BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Progressive taxation combats growing income inequality

Steve Weissman. "Spread the Wealth? Soak the Rich?". Truthout. 24 Oct. 2008 - "In terms of policy, the arguments are equally strong. Our social stability depends upon rebuilding a strong middle class and reducing the enormous gap between the rich and all the rest of us. Whether from above or below, this growing inequality threatens the survival of even our limited democracy and does nothing to increase the strength of America's economy."
Progressives wrongly assume wealthy dollars have less utility

Friedrich A. Hayek. "Taxation and Redistribution". The Constitution of Liberty. 1960 - [One argument's] basic conception is that of the decreasing marginal utility of successive acts of consumption. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its abstract character, it has had great influence in making scientifically respectable what before had been admittedly based on arbitrary postulates.[...]Modern developments within the field of utility analysis itself have, however, completely destroyed the foundations of this argument. It has lost its validity partly because the belief in the possibility of comparing the utilities to different persons has been generally abandoned and partly because it is more than doubtful whether the conception of decreasing marginal utility can legitimately be applied at all to income as a whole, i.e., whether it has meaning if we count as income all the advantages a person derives from the use of his resources."
Progressive taxes adjust for random factors in wealth

Robert J. Shapiro. "Why Fairness Matters: Progressive Versus Flat Taxes". Progressive Policy Institute. 1 Apr. 1996 - "progressive taxation has the better of the argument. Flat taxers may be right that it would be morally offensive to tax higher income people more heavily if differences in income reflected only how hard different people work. But income differences reflect much more than that, if only because people don't start in the same place. People are born with different talents and come to age in families, neighborhoods, and cultures with different resources to prepare them for market competition. And plain luck often plays a role."
Progressive tax rates end up squeezing the middle class

Michael Novak. "An Immoral Tax". Wall Street Journal. 18 Feb. 2003 - "What is lost in their "idealism" is the fact that to pay their bills, redistributionist states cannot tax only the rich. They must also tax way down into the middle class, stinging the single mom, policeman, and teacher as well. Meanwhile, many on welfare pay no income taxes at all, because they have no income. They have no income because (most often through no fault of their own) they do not work."
Calling progressive taxation "tyrannical" is inappropriate

Carl Henn. "Taxation without exacerbation". Letter to Washington Times. 30 Mar. 2008 - "Many of the richest people support progressive taxation, which provides some argument that progressive taxation isn't tyranny, but rather a policy option with which Mr. Rahn disagrees. To call these tax policies "tyranny" is sloppy. Why is it important to correct sloppy thinking? Because sloppy thinking has consequences. Revolt may be an acceptable response to tyranny. It isn't an appropriate response to mismanagement. Inflammatory rhetoric does not promote reasoned public debate."
Progressive taxes violate rule that men earn what they deserve

Edwin R. A. Seligman. "Progressive taxation in theory and practice". American Economic Association. 1894 - "Time was when the progressive tax would not have been accepted as equitable even by a majority of the poor. Traditional equity required that taxes should be levied proportionately, not progressively. This was in accordance with the belief that’ a man’s property, or his income, was an index of deserving achievement, or of value contributed in the market place to society. True, some men inherited their property or incomes—but that was something to be handled or regulated under laws of inheritance. In any case the erosion of time could be counted on to take care of the inefficient use of inherited fortune—“shirtsleeves to shirt-sleeves in three generations” expressed the common wisdom in this matter of luck in the choice of one’s parents."
Progressive taxation can help combat crime

Nick Netzer. "Bribing Thieves. A Theory of Crime and Progressive Taxation" - "The level of crime is often claimed to be correlated with the degree of inequality in a society, and redistribution is suggested as a remedy. This paper analyzes a producer-predator model of theft in large heterogeneous societies and examines the effect of public redistribution on individual incentives and consumption levels. It turns out that redistribution of income by moving from a linear to a progressive tax schedule can be Pareto improving under a large variety of circumstances. If the ratio of high-skilled to low-skilled individuals is small, progressive taxation acts as a substitute for direct law enforcement. Otherwise, redistribution and law enforcement are complements, in the sense that the introduction of progressive taxation should go along with stricter law enforcement. Altogether, the existence of crime is never Pareto effcient as soon as progressive taxation is admitted."
Existing budgets in modern states requires progressive taxation

"Progressive taxation is not the same as 'spread the wealth.'". The Right Wing Professor. 26 Oct. 2008 - "Our federal government spends roughly $3 TRILLION a year and the population is roughly 300 million, which works out to $10,000 per person per year. With a median family in the US earning around $50,000/year and having 3 members, it is clear that this family can't afford to pay its "fair share" of $30,000/year in taxes. Without a drastic slashing of the federal budget, we are forced into a progressive tax system, where by progressive I simply mean the wealthy pay more in taxes than the not so wealthy."
Progressive taxation does not reduce work ethic

