how do you define this statement? no taxation without representation lets say i pay 1 dollar a year in taxes, while my neighbor pays 1000. for argument's sake, let's say we make roughly the same amount of income. we get represented equally, because under our constitution we are equal, but somehow this defies the statement of 'no taxation without representation'. for me, it would seem that representation is supposed to be based off a 'fairness' conceptualization of how much each individual is supporting the government. but, in that case, the government would simply be controlled the same way that large companies are controlled by majority shareholders. (seems that way already though, doesn't it) on the other hand, it doesn't seem fair to be taxing this and that, creating a total lack of balance that screws some people over, while giving others a break, and then turning around and pretending that everyone is equal and deserves to be treated as such. shouldn't representation be just as fair as the tax system? at what point did we abandon fairness and trade it for selfish evasion and persecution of the successful upper class? when will we realize that creating new types of taxes all the time is not the answer? sales tax ftw
Fairness is not conceptualized on wealth or taxes but regardless of them. Representation is not decided by income or taxes or property ownership in popular democracies. If it was, they would no longer be popular democracies, or even democracies but something else, like oligarchies, which is the model that many corporations use. Models that give major owners disproportionate power that puts minority shareholders in the position of powerlessness. While disgruntled shareholders without representation can sell out, disgruntled citizens without representation tend to revolt, violently. It is easy enough to complain about taxes since almost everyone considers them unfair to them personally. But is that really a basis for the overthrow of popular democracy in favour of oligarchy? At what point did we abandon fairness and trade it for the abject worship of wealth? Why are so many willing to hand these selfish self absorbed megalomaniacs the last set of keys to our democracy? When will we realize that not taxing the wealthy enough was a big mistake?
The majority of the voters are already bought off or "owned" by both major parties no matter what they do. At the end of the day they fight for a few undecided to win elections. The system has NOHTING to do with fairness no matter what their demagogary may say otherwise.
it just seems to me like most of the tax system doesn't even make sense. money getting handed from citizen to citizen, getting taxed each time it changes hands, makes no sense in reference to representation, because representation is unchanging relative to how often money changes hands. for example: if one company owned everything in the country, and everyone that is currently employed worked for that company, the money would only get taxed once, when going from the company to the worker. this would drastically reduce the amount of tax revenue the country brings in, and really sheds light on how important small businesses are to our country. it also shows that while small businesses are more important than big businesses, big business has a greater share and control of the government, making their representation greater than their value in comparison to small business. not fair at all
We didn't. Instead we whinged and whined, allowing an unfair system resulting in a drastically irrational social wage (i.e. there is insufficient redistribution, allowing for a class system that destroys the available gains from individual endeavour)
Drastically irrational social wage.....now there's a hoot. Insufficient redistribution......an even bigger hoot. Seems to me your idea of an irrational social wage is based upon the minimum wage, which given the skill set those jobs have, is about right. Americans don't do redistribution in case you haven't learned that lesson yet. Obviously not though since almost every answer in any financial thread you reply to revolves around redistribution of wealth......and rents.
Minimum wage? Nothing to do with it. The minimum wage is just a means to reduce market failure. It is, however, set too low in the US (allowing continued inefficient underpayment and a skewing of resources to low wage labour). The social wage provides a means to assess the true nature of any redistribution (combining both tax and benefit effects). And what do we find? The US does indeed have a history of using redistribution effectively but, driven by anti-individualism inherent in right wingers looking to intensify class divides, it was fallen dramatically
Please spend some time thinking about the meanings of equality and fairness. They aren't the same thing. Based on the Declaration and Constitution, government should treat people equally. Even though people are not equal, they should be equal in terms of the law and government policy. That is right and proper. Fairness, on the other hand, assumes an inequality that should be corrected by government. People are not equal. It is not government's job to make them equal. It is government's job to treat them equally. Government should never get involved in fairness. Equality is easy to understand. The government should do for me and to me as it does to everyone else. Fairness gets down to attitudes and opinions and feelings. For you example, if two of you have the same income but pay different taxes, understand that both of you are treated equally because tax law applies to you both in the same way. There are differences in your two situations that caused one person to have more deductions than the other person. In order to maintain equality you would have to change the tax law because it is what applies to both of you. Just eliminate the deductions from the tax law and you have equalized government revenue from the two of you while still maintaining equality. So if you don't like the tax laws, you should lobby your congressman or senator.
The reason the tax laws are what they are is because of politics and special interests. Fairness has nothing to do with it. Read what I said above about equality and fairness. Tax laws are designed to give the congress as much money to spend as possible without the members losing subsequent elections. Seems like a backward way to do things and it is. As you can obviously see, the congress has been greedier than the tax laws they pass have provided. So we have an immense debt to supply funds for government spending. The fact that the money is taxed each time it changes hands is irrelevant. If it were only taxed once then all taxes would be paid from business profits because business profits are the source of new wealth. It would make things pretty much like a sales tax because consumers would pay for those taxes equally in the prices they pay for what they buy. That is a regressive tax and regressive taxes are very unpopular with politicians because they are very unpopular with the majority of voters. So that won't happen. Having the money taxed each time it is transferred takes it in smaller bites and allows government to engineer things to its benefit. The benefit, of course, is the maintenance of power. Pretty simple when you think it through.
