Whence comes wealth?

Great Debates
81

In a sense.

You could trace current power relationships and technological advances to older states, which came from kingdoms, which ultimately came from warlords convincing men to kill others for him for whatever reason so they can control land (which, really, is the job title of any leader). Different relationships, different beneficiaries. You mentioned cavemen, but you can get even more sophist. A rat-like creature deciding to mate with a different rat-like creature 145 million years ago changes all of human history. Or a particle vibrates differently 13 billion years ago. Or maybe everything is determined from the start, so there’s no maybe about it.

What this has to do with tax ideology I have not a clue. Let’s say taxing the wealthy x% to use for program Y is better for society. What does it matter if it’s unearned or not? Would you have a guilty conscience or something if it was earned? It’s not like paying tribute is some cold instrument invented during the enlightenment. That’s one of the reasons having a bunch of armed men controlling a large area of land was always so useful.

82

Prr, you are suffering from several misconceptions. Let me help you.

  1. It turns out that the rest of us don’t really care whether the way we have set up society comports with your ideas of fairness or not. We are only trying to set up society in a way that we think makes it work the best (and people of course have different ideas about that). If it doesn’t comport with your notions of justice, then tough titties.
  2. You, like most liberals, fail to see the difference between two separate ideas: the idea that the government shouldn’t tax rich people and give it to poor people and the idea that rich people should not give money to poor people. You think everyone who believes the former believes the latter, which is simply not the case. And you can’t imagine something being done without the government doing it.
83

And furthermore . . .

  1. Not only have you failed to build a policy argument around your principle, it isn’t even possible to do so because your argument proves too much. If everything that everyone has is due to some criminal or otherwise wrong act in the past, then what justifies anyone having anything? A tax rate of anything less than 100% allows people to keep some of their ill-gotten gains. So, your principle can’t be used as the basis of a policy argument and is therefore worthless.