Robert J. Shapiro. "Why Fairness Matters: Progressive Versus Flat Taxes". Progressive Policy Institute. 1 Apr. 1996 - "The economic theory behind progressive taxation begins by separating the tax system from the economy that provides its resources. By this view, people work and save because they need or want certain benefits. The existence of taxes does not change those needs or desires, and so should not discourage work and saving. Therefore, tax rates could reasonably rise with income without imposing additional economic costs."
Progressive taxation is a form of tyranny of the majority

James A. Dorn. "Ending Tax Socialism". CATO Institute. 13 Sept. 1996 - "If we let constitutional principles be eroded by majority rule, in the name of social justice, then both freedom and true justice will be lost. Progressive taxation is not a virtue but a vice. It presumes that the property rights of the wealthy are not as sacred as the property rights of the poor and that the values of the majority are superior to the rights of the minority."
Progressive taxes disincentivize hard work and productivity

"Flat Tax: What Would It Do For Ireland?". Business and Finance Magazine. 5 May 2005 - "A recent study of a revenue-neutral flat tax proposal for the US (Ventura, 1999) shows that, due to the positive effects on individual incentives to invest in productivity enhancing learning and greater hours of labour supply, a flat tax system yields up to a 9% increase in the aggregate efficiency adjusted labour force.[...] In the Irish case, this is equivalent to adding over 180,000 workers with an average productivity without incurring additional social and welfare costs of actually increasing Ireland's population. The more productive the segment of population, the higher are the increases."
Wealthy benefit more from system, so owe a greater tax debt

George Lakoff and Bruce Budner. "Hidden Truths Of Progressive Taxes". Tom Pain. 16 Apr. 2007 - "Ordinary people just drive on the highways; corporations send fleets of trucks. Ordinary people may get a bank loan for their mortgage; corporations borrow money to buy whole companies. Ordinary people rarely use the courts; most of the courts are used for corporate law and contract disputes. Corporations and their investors — those who have accumulated enough money beyond basic needs so they can invest — make much more use, compound use, of the empowering infrastructure provided by everybody's tax money.[...]The wealthy have made greater use of the common good—they have been empowered by it in creating their wealth—and thus they have a greater moral obligation to sustain it. They are merely paying their debt to society in arrears and investing in future empowerment."
Progressive system causes government to favor wealthy for tax revenue

"Are Progressive Taxes a Good Thing?" Critical Mastiff. 9 Aug. 2005 - "In our present fiscal situation, wealthy people and corporations pay high Federal income taxes, and poorer people pay no income taxes at all or very few. Therefore, it makes sense for our rational actor, the Federal Government, to make laws that give preference to the rich and corporations over the poor, since tax revenues respond much more quickly when the rich get richer than when the poor get less poor. Such additional revenues can naturally be used to succor the same poor that the government has just victimized, making the poor indebted to the government and to the particular elected officials of each district."
Progressive tax rates hide size and growth of government

James A. Dorn. "Ending Tax Socialism". CATO Institute. 13 Sept. 1996 - "One major benefit of a flat-rate tax is that it would make the cost of government expansion visible to all taxpayers, especially if combined with a balanced-budget amendment. There would be a built-in incentive to compare the costs and benefits of new government programs. The invisible hand of the democratic process would then work more judiciously to determine the size of government."
Bottom-up progressive taxation leads to stronger growth

Steve Weissman. "Spread the Wealth? Soak the Rich?". Truthout. 24 Oct. 2008 - "Who should pay what for the costs of government raises the most basic issues of fairness. But who pays also determines whether we rebuild our economy from the bottom up, as Obama promises, or continue to wait in vain for good jobs and decent wages to trickle down from John McCain's friends at the top...[Progressive taxes] can help create a more vigorous economy, one based on growing demand from the bottom to encourage investment from the top. Cutting taxes for the vast majority builds that demand, spreading wealth in a way that will create greater wealth for us all."
Progressive taxation applies a compassionate philosophy to poor

"Progressive vs. Regressive Tax Structure". Faded.org. - "The unabated greed, lack of values, and sense of community that so many Americans hold is utterly astounding to me. The materialistic, egotistical attitude of "I got mine, screw everyone else" abounds. Not only that, but it also seems a bit hypocritical to me that these arguments come most often from the "religious" right. Astonishing how quickly the beliefs and teachings of their religion fly out the window as soon as money enters into the equation. (I'll save all of my other rants about religion in general for another post.)"
Modern state budgets do not require progressive taxes

