View source for Answering questions with questions

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[[Category:Eli]]
[[Category:Progressive Taxes]]
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{{DES | des = Good answers to a bunch of [[Hunter Baker]] questions about the justice of progressive taxation. | show=}}
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Hunter Baker, who really needs to pick one high-fantasy-villager career path and stick with it, has some questions. Specifically, he doesn't understand why "the American media and young people seem to be enamored of the thought of steeply progressive, redistributive tax rates designed to achieve some vision of justice." This isn't exactly a complicated idea, and Baker should probably already be familiar with our reasoning if he actually has bothered to pay any attention to what people are saying in the media. But, y'know, whatever - just for the sake of playing the game, let's see what he's got for us.
"1. What is the moral basis for taxing some incomes at higher rates than others?"
Uh, how about, what's the moral basis for not doing that? There are people out there whose incomes leave them in constant debt and in constant need of aid (from private charities, from a government, or both). Are we really supposed to believe that we should fund our governments by heavily taxing those people - i.e., the people who are either have no margin for error or whose margin is negative - in the same way that we heavily tax the rich? Because that's insane, and the only alternative is to continue "taxing some incomes at higher rates than others."
"2. Do we imagine that incomes are entirely the result of some random process?"
No - but does it matter? What's the point of even asking this question? Some people are hungry and homeless, working multiple full-time jobs, and/or rationing their insulin; meanwhile, other people have so much money that they're launching luxury cars into space for fun; how hard is it to do the moral math there?
"3. Do we understand that people with high incomes are the most mobile people on earth and that such persons are most able to leave one tax regime for another?"
Oh yeah? Then tell me: how many of those highly mobile rich fuckers are currently living in Alaska or Mongolia?
"4. Related to question #3, do we realize that governments exist in a competitive landscape, very much like businesses do?"
Sure! But do you? If business competition is like government competition (which, at some abstract level, I fully believe that it is) and if business competition is so good that it can be trusted to just run smoothly by itself (as libertarians believe), then why should we be worried? Either this'll work out or it'll be a temporary hiccup that the magic of the market quickly corrects, right?
"5. Do we have a right to treat wealthy individuals and organizations as a resource for our benefit?"
I mean, look, do they have the right to treat us that way? Because that's what's happening right now. Pharmaceutical companies shy away from developing cures because they can extract more money out of long-term disease management; every company in Silicon Valley wants you to be addicted to its product so that it can harvest your data without your knowledge or permission; and old-line industries like coal mining are so inextricably linked with worker exploitation that CEOs in those industries "think that OSHA, EPA or MSHA violations are part of the cost of doing business." Left to its own devices, corporate capitalism has no way of seeing humanity except as "a resource" to bleed dry. So if they can do it to us, why can't we do it to them? Or, at the very least, why can't we defend ourselves from predatory capitalism? Is "the moral basis" for financial inequality truly so strong that it even outweighs our moral right to self-defense?
"6. Will democratic socialism damage innovation and economic growth?"
C'mon, man, how much more "innovation and economic growth" do we need? Seriously, give me a number: how much more? Again, our current GDP per capita in this country is almost sixty grand. In other words, we're producing sixty grand's worth of goods and services per person every single year. How much higher does that number need to go before all of our people have enough fucking food to eat? Does it need to be seventy thousand? A hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand? A million? Eleventy balillion? Because it sure seems like we should be there already, only somehow we're not, which pretty strongly suggests that "innovation and economic growth" are not going to help with the most serious problems that we actually have.
"7. Why do we prize many other kinds of freedom more than economic freedom?"
Wait, wait, wait - let's go back a step. In our society, people get fired and shunned for things that they say in their private lives, religious orders can deny legitimate health care to dying patients, lots of places have patchwork Jim Crow voting systems, and we even go out of our way to criminalize homelessness. So, I mean, do we "prize many other kinds of freedom more than economic freedom"? Remember, all we're talking about here is progressive taxation. Nobody's suggesting (unfortunately) that we line up everybody with a nine-figure net worth and blow their brains out or anything like that. So in what sense does progressive taxation somehow count as a major or even meaningful restriction on freedom?
"8. Do we really need higher taxes or do we need to rethink the way we spend our money now?"
Porque no los dos? Redirecting funds away from the military is a great idea. Soaking the rich is a great idea. Why on Earth would we settle for only one great idea when we could have two?
"9. Are we getting taxation wrong?"
Why, yes. Yes, we are. For some reason, we seem to think that taxation is mostly about being nice to rich people instead of doing what needs to be done. Why, I wonder, would we think that? Why would we ever look out at the world, see the staggering inequalities that exist, observe the gratuitous suffering that results from those inequalities, and then allow some bullshit line about "economic freedom" to trick us into not doing anything about it? How stupid does Baker have to be to fall for this shit - or, for that matter, to think that we'll do the same?

Of course, I don't really expect Baker to answer. If nothing else, he's probably too busy stalking some cupcakes or some shit. (Or maybe making the batter for a deer? One of those.) Really, I just wanted to beat him at his own game, which, given that my questions are both better and more numerous than his, I think I have. And thus, according to the logic of his own rhetorical strategy, I think we must now all declare socialism to be the winner and then run Baker out of town on a rail. So Hunter, if you're out there reading this, feel free to contact me at your leisure to schedule your ejection from polite society. I'd say that we'll miss you, but, well, only one of us is a brazen fraud and I think we both know who it is.
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