# Why is it unfair for the poor to be tax exempt? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 27, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773 "2008-10-27T15:29:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/121 "2008-10-30T01:48:20Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > . . . _bourgeois_ pig. > [@bump](#): > > It’s fools like you . . . Not in **Great Debates**. Knock it off. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/122 "2008-10-30T02:18:00Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Why is that the metric? No matter how much you take from the rich guys (shy of whittling him down to the poor guy), the rich guy is going to have an easier time. You think this is some revelation? In related news, Yao Ming has an easier time of dunking a basketball than I do. Life isn’t fair. Get over it. And rich people are going to pay more in taxes–because life isn’t fair. Get over it. And if Yao Ming went around kneecapping people to ensure his primacy in slam dunking I’d be calling him out on it too. > [@](#): > > Not if he planned for it. And even if he his, he’ll work harder to make sure he’s not hungry in future weeks. Fortunes have been amassed by this primal motivation. Just look at the many people who went through the depression and then did quite well. You can’t “plan” enough to do something that’s not possible. If you have ten bucks, and it costs twenty bucks to eat for a week, you get hungry–there’s no “planning” or “foresight” that will change that. Many people get through hard times by knocking other people over the head and taking their shit, too. Fortunes, in fact, have begun in just such ways. Prohibition enabled many a gigantic family fortune to be built on illegal activity, likewise with war profiteering. Just because somebody is rich doesn’t mean he’s right, ethical, or morally defensible. > [@](#): > > Except down the road he decides to build a home, employing many people and buying many things from many other companies who employ many other people. No, “a” home does not employ many people, nor does it buy “many” things from other companies. “A” home that costs a million dollars to build doesn’t actually create nearly the employment that building ten houses that cost a hundred grand each does. The larger number of houses being built, that can then be sold to ten families rather than just one, that use ten times the amount of raw materials as a single house, is societally more valuable than one overblown McMansion. > [@](#): > > So what? the wealthier guy can spend a 10-100 times as much. And one of the reasons he is willing to spend more on higher price goods is that he has a cushion, which he can spend at anytime on cars, refrigerators, suits, shoes, boats, etc. People have to get paid to make those things. And he pays sales tax on every one of them. The wealthier guy doesn’t buy 10-100 times as much, he merely spends more on the same amount of goods. Rich people don’t eat 100 times as much food, or sleep in 100 beds in 100 houses per night. Again, it’s better for the economy in general to sell 100 times as much in lower end goods than one high ticket item–one item, regardless of its selling price (which in most cases does NOT accurately reflect a greater value of labor OR material–good example being “designer clothes”) does not stimulate the economy nearly as much as a hundred similar items selling for much less. > [@](#): > > Tell that to a company whose stock isn’t being bought. And to the people planning for retirement who already have money in the company. and high-end earners often start new businesses with the money they [stash]. You know, those things that give people jobs and create wealth. What about the huge numbers of companies that aren’t publically traded? Do they not count? And money that’s being used to start new businesses, by definition, is not being stashed–you’re making something up here… I think we call that a “straw man,” do we not? > [@](#): > > Why? The dealership employs lot’s of people. And the tax on a Lamborghini is quite a lot, not to mention service. And the fortune it costs to insure it. A Lamborghini dealership does NOT employ “lot’s” [sic] of people. A Ford or Chevy dealership employs many more people and sells many more cars a month, benefiting many salespeople, rather than one or two. The Lamborghini taxes are mostly as high as they are because they’re gas guzzlers, which hurts everybody by using a disproportionate amount of a finite resource for no great benefit to society as a whole. Also, the money for the Lamborghini goes to an Italian company, which doesn’t benefit the US economy nearly as much as the sale of 10 Chevy’s. > [@](#): > > No, the government isn’t paying anything, the rich people are paying the poor people. Well, indirectly, because the money is not a voluntary payment. First it is confiscated from them and then doled out. It’s forced charity, that passes through the government’s hands. So? The rich are getting that way, in large part, by refusing to pay their employees decent wages, or furnishing benefits, and