Friedrich A. Hayek. "Taxation and Redistribution". The Constitution of Liberty. 1960 - "How small is the contribution of progressive tax rates (particularly of the high punitive rates levied on the largest incomes) to total revenue may be illustrated by a few figures for the United States and for Great Britain. Concerning the former it has been stated (in 1956) that "the entire progressive super-structure produces only about 17 per cent of the total revenue derived from the individual income tax"-or about 8.5 per cent of all federal revenue,-- and that of this “half is taken from taxable income brackets up through $16,000-$18,000, where the tax rate approaches 50 per cent (while] the other half comes from the higher brackets and rates."
Progressive taxation helps combat extreme poverty

This is because the lowest tax band will apply to earnings beneath an initial threshold. Therefore, the less one earns, the higher percentage of one’s pay is not taxable. The cost of basic survival needs is by definition a larger proportion of a lower earner's income and therefore a certain “block” at the bottom of each income may be tax free altogether to allow for these needs. This protection for the poorest is important, because most countries also operate customs tariffs and sales taxes, which tend to hit the poor more than the rich in terms of the proportion of their income going in indirect taxation; progressive direct taxation redresses the balance.
Progressive taxes benefit public, which benefits the wealthy

George Lakoff and Bruce Budner. "Hidden Truths Of Progressive Taxes". Tom Pain. 16 Apr. 2007 - "An important point often lost in this debate is an appreciation that the common wealth, which our taxes create and sustain, empowers the wealthy in myriad ways to create their wealth. We call this compound empowerment — the compounded use of the common wealth by corporations, their investors, and other wealthy individuals."
Regressive sales tax makes progressive income tax necessary

Jacob Levy. "Progressive taxation". The Volokh Conspiracy. 19 Sep 2003 - "With lots of taxing authorities but reason to not want them all to tax income, there's going to be a tendency toward regressivity because of the use of consumption and property taxes. This creates pressure to make the income tax, where used, more progressive-- which tends to make it both more complex and more distorting."
Public support for progressive taxes varies over time

Jean Hindriks. "Is there a demand for income tax progressivity?". Elsevier Science B.V. 15 June 2000 - "Recently, Marhuenda and Ortuno-Ortin [Economics Letters 48 (1995) 319] have provided a popular support for progressivity theorem that says that a marginal progressive tax always defeats a marginal regressive tax as long as individuals vote for the tax scheme minimizing their tax liabilities and the median income is less than the mean income. In this paper we provide, under similar circumstances, a popular support for regressivity theorem according to which for any existing tax scheme there is always a majority support for a regressive reform reducing marginal progressivity (or increasing marginal regressivity). This regressive reform is supported by both extremes of the income distribution. Combining this result with Marhuenda and Ortuno-Ortin’s result implies that vote cycling between regressive and progressive tax reform is inevitable and thus that the demand for progressivity cannot be established in the standard Downsian framework with self-interested voters.
Tax code can be simplified without ending progressive tax

Daniel Nemiroff. "Simplification without a flat tax". The Gazette (Montreal). 1 May 2008 - "Both William Watson and Neils Veldhuis make compelling cases for simplification of the tax code. They are largely correct, and most Canadians would agree that loopholes ought to be closed, extravagant deductions disallowed, and all forms of income - salary, capital gains or stock-option bonuses - be treated the same[...]Both men then commit the fallacy of equating tax code simplification with a flat tax.[...]There is no reason we can't implement most of Veldhuis's shortcuts and keep a progressive taxation system. We'll still have to fill out a return, but as long as we keep the math simple - e.g., 10 per cent on the first $50,000, 20 per cent on anything up to $250,000, 90 per cent on anything over $10 million - we should be able to keep within postcard dimensions."
Even free-marketeer Adam Smith advocated progressive taxation

Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations: "The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."[5]
Lifting poor with progressive tax is good for economy

"Progressive Taxation". Lolife. 25 June 2004 - "With a flat tax, no one could be taxed more than they make, but the taxes would still have to be fairly high on the poorest people. With a progressive tax you can generate the revenue you need while still allowing poor people the opportunity to become not-poor. This is not altruism — it’s an economic strategy to keep our economy strong by getting as many people participating in it as possible. The more poor people we turn into middle class people the easier the tax burden will be on everyone."
Progressive taxation fosters greater happiness in society

Thomas D. Griffith. "Progressive Taxation and Happiness". Boston College - "Abstract: This Article explores the optimal level of income redistribution by examining the potential welfare gains from redistributive tax and spending policies. Drawing on recent research on human happiness, this Article argues that while wealthy nations are generally happier than their poorer counterparts, neither national nor individual economic growth appear to have an appreciable impact on the subjective well-being of the citizens of relatively wealthy nations. Significant causes of this finding include the problem of rivalry—that increases in the income of some depress the happiness of others—and the fact that individuals overestimate the degree to which additional consumption will improve their happiness. Studies show the level of inequality in a society also may affect levels of happiness. Ultimately, happiness research is consistent with the strongest justification for adopting a progressive tax structure—income has declining marginal utility thus redistribution can increase total welfare in a society."
Progressive taxation is an inefficient and costly system

