Comment by dataflow
2 days ago
My issue with this is that it still won't make people happy, because ultimately people care about wealth too. Like say some big CEO's income is $100M/year. And they pay half of it in taxes. Then after a decade they have half a billion dollars. Will people be content seeing that? Or still be unhappy at the obscene wealth?
Warren Buffett famously claimed he paid a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.
Yes. The whole point of my comment was to assume a less unequal hypothetical than the current situation and show people still wouldn't like it.
The problem is that aren’t paying “half of it in taxes”, not even close.
I think you missed my point. I was saying that even if they did, a lot of people would still be unhappy with that kind of outcome.
Which isn't to say that they shouldn't pay more in income taxes. It's just to say that it's important to identify the real problem and address it directly, and to realize when you're not going to be happy with a solution beforehand.
This is the worst kind of defeatism. By that logic literally no progress on anything is ever possible.
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Another way of stating this straw-man argument might be "what if we tried to do anything meaningful at all about wealth inequality and the market distortions it causes and people liked it?"