Hi, I hope yesterday is treating you well.

I'll give you point 1, but as to point 2; I wanted to bring morality into the discussion and I think the use of violence is key to the moral argument. But yeah the first post was lazy and inflammatory.

To me it's important to remember that when we tax people, it's enforced under the threat of violence. I do think there are lots of times where the use of violence is okay. If you rob a store you need to know there will be police that will come after you with the threat of violence. But if we are going to use this as our means of control in society it's important that we don't abuse it and are able to include that in our weighing up of the morality of different laws. When the tax rate gets this high, even when the person has a huge amount of money, it's hard to justify using force.

Morality was my sole point. It seemed from this article that the morality of the tax rate wasn't considered. I'm sorry if this seems obnoxious to you but I think it's key to discussion and something that's left out.

I'm also not trying to push the lazy poor just need to work harder line. I know there are a lot of factors the cause a person to be poor and don't want to beat up on them . I think it's still reasonable to provide a basic safety net for them but don't think you need such and extreme tax rate to do it.

I also think we don't want to throw out progressive tax rates. Mostly because I don't think changing the tax system dramatically is ever a good idea. Slow incremental change is really the only safe way forward there. I'm not aware of any long term trials of a flat tax but it's not something you want to do without careful consideration and long term data. Anyway not something I'm pushing for.

Going back to the point. At 70 cents on the dollar for every additional dollar someone earns the government has the right and some would say the prerogative to take that money and repurpose it as they see fit. To me that is unjust. It's a matter of proportion. Even at a flat tax someone earning a lot more is still paying for a higher proportion of the countries running costs. But at 70% society is taking considerably more than the person who is earning the money. Is it really just to have a law such that if they don't give 70% of the upper part of their income we'll throw them into jail?

At some point the cost of the running the country costs x and we have to get that from somewhere so yes it justifies some tax. But we also have to keep in mind that no one is owed someone else's money just because they earn more.

Yes too much inequality is bad and finding ways to avoid that is really good. But I think first we have to look at other things. Trying to remove as much corruption as we can. Avoid corporate welfare at all costs. The most appalling government action of recent times to me is the bailing out of the banks. If you want to make sure the rich stay rich the perfect way is to remove all the risk from them and put it on the tax payer. Idiotic things like corn subsidies need to be removed so taxes aren't helping those that don't need help. Sorry I'm a bit off topic.

I suspect (and this may be unfair) a lot of the support for this idea comes from jealousy and if we got passed that people might see that it's not a moral idea to push someone's tax rate this high. It's too easy to go that person earns so much what's wrong with taking some of it.