Linda Leatherdale, Business Editor for Toronto Sun. "Flat is where it's at". Toronto Sun. 13 Jan 2008. - "with a flat tax on our incomes, what a fairer, simpler world it would be.[...]Imagine being able to complete your income tax return in just five minutes on a post-card-sized form. That's what's possible if Canada would adopt a 15% flat tax, says Dr. Alvin Rabushka, an internationally renowned tax reform expert with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.[...]Think about it: No more high-paid accountants and lawyers. No more shoe boxes full of receipts. And no more auditors trying to bully you into admitting you intentionally cheated. It would be so simple, who'd want to cheat?"
A pure flat tax would be a major burden on the poor

Mark Jaquith. "Why I Support Progressive Taxation". Tempus Fugit. 18 Sept. 2005 - "you must consider the effect that a completely flat tax system would have on the poor. The people who, after buying the things they need and are left with nothing, will have a very hard time breaking that inertia. They likely won’t have time to learn new skills, because they don’t have any significant discretionary income. They have to keep going to work just to put food on the table. A tax on the basic necessities of life is a severe handicap to one’s ability to break out of that cycle. It is essentially a tax on living, which is abhorrent both from a moral standpoint (Liberals’ objection) and from an American philosophical standpoint (Conservatives’ and Liberterians’ objection)"
Progressive systems unfairly force rich to pay bulk of taxes

David N. Mayer. "Wealthy Americans Deserve Real Tax Relief On Principle". Ashbrook Center. October 1999 - "The tax-cut debate has focused attention on the issue of fairness, and all Americans should seriously question whether the federal income tax is really “fair” at all. Under its so-called “progressive” rate structure, a minority of taxpayers in the upper income brackets are forced to pay the lion’s share of federal income taxes."
Progressive taxes do not increase happiness

Martin Wolf. "Why progressive taxation is not the route to happiness". Financial Times. 5 Jun. 2007 - Happiness is fashionable these days. Yet should we accept the common view that the new “science” of happiness has cemented the superiority of Scandinavian social democracy over Anglo-Saxon liberalism? The answer is: No. The results are just as destructive to the pious certainties of “progressives” as to those of their opponents.
Progressives shift money from entrepreneurs, capital investments

A belief that progressive taxation shifts the total economic production of society away from capital investments (tools, infrastructure, training, research) and toward present consumption goods. This could happen because high-income earners tend to pay for capital goods (through investment activities) and low-income earners tend to purchase consumables. Smithian and neo-classical growth theory says that spending more on consumption goods and less on capital goods will slow the rise of the standard of living, and possibly even reduce it since capital goods increase future production possibilities.
Progressive tax policies erroneously "compassionate"

Andrew Sullivan. "'Progressive' Taxation". The Daily Dish, The Atlantic. 27 Jun 2008 - "Am I heartless? I hope not. I just don't believe that having a heart is what government should be about. It's what the rest of us should be about. This, of course, is my core disagreement with Obama who does indeed have a notion that government has a right and a duty to take money away from those whom he believes can "afford" it and give it to those who "deserve" it. I don't believe in a government with that much power and that lofty a social goal. It's also in part a disagreement with my friends, Ross and Reihan, who see government as integral to guiding the behavior and lives of the working poor."
Progressive taxes are not socialism or "spreading the wealth"

Judith A. Klinghoffer. "'Spreading the Wealth' is NOT progressive taxation". Political Mavens. - "Conceptually there is a major difference between progressive taxation and "spreading the wealth" socialism. Progressive taxation assumes that the richer should pay more of the government’s expenses than the poor. It does not mean that it is the role of the government to redistribute the wealth to reduce the wealth differential between rich and poor."
Low economic growth in progressive systems hurts the poor

Judith A. Klinghoffer. "Spreading the Wealth" is NOT progressive taxation". Political Mavens. - "the European experience demonstrates that Socialism, as well as Communism, stifle economic growth. Of course, no one gets hurt more by reduced economic growth than the poor. This has been proven by the economic histories of three so different ex British colonies as India, Ireland and Israel. All three adopted Socialist confiscatory tax policies and languished. All three dropped those policies and are booming."
Flat tax fairly has wealthy pay proportionally more in taxes.

It is unfair that people who earn more should pay at a progressive rate. Even on a standard rate, they already pay more tax, because they have a higher taxable income. Therefore progressive tax rates are a form of double taxation, as higher earners pay tax on more income, and then at a high level. This is further unfair to them since high earners are the least likely group to benefit from much taxpayer-funded activity e.g. welfare.