Sorry, I was reediting myself & lost clarity. What I mean to say is:
My personal preferred approach to income tax is that there should be a generous exemption per person per year (say, $40,000 in current dollars, or $120,000 for an earner with two dependents), & that marginal taxes should rise progressively from there.
However, I have to concede that this is unfair (OK, you made me say it) to those who make a lot of money in a non-repeatable fashion in a short time, such as lottery winners. It’s also problematic for those with intrinsically shorter careers, such as ballplayers & supermodels.
And, yeah, I have my own ideas of fairness, so my quasi-totalitarian argument that “fair is whatever the state grants you” is at the least an overstatement. The fact remains that as far as the constitution is concerned, your protection against the seizure through taxation of over 90% of your assets is merely the fact that your countrymen don’t want that law either.
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As for your contention that, “If people are equal they should be treated equally,” as a radical egalitarian, I agree. The difference is that mathematics, economics, & sociology all tell me that unequal amounts of money are definitely not equal. You seem to think that A’s income should be treated equally to B’s income even if A’s income is unequal to B’s income, but this is not proven by the premise of treating the equal equally.
If, in fact, we seek to treat people equally, we have cause to try to mitigate the social inequality that wealth inequality is used to support. This is why, for example, we have publically funded schools, instead of relying on individuals to procure all their own schooling.
No need for the subjunctive; one may argue that, we have freedom of the press. It does not mean it makes any sense at all.