sometimes by making sure lots of them lose their jobs in order to “improve” the profit margin to make stockholders happy. This places hardship on the economy as a whole, and forces the government to either make up the shortfall or allow people to starve to death–which most of us who have brains and hearts consider to be a bad idea. > [@](#): > > The rich didn’t get rich by being dumb. If you’re product is beyond the reach of enough people, you either improve the value (either increase quality/quantity or lower price) or you come up with new products people can afford. And if you won’t do it, another rich guy will. Or GET rich doing it. Oh please–George Bush? Paris Hilton? Give me a break. Being rich does not confer ability or intelligence. Likewise, making more money for what you do does not mean you “work harder.” As a matter of fact, I can pretty much guarantee that no SDMB conservative bootstrapper works harder than some poor bastard working two full time jobs to try to keep his family off the streets. I sincerely doubt that any lawyer works “harder” than a garbage truck driver, or a warehouse worker, or a roofer, or an agricultural worker. Just because somebody is willing to pay a lot of money for a given occupation does not mean the beneficiary of that largesse “works harder.” For that matter, the rich person doesn’t have more hours in his day or days in his week in which to labor–he just has somebody who’s willing to agree that he’ll get paid a lot for his hours. By the same token, corporations that keep wages artificially low (and by all metrics, the average American hasn’t had a pay raise since 1999) and keep jobs scarce to discourage competition don’t make the value of the labor of their employees less. The rich, in general, are rich because of the labor of OTHERS, not their own. The rich benefit from the labor of others who make and sell their products–if you can sell a widget for ten bucks materials cost plus ten bucks labor plus five bucks marketing, then force the laborer to get by on five bucks and pocket the other five, you’re a parasite–a “sucker” in the truest sense of the word. > [@](#): > > Bullshit. (And now the rich are “suckers”?:rolleyes:) No they don’t. If I’m in the car business and people can no longer afford Lamborghinis, I need to offer lower priced cars if I want to stay in business. And if I downscale to BMWs and stop, and people still don’t buy, the guy down the street offering VWs and Saturns will do quite well. Or, as we’ve seen over and over, you pay lobbyists to reduce CAFE standards and create loopholes that allow huge SUV’s to be considered “trucks” and write in tax loopholes that allow huge deductions for purchasing 6000 GVW vehicles to encourage people to buy those instead of more sensible cars (because the profit margin on SUV’s is much higher than modest sedans) and protect your “too big to fail” business, then go for a corporate welfare payment when the bottom falls out of the Hummer market. Yeah, no handouts there! :rolleyes: Not to mention that when the greedy fuckers get done grabbing everything they can to the point where nobody else can afford a damned thing, everybody goes under. Everybody. > [@](#): > > Wow. Let’s just hope your grandson stays in school and gets another view other than yours. Thanks–my grandson is learning a lot of things, like not to mindlessly worship the getting of money and stuff as a measure of a person’s worth. He’s learning that doing things for other people is a great benefit and the right thing to do. He’s learning that the vast majority of rich people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. He’s learning that wisdom and knowledge and caring are things that can never be taken away and that never lose their value. He’s learning that “liberal” and “progressive” are not dirty words. He’s learning that mindless consumerism and worship of the almighty dollar are soul deadening pursuits that turn people into mindless, jingoistic, knee jerk apologists for the status they merely wish was quo, but which will always remain juuuuust out of reach. He is, in fact, learning to be a good man. I know a lot of people who could learn a lot from him, for all that he’s only twelve. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/123 "2008-10-30T02:48:46Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Likewise, even if a flat-rate tax code is considered more “fair”, we can still choose a system that’s more efficient. Progressive taxation is a better system because it provides the most revenue with the least economic hardship. Is your measure of efficiency here just how well we can collect taxes? I’m… not sure how I feel about this. Probably I’m missing something. > [@](#): > > Demanding that poor people pay taxes strictly as a percentage of income, when they don’t get to pay for goods and services as a percentage of income, is burdensome and unfair. **Kimstu** , you’re very reasonable person who I expect can answer the question simply and concisely: what are your criteria for fairness in this context? I like to agree with you, it makes my job