# Representation without Taxation
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/representation-without-taxation/579276
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 21, 2011, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/representation-without-taxation/579276 "2011-04-21T20:06:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/representation-without-taxation/579276/81 "2011-04-26T21:14:48Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#):
>
> I am not making that point at all, unless your definition of freeloader is different than mine.
>
> I’m making the point that those who pay into the system have more of a vested interest in seeing it run effectively, efficiently, and demand good stewardship of their money. Not sure why anyone would argue this point, frankly.
Well, I guess it has to do with how you define who is paying into the system.
When you only count 42% of the federal revenue that is largely collected from the top income earners and entirely discount payroll taxes (which account for another 40% of federal tax revenue) then, sure, I guess you’ve got a point. For a lot of those people who pay payroll taxes, they really count on those retirement benefits and have a significant vested interest in seeing government run effectively, efficiently and would demand good stewardship of their money.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/representation-without-taxation/579276/82 "2011-04-26T21:34:04Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#):
>
> I’m fine with that. Who says it should be progressive all the way to the top? That sounds reasonable only to someone who comes in with the preconceived idea that wealth redistribution is fair. If the bottom of our society has basic living expenses covered, then who cares how the people with $150k paychecks are measuring up to each other? After a certain point, it’s silly to measure tax burden as a percentage of income. Once you’re up in the well-off territory, it should be measured in absolute dollars. And in that case, the richer you are, the more you pay for society to continue to function..who cares what that is as a percentage of income?
This “preconceived notion” that progressivity (you call it wealth redistribution) is fair is grounded in principles of equity. You seem to acknowledge as much but seem to think that the principle of equitable distribution break down after you make some amount of money (150K in your case).
> [@](#):
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> Everybody keeps going on about Fairtax-this and Fairtax-that. Not once have I said “Let’s establish the Fairtax plan!” I’d never even heard that name until this thread. So whatever “they” advocate tells you nothing about _my_ stance.
I guess the reason we bring up the fair tax is that it is the only consumption tax proposal that has any meat on its bones, the details work the way they do because its about the only way to keep a consumption tax revenue neutral without creating a consumption tax that has a higher rate than what we already have. The fact is that if you can just make up a consumption tax system on the fly and change the terms to address issues that we bring up, you would end up with a consumption tax that is broken in one way or another.
> [@](#):
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> So what? The poor don’t deserve choice. They deserve food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. That’s it. Society doesn’t have an obligation to boost him up to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. So the poor guy has to spend all his money…boo hoo. Shoulda done something with your life, buddy.
And there it is. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor so fuck them. You seem to think that the value of a person’s life is related to how much money they make. So Mother Theresa and Gandhi didn’t do anything with their lives.
The point that we were trying to make is that you say “boo hoo its only fair to give rich people a choice to spend their money and be taxed or not spend their money and not be taxed” So you want to give rich people a choice on how much taxes they will pay because they can choose their consumption level. Well poor people don’t have that choice and not necessarily because they are lazy and stupid.
> [@](#):
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> But how are you going to register it? In my state, when you register your car, you have to PROVE that you paid the sales tax on the vehicle. If you don’t, then they assess the tax again for the value over $2,500 (I think that’s the number). Why can’t they do that at a federal level?
You paid sales tax in Canada, but not at the sort of rates we are talking about. The notion of paying sales tax on everything you bring with you when you move to the United States is well unique.
> [@](#):
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> As for people that would just amass a fortune and take it on the road with them, well…you’re always going to have that. But seeing as how we tax ex-pats now, it’s not like our power to tax stops at the border.
WTF? There is not a consumption tax system that ANYONE is proposing that would charge you a US consumption tax for stuff you buy in Hong Kong. One of the few merits of a sales tax is that you don’t have to do ANY auditing at the individual level other than to check and see if they actually have as many dependents as they say they have. The collection burden is on the retailer (and you can imagine how many more cash transaction you will see when the sales tax jumps to 23%.
