04-04-2013, 03:41 PM
Acer wrote:
What proportion of taxing the rich actually results in redistribution in the classic sense, i.e., taking from the rich and giving to the poor? The rich enjoy the same highway system, military and civil police protection, consumer protection, health care and research, access to natural resources, stable currency, etc. etc. Indeed the value-to-them of these shared resources is even greater to the rich because they, for example, have more valuable property to protect or travel more. Moreover, they "take" from the collective in other ways because they externalize significant business operating expenses to the government, such as to fund their employees' retirement or disability, to educate their workforce, clean up their messes, etc.
The rich tend to defend themselves as the givers in the equation, when the take is quite significant.
I totally agree that wealthier people get more value out of public expenditures than poor people but with the top quintile of income earners are paying 70% of the total federal taxes, there is no way we could afford big, costly programs like Medicaid if they didn't pay such a high proportion of all federal taxes. A significant chunk of the funding for Medicaid is essentially a redistribution of wealth from the wealthiest to the poorest. I think that is totally justified and is something that should happen, but my concern is that as the wealth disparity grows, we liberals will want to keep looking to government programs to do more and more redistribution to address the imbalance. I don't think such a strategy is viable. Instead, I think we liberals need to look at the root of the problem - why is our economic system distributing so much wealth to so few hands in the first place? Our economic system should be able to provide anyone who works hard with sufficient living conditions without needing a lot of government assistance. I'm wondering how can we jigger the economic system to accomplish that since I am convinced that that approach is far superior to having the government do more and more taxation to provide for the poor when the system should distribute sufficient resources to them in the first place as they do their work.