of you deserve from the guy that made them.
There are plenty of rich people who do, on both sides of the aisle. I can't do what you suggest, I'm stuck here with a government that taxes both you and I overmuch, only to waste a lot of it on things that both you and I disagree with. Why not pare government down to it's bare Constitutional minimums, that way we both get to keep more of what we worked hard to earn and neither of us believe our money is being wasted?
Or how about this: there are plenty of places that are happy to tax-and-spend, but only one America with it's foundational ideal of small and limited government. Why erase the approach which has been proven to be so successful in a few short centuries? So many people want to immigrate to America because of it's reputation for offering opportunity for all, not because it's becoming just another authoritarian mess.
It's a lot easier to expound on the virtue of others suffering needlessly when you aren't living under a blue UN tarp. Things get pretty easy when you can expect 3 squares a day and have a warm, dry, safe place to sleep.
Now you're shifting the focus from me and my interaction with my countrymen to me and my interaction with those who are not my countrymen. Ok, fine. Here's my reply:
When will the leftists, socialists, and communists start writing personal checks to the Treasury and the UN to pay for the programs that will save the poor and sick, give up their ivory tower academia seats of privilege to others in need, and give up their own houses to the homeless? They appear to be happy to demand that I give up the things I worked hard to acquire, so why don't they put their money where their mouth is first and show me how it's done?
It's easy to be a socialist / communist in a capitalist society, where the freedoms afford within the system allow the socialist / communist to haughtily spout their beliefs and urge others to do as they themselves believe should be done (but curiously don't do so themselves). However, it's impossible to be a capitalist in a socialist or communist society. Just ask Marx - he's a great example of the former. It's easy to be generous with other people's money, especially if you can get the government to do it for you. I can't solve the suffering of the world, but compelling me to participate in ineffectual efforts to do so is immoral.
We live in a society. Why? Because that's how humans survive best. The "friendly association with others" includes sharing resources. The "I got MINE, Jack" mindset doesn't square with that long term.
Yes, we live in a society. Nobody how to make a pencil. However, you seem to think the the "free association with others" not just includes sharing of resources, but requires it, and the only sensible thing to orchestrate is government. That's where it gets confusing. The thing that first enabled humans to band together and do more united than we could each do alone wasn't government. It was reciprocity that enabled us to kill the mastodon. Meaning, we voluntarily engaged in activities that were:
- Fully informed (truthful and complete)
- Voluntary to all (not compulsory)
- Productive (everybody put forth effort and nobody was a freeloader)
- Free of external costs imposed by others (such as government)
- Free from exerting extra costs on others (the reciprocal parties didn't conspire to harm another)
That forms the basis for all natural law: sovereignty and reciprocity. The concept that we are all individually sovereign unto ourselves, and that we can only morally engage with each other in a reciprocal manner. When government - or our fellow man - removes our sovereignty or treats us in a nonreciprocal manner, we feel cheated.
The ludicrous references to "punishing self-made millionairs" by taxing them is more contact magic wishful thinking. Where did the money come from? It came from ordinary folks benefitting from the innovators effort.
Correct. The effort of the individual was voluntarily altruistic and benefited others. He was an example of ethical selfishness: he wanted to get rich, so he had to make other people's lives better in some way in order to make money. Taxing him for doing this punishes him for helping others by providing goods or services they want. As for the super-rich, it takes a lot of risk to be innovative, and the risk-takers only get the payout at the end. Steve Jobs knew I wanted an iPhone before I knew I wanted one. He didn't know if people would want them, but he set out to lead the effort to create them anyway, and he helped a lot of people make money / earn a paycheck along the way. You're arguing that he should be taxed for that effort in order to pay for programs you want. I don't want him taxed: he's earned his money, and government taxes the sale of the phone already.
Who's the selfish one: the one who works hard and wants to keep more of what he's earned; or the one who doesn't have the skills, drive, and/or ability to compete and wants government to take money from others in order to give him the things he wants provided to him for free or reduced cost?
Does defending the innovators wealth make you wealthy? NO
Does the innovator live within society? YES
Does/has the innovator benefitted from efforts of those that came berore? YES
Was it possible to accrete this much personal wealth before the advent of money with a simple barter economy? NO
What percentage of modern human history is associated with monetary currency? MAYBE 1%.
Not sure what you're trying to get at here? History has been full of those that have and those that have not. It's the way of life. Only three kinds of people complain about the fact that inequality exists: those that can't compete, those living in a system so successful that they have the luxury of pontificating about it because they aren't busy trying to compete, and those who wish to gain power by asserting that inequality exists and they have the solution.
The richest people in history: Mansa Musa (the slave trader king of the Mali Empire who lived from 1280-1337 and who's wealth can't be calculated), Genghis Khan, Emperor Shenzong of Song (ruled China from 1067-1085), Akbar (ruled the Mughal Empire from 1556-1605), and Augustus Ceasar (63BC - 14AD). They became rich via the exploitation and rule over others, not because they innovated and created new things that benefited the lives of others. Don't lump such as these into the same mold as the current self-made millionaire who provided jobs for hundreds along the way.
It takes about the same amount of money to feed, clothe & shelter a zillionair as it does a welfare case. Amounts above that are gravy. You appear to go after the low income folks and protect the zillionair. This is vassal behavior, the same as shown by pesants outside the castle walls defending the King with wooden pitchforks, shovels & rocks (God save the King!). If they do, hopefully nice partially-eaten scraps from the table rain down from the castle walls. Elon Musks $2.3B compensation at even the 1944 tax rates (when there wasn't particularly a millionair shortage) would still be $115,000,000 yearly. At todays rates it's at least 10x larger. Do you actually know anyone that would feel like they are suffering at $115,000,000 a year? And that wealth would not be possible unless people (i.e. SOCIETY) bought his products. Without the medium of money Elon would just be that guy flint knapping out 100 stone knives from a single flint nodule instead of making one knife per stone., happy to get a deer hide and rabbit carcass without having to play tag with cave bears and smilodons.
See my question above about who the selfish one really is. I don't need any of these people's money. I just want the freedom to earn my way to a comfortable life because I view myself responsible for my own welfare in my own age, not society.
The top individual marginal income tax rate tended to increase over time through the early 1960s, with some additional bumps during war years. The top income tax rate reached above 90% from 1944 through 1963, peaking in 1944 when top taxpayers paid an income tax rate of 94% on their taxable income. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-income-tax-rates#:~:text=The%20top%20individual%20marginal%20income,94%25%20on%20their%20taxable%20income.
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How many actually paid that top income rate? Answer: not many, it was more a formality than something that was actually asserted on people. That's why they dropped it: it was absurd to demand that some people pay 94% of what they earned.
Also: progressive taxation is the second item on the list of measures to be adopted, according to the Communist Manifesto. Arguing for it doesn't exactly impress the classic liberal or conservative.