> [@](#):
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> I thought I already answered that. You’d be able to write off the first $X, depending on your zip code. After that, it’s all considered “extra” or “luxury” or “discretionary” or whatever you want to call it. That part is taxed. Complicated? Well, yeah, but simple is rarely fair, and hardly ever manageable.
The point of a consumption tax is that you don’t file a return, the retailer does that. I don’t think you’ve thought this through.
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### Author:  [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/representation-without-taxation/579276/83 "2011-04-27T00:54:30Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> This “preconceived notion” that progressivity (you call it wealth redistribution) is fair is grounded in principles of equity. You seem to acknowledge as much but seem to think that the principle of equitable distribution break down after you make some amount of money (150K in your case).
I only acquiesce to the demand of reality that says you can’t get blood from a stone. The only reason not to tax the poor is because they don’t have any money to give. It doesn’t make it fair, but it’s the only way to do it. It’s excusable because life (and math) is unfair that way…but that’s worlds apart from actually being fair.
But once you get to the $150k (or whatever) level, there _is_ money to be taken. I see no reason why John and Paul should pay different amounts to live in society simply because Paul makes more. So yes, it does break down after some amount of money.
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> I guess the reason we bring up the fair tax is that it is the only consumption tax proposal that has any meat on its bones, the details work the way they do because its about the only way to keep a consumption tax revenue neutral without creating a consumption tax that has a higher rate than what we already have. The fact is that if you can just make up a consumption tax system on the fly and change the terms to address issues that we bring up, you would end up with a consumption tax that is broken in one way or another.
> …
> I don’t think you’ve thought this through
So be it. Let me collect a congressman’s salary and I’ll draw up a detailed, balanced plan. Until then, I’m going to armchair it.
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> And there it is. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor so fuck them. You seem to think that the value of a person’s life is related to how much money they make. So Mother Theresa and Gandhi didn’t do anything with their lives.
>
> The point that we were trying to make is that you say “boo hoo its only fair to give rich people a choice to spend their money and be taxed or not spend their money and not be taxed” So you want to give rich people a choice on how much taxes they will pay because they can choose their consumption level. Well poor people don’t have that choice and not necessarily because they are lazy and stupid.
Yes, the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor. You go too far in saying that a person’s _life_ is valued by how much they make; it’s more like a person’s career and economic worth is valued by how much they make. Mother Theresa and Gandhi were worthwhile poor people, but then again, they weren’t trying to raise my taxes to fund their ventures, now were they?
I have a policy of not defending my personal life on these boards (mainly because I shouldn’t have to) but suffice it to say that my views on the poor vis a vie taxation are not the same as my view vis a vie charity.
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> You paid sales tax in Canada, but not at the sort of rates we are talking about. The notion of paying sales tax on everything you bring with you when you move to the United States is well unique.
But what I’m saying is that if you pay sales tax in Canada, it’s worthless. You either pay it in the states, or you don’t get your car registered. That is, if you walked into the DMV and said “But I paid Canada!”, they’d say “That’s nice. Now it’s Uncle Sam’s turn.”
And if you want to go border-hopping for your shampoo and Playstations, well, I don’t think anyone’s going to miss your cash _that_ badly.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2011, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/representation-without-taxation/579276/84 "2011-04-27T20:38:15Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#):
>
> I only acquiesce to the demand of reality that says you can’t get blood from a stone. The only reason not to tax the poor is because they don’t have any money to give. It doesn’t make it fair, but it’s the only way to do it. It’s excusable because life (and math) is unfair that way…but that’s worlds apart from actually being fair.
Then you have no concept of what constitutes fairness and equity.
These are not just words that liberals use to extort money from rich people to give it to poor people, these are principles that can be objectively evaluated.
Whether you use utilitarian principles or rawlsian principles, notions of fairness and maximization of societal happiness tell us that there are reasons more sophisticated than “you can’t get blood from a stone” for progressivity.
