this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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Increasing taxes to solve inequality is based on fundamentally wrong assumptions. (lemmy.fbxl.net)
submitted 1 year ago by SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Why on earth would taking wealth from everyone (and it turns into everyone -- There are non-executive wage earners working mundane jobs who pay 50% taxes on their last bit of income and basically pay that on any overtime they work) and concentrating it in the hands of a few insanely powerful government workers ever result in less inequality? You're literally making an overclass of super-powerful people a little bit stronger.

We've done that before -- we gave all the power to people based not on their amount of money but instead their ownership and effective use of horsies and horsie accessories, hard clothing, and pokey sticks of varying descriptions and materials. It wasn't a more equal society back then. The pokey stick hard clothing horsie people still got the nicest houses and could get a bunch of slaves to build big pointy buildings for them.

You're just taking money from the super powerful (and everyone else) and giving it to the ultra mega powerful.

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[–] Kurt@lemmy.one 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Take another shower. Taxes aren't used to fix inequality. They're used to fund infrastructure and services that we all need. They're also used sometimes to redistribute income, but the idea isn't to solve inequality. The idea is to get some income, in one form or another, to people who cannot or should not work, like the sick, children, the elderly, and anyone else excluded from the workforce. This non-working population needs income as much as the working population does and it doesn't make sense to force them to get it in inefficient and harmful ways. Taxation to solve inequality is a myth that isn't happening.