here at SDMB much easier, but I can’t quite put my finger on your position. It’s like… you like efficiency in pricing, which you admit is at the cost of fairness, but then you want fairness in taxation, which is… more efficient? It seems that efficiency both is and is not in support of “fair,” which is just to say, it has nothing to do with it. So, what is “fair” here? Equal purchasing power? > [@](#): > > You’ve got my conclusion precisely backwards. I’m not saying that income redistribution through the tax code is the cause of the one-price system in commercial markets. Rather, I’m saying that the one-price system in commercial markets is one of the reasons that we should have some income redistribution through the tax code. I agree with you here; perhaps we only disagree on the magnitude of the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/124 "2008-10-30T03:19:44Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > what are your criteria for fairness in this context? I like to agree with you, it makes my job here at SDMB much easier, but I can’t quite put my finger on your position. It’s like… you like efficiency in pricing, which you admit is at the cost of fairness, but then you want fairness in taxation, which is… more efficient? It seems that efficiency both is and is not in support of “fair,” which is just to say, it has nothing to do with it. So, what is “fair” here? Equal purchasing power? Sorry, I don’t mean to be confusing, but I don’t think there **is** a simple and consistent way to define “fairness” here. I brought up the subject of “progressive pricing” in the first place as a response to the flat-taxer argument that a flat tax is more fair because it takes the same percentage of income from everybody. Okay, I see the point of that argument, but in that case isn’t it **un** fair not to have a system of prices that also take the same percentage of income from everybody? If you have to devote the same percentage of your income to tax payments as a rich person does, but have to spend a much higher percentage of your income on the basic necessities of life than a rich person does, how is that fair? I guess the larger point I’m trying to make is that it’s impossible to define “tax fairness” in isolation from related concepts such as socioeconomic inequality and the operation of markets. Which is why I think the flat-tax position generally misses the boat: it’s considering the taxation issue too narrowly. (And yes, I’d describe it as less efficient for the economy as a whole to try to generate tax revenue from a single tax rate applied equally to all incomes than from a progressive-taxation system. Disproportionately soaking the rich gets you much more money with much less financial hardship. I certainly do not claim that this is necessarily the fairest approach, but as I said, I think the notion of “fairness” is very murky and contingent when it comes to tax policy.) ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/125 "2008-10-30T03:37:03Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Sorry, I don’t mean to be confusing, but I don’t think there **is** a simple and consistent way to define “fairness” here. I like: “A fair tax is one that does not care which dollar you’re earning next.” Incentives are a big deal to me. I like taxes to fix incentive problems; and, where there are no incentive problems, to get the hell out of the way. I don’t personally see purchasing power disparity as an _incentive_ problem, so I’m personally a little uncomfortable using taxes to address it. But, practically, it is a problem, and redistribution is the only way to deal with it. So, yeah, probably not a simple and consistent way. 🙂 > [@](#): > > I brought up the subject of “progressive pricing” in the first place as a response to the flat-taxer argument that a flat tax is more fair because it takes the same percentage of income from everybody. Okay, I see the point of that argument, but in that case isn’t it **un** fair not to have a system of prices that also take the same percentage of income from everybody? Ahh, gotcha. So it is more like, “How the hell are _you_ using fair?” > [@](#): > > I guess the larger point I’m trying to make is that it’s impossible to define “tax fairness” in isolation from related concepts such as socioeconomic inequality and the operation of markets. Which is why I think the flat-tax position generally misses the boat: it’s considering the taxation issue too narrowly. I’m happy with it as long as there are base payments to cover the bottom. What concerns me about progressive taxation is that it is almost making an assertion about how much person X values his next dollar, when there is no reason at all to assume that this can be meaningfully aggregated. I see progressive taxation as a means of discouraging income earning, much in the same way tax penalties for pollution would discourage polluting. I must admit, _any_ tax but a head tax will discourage income earning to some extent, but what else can we do? > [@](#): > > And yes, I’d describe it as less efficient for the economy as a whole to try to generate tax revenue from a single tax rate applied equally to all incomes than from a progressive-taxation system. Disproportionately soaking the rich gets you much more money with much less financial hardship. I’m just not sure about this. Fabulously wealthy people, for an extreme example, seem to care about the act of making money itself. Like, spending it on themselves is just something to pass the time, but _earning it_ is somehow its own benefit. I feel strongly that there are people that wealthier than I that care much more about their next dollar. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s _part_ of the reason they’re wealthier than I am! I just looked at my 401k and saw it lost about 40%. I shrugged. Oh well, that’s life. But to hear some people talk, it’s the friggin’ end of the world. Taxing them more than I am taxed feels unfair. It might not hurt them financially as much, but it will hurt them. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/126 "2008-10-30T06:39:03Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > And rich people are going to pay more in taxes–because life isn’t fair. Get over it. And if Yao Ming went around kneecapping people to ensure his primacy in slam dunking I’d be calling him out on it too. I’m not against the rich paying more in taxes, so try reading for comprehension next time. The rest of this is just nonsense. Kneecapping? > [@SmartAleq](#): > > You can’t “plan” enough to do something that’s not possible. If you have ten bucks, and it costs twenty bucks to eat for a week, you get hungry–there’s no “planning” or “foresight” that will change that. Sure there is. If you learn that ten bucks is not enough to eat for a week, you find a way to earn twenty bucks next week. It may be difficult, but it can be done. Millions have done it. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > Many people get through hard times by knocking other people over the head and taking their shit, too. Fortunes, in fact, have begun in just such ways. Prohibition enabled many a gigantic family fortune to be built on illegal activity, likewise with war profiteering. Just because somebody is rich doesn’t mean he’s right, ethical, or morally defensible. I never claimed that rich people were better than anyone else, more law abiding or morally superior. Neither are the poor. Fortunately we have laws to deal with both groups. If you’d like the law to be more vigilant, we’re in agreement. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > No, “a” home does not employ many people, nor does it buy “many” things from other companies. :rolleyes: The building of; the filling of. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > “A” home that costs a million dollars to build doesn’t actually create nearly the employment that building ten houses that cost a hundred grand each does. I’m not so sure about that. A cheaper home would use more prefabricated goods. A mansion would require more craftsmanship. and those craftsman earn more than the run-of-the-mill house laborer, giving that laborer a way to make more money down the road if he can master a particular skill. So , a low paid worker becomes a high paid worker, who in turn will have more money to buy more goods. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > The larger number of houses being built, that can then be sold to ten families rather than just one, that use ten times the amount of raw materials as a single house, is societally more valuable than one overblown McMansion. Careful there, you’re getting a little close to the government deciding how much of whatever you want you’re allowed to have. Do you really want to go there? > [@SmartAleq](#): > > The wealthier guy doesn’t buy 10-100 times as much, he merely spends more on the same amount of goods. Rich people don’t eat 100 times as much food, or sleep in 100 beds in 100 houses per night. Again, it’s better for the economy in general to sell 100 times as much in lower end goods than one high ticket item–one item, regardless of its selling price (which in most cases does NOT accurately reflect a greater value of labor OR material–good example being “designer clothes”) does not stimulate the economy nearly as much as a hundred similar items selling for much less. That’s not necessarily true. He sets dollars in motion that continue to serve society well. Those dollars don’t stop moving when the suit is in the closet. Someone else has the money, and they’re paying employee with it, and buying goods and services, and investing it. Every dollar is put to good and continuous use. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > What about the huge numbers of companies that aren’t publically traded? Do they not count? And money that’s being used to start new businesses, by definition, is not being stashed–you’re making something up here… I think we call that a “straw man,” do we not? Non-publicly traded companies benefit society as well. They employ people, provided goods or services, pay taxes… And, uh, you’re the one who claimed the money was being stashed, as if it was being shoved under a mattress. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > A Lamborghini dealership does NOT employ “lot’s” [sic] of people. A Ford or Chevy dealership employs many more people and sells many more cars a month, benefiting many salespeople, rather than one or two. The Lamborghini taxes are mostly as high as they are because they’re gas guzzlers, which hurts everybody by using a disproportionate amount of a finite resource for no great benefit to society as a whole. Also, the money for the Lamborghini goes to an Italian company, which doesn’t benefit the US economy nearly as much as the sale of 10 Chevy’s. Oy! A Lamborghini dealership can bot employ lots of people and not as many as a Ford dealer. They have fewer sales people probably, but they may employ more service people. when you pick up a Lamborghini you can be rest assured it will be spotless. Somebody had to make it so. And the mechanic who works on a Lamborghini makes a lot more than the mechanic who works on the Ford. That should be a good thing. A Ford mechanic can aspire to work on Lamborghinis and make more money. I guess that’s a bad thing in your book, as it might lead to him becoming—egad—rich. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > So? The rich are getting that way, in large part, by refusing to pay their employees decent wages, or furnishing benefits, and sometimes by making sure lots of them lose their jobs in order to “improve” the profit margin to make stockholders happy. This places hardship on the economy as a whole, and forces the government to either make up the shortfall or allow people to starve to death–which most of us who have brains and hearts consider to be a bad idea. Here’s a little lesson that you seemed to not have learned elsewhere. A business man should pay no more for something than he has to. If two people are being interviewed for a job and one wants $12/hr and the other $10, all things being equal, he’d be a fool not to hire the $10/hr guy. Now if it turns out that $10/hr guys tend to be late or not take their jobs very seriously he may deem it smarter to hire $12/hr guys. This happened here in SF. A local coffee shop paid a few bucks more for baristas than similar places (or jobs) in town. They did so because they wanted really good employees and had learned that many young people looking for those jobs didn’t take it seriously. By offering more, they had their pick of the cream of the crop. Then SF went and increased the minimum wage/living wage. The company could no longer offer such a premium and could no longer attract the best employees. The result? Service went downhill considerably. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > Oh please–George Bush? Paris Hilton? Give me a break. Being rich does not confer ability or intelligence. Heavens no. But ability and intelligence are often rewarded with riches. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > Likewise, making more money for what you do does not mean you “work harder.” As a matter of fact, I can pretty much guarantee that no SDMB conservative bootstrapper works harder than some poor bastard working two full time jobs to try to keep his family off the streets. I’d probably agree with that. So? > [@SmartAleq](#): > > I sincerely doubt that any lawyer works “harder” than a garbage truck driver, or a warehouse worker, or a roofer, or an agricultural worker. And disagree with this strongly. And I say that as someone who worked at an amusement park collecting trash and cleaning bathrooms all day long. I have to ask you, did some rich kid steal your ice cream cone years ago? Or beat you up? This idea that someone non-rich is more noble than someone rich just because he isn’t rich is beyond nonsense. It shows strong bias, founding in some underlying hate. Not that I like defending lawyers, but law school is no cakewalk. And once in a law firm, you have no union protecting you and keeping your week down to 35 or 40 hours. At my first job in Manhattan I worked 90-100+ hours a week, many weeks in a row. I did this for four years, due to seasonal demands. No overtime. There are millions of people who sacrifice similarly, not just for the hell of it, but to better themselves. The way I looked at it was that after a year, I’d have two years experience; after four years, eight years experience. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > Just because somebody is willing to pay a lot of money for a given occupation does not mean the beneficiary of that largesse “works harder.” For that matter, the rich person doesn’t have more hours in his day or days in his week in which to labor–he just has somebody who’s willing to agree that he’ll get paid a lot for his hours. And you see this as a problem? This is a good thing. People can earn more and work less. Why is that bad? That is why people spend years going for advanced degrees. Or working to be the best at what they do. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > By the same token, corporations that keep wages artificially low (and by all metrics, the average American hasn’t had a pay raise since 1999) and keep jobs scarce to discourage competition don’t make the value of the labor of their employees less. You’ll have to attach this to a real-world example. I have no idea what you’re talking about. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > The rich, in general, are rich because of the labor of OTHERS, not their own. Bullshit. It is because of their own skills and labor that they’ve reached the point that they can earn money from the labor of others. A man I worked for became very rich by building a 400-person service company. The clients were happy, He was happy. And the people he hired were happy. After all, without him, they’re would be 400 people looking for jobs elsewhere. and that’s one way to become rich. You can also invent something, or find a way to entertain millions of people. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > The rich benefit from the labor of others who make and sell their products–if you can sell a widget for ten bucks materials cost plus ten bucks labor plus five bucks marketing, then force the laborer to get by on five bucks and pocket the other five, you’re a parasite–a “sucker” in the truest sense of the word. Where do you get these ideas? That business owner should pay as little as he can for those things he needs. If he can get appropriate labor for $5, he should . If he has to spend 10, 20 40, so be it. This is part of the problem with illegal immigration. The illegals keep wages artificially low. Also, back in the '60s/'70s NYC was filthy. There weren’t enough garbage men. No one wanted that dirty job. Except the truth was that no one wanted that dirty job _for the wages they were paying_. They dramatically raised the pay and the job quickly became one where demand was greater than supply. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > Or, as we’ve seen over and over, you pay lobbyists to reduce CAFE standards and create loopholes that allow huge SUV’s to be considered “trucks” and write in tax loopholes that allow huge deductions for purchasing 6000 GVW vehicles to encourage people to buy those instead of more sensible cars (because the profit margin on SUV’s is much higher than modest sedans) and protect your “too big to fail” business, then go for a corporate welfare payment when the bottom falls out of the Hummer market. Yeah, no handouts there! :rolleyes: I’m no fan of corporate handouts. Or bailouts. Fact is, though, sometimes they are the wise thing to do. But if you don’t like those loopholes, you should love a flat tax. > [@SmartAleq](#): > > Not to mention that when the greedy fuckers get done grabbing everything they can to the point where nobody else can afford a damned thing, everybody goes under. Everybody. Translation, please? > [@SmartAleq](#): > > Thanks–my grandson is learning a lot of things, like not to mindlessly worship the getting of money and stuff as a measure of a person’s worth. He’s learning that doing things for other people is a great benefit and the right thing to do. He’s learning that the vast majority of rich people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. He’s learning that wisdom and knowledge and caring are things that can never be taken away and that never lose their value. He’s learning that “liberal” and “progressive” are not dirty words. He’s learning that mindless consumerism and worship of the almighty dollar are soul deadening pursuits that turn people into mindless, jingoistic, knee jerk apologists for the status they merely wish was quo, but which will always remain juuuuust out of reach. > > He is, in fact, learning to be a good man. I know a lot of people who could learn a lot from him, for all that he’s only twelve. Well, that’s good. But I hope he’s playing some sports or something were he can learn about the world of meritocracy. If not, don’t tell him to come knocking on my door. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/127 "2008-10-30T13:18:38Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > > [@mazinger\_z](#): > > > > [“Progressive pricing” is] A bizarre notion, economically speaking > > I agree entirely. In fact, that’s my point. [Not such a bizarre notion, after all.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination) The idea, simply, is that you charge more for people that can afford more. Ever wonder why students and children get to watch movies at the theater cheaper than everyone else? Why seniors get a cheaper cup of coffee at McDonald’s? I’m not going to touch this debate with a 10-foot pole, but I just wanted to inform everyone that, while relatively rare, price discrimination is not at all a bizarre idea in economics. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2008, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773/128 "2008-10-30T14:10:00Z")
I thought the same thing. Extracting the consumer surplus is the stuff dreams are made of. Airlines and grocery stores are classic examples. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-it-unfair-for-the-poor-to-be-tax-exempt/469773.md?page=6)