The utilitarian argument is that wealthy folks do not feel the burden of taxation nearly as much as the poor. So we can tax them more without causing as much harm as taxing the poor would cause.
The rawlsian would say that if your unborn children were going to be taken from you at birth and airdropped into a society and you didn’t know if your children would be rich, poor, in the majority, the minority, blessed with opportunity or cursed with bad fortune, what sort of rules would you implement in that society? Its hard to get from taht hypothetical (the original hypo is a bit more complicated and not really that necessary for our purposes (I hope)) to a tax system that is NOT progressive.
> [@](#):
>
> But once you get to the $150k (or whatever) level, there _is_ money to be taken. I see no reason why John and Paul should pay different amounts to live in society simply because Paul makes more. So yes, it does break down after some amount of money.
Are you saying taht you think that John (who lets say makes $150,000/year) and Paul (who lets say makes $150 million/year) should both pay the same amount in taxes in absolute dollars or as a percentage of their income?
You seem to take an a la carte view of government. i.e. why should Paul pay more than John? What is Paul getting taht john isn’t getting that would jsutify paul paying more? Is that your logic? That government is some sort of service provider in the same sense that a lawyer of a doctor might be a service provider that gives poor people a bit of a break but charges anyone taht can afford it pretty much the same amount?
> [@](#):
>
> So be it. Let me collect a congressman’s salary and I’ll draw up a detailed, balanced plan. Until then, I’m going to armchair it.
That wasn’t my point. My point was that you wave away problems and disreagard tradeoffs that are necessary to mantaining a reasonable consumption tax that is administrable (or has any advantage over the current system other than shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class).
> [@](#):
>
> Yes, the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor. You go too far in saying that a person’s _life_ is valued by how much they make; it’s more like a person’s career and economic worth is valued by how much they make.
So why the “shoulda done something with your life buddy” comment. I think it reveals an underlying attitude.
> [@](#):
>
> Mother Theresa and Gandhi were worthwhile poor people, but then again, they weren’t trying to raise my taxes to fund their ventures, now were they?
You may not be familiar with Gandhi and Mother Theresa’s position on wealth distribution.
> [@](#):
>
> I have a policy of not defending my personal life on these boards (mainly because I shouldn’t have to) but suffice it to say that my views on the poor vis a vie taxation are not the same as my view vis a vie charity.
I’m not asking you to defend your personal life, I’m asking you to defend the positions that you state here. Your position is that there is nothing intrinsically fair about a progressive tax system while it is only fair to let a rich man determine how much tax he will pay by adjusting how much taxable consumption he engages in.
> [@](#):
>
> But what I’m saying is that if you pay sales tax in Canada, it’s worthless. You either pay it in the states, or you don’t get your car registered. That is, if you walked into the DMV and said “But I paid Canada!”, they’d say “That’s nice. Now it’s Uncle Sam’s turn.”
Once again, that is not how the FAIR tax works, they do not collect a consumption tax on preexisting or sale of used goods. So if you buy a new car, there is a FAIR tax, if you buy a used car, there is no FAIR tax. There are all sorts of reasons for this, starting with administrability issues to liquidity issues (imagine if you had to pay a 23% tax everytime you sold an old house and bought a new one), etc. I suppose you could try to attack extraterritorial purchases of automobiles, but then what would you do about yachts or buying a ranch in mexico? We can’t tax those purchases and yet the money used to purchase those things were earned from the American economy.
> [@](#):
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> And if you want to go border-hopping for your shampoo and Playstations, well, I don’t think anyone’s going to miss your cash _that_ badly.
You would basically be giving anyone within commuting distance from the border the ability to avoid taxes and a lot of epople would end up buying their jewelry abroad.
The consumption tax is an idea that is attractive to some people in theory but the people who are most dedicated to that idea haven’t been able to come up with a model that works after decades of trying. It requires wilful ignorance to come up with a reasonable consumption tax that is revenue neutral.
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