Comments on: Rubber Duckies

By: Ray

Ray — Sat, 20 Sep 2003 22:07:08 +0000

Forgive the self-promotion here, but: A progressive tax isn’t a penalty. It’s not a personal attack. It’s simply a practical matter, like shooting a mad dog. The world isn’t socialist, and so governments need funding to provide services. Unless the government gets its funding from other countries (the empire model), it has to be funded by its citizens. Rich citizens have more money, so it makes practical sense to get more funding from them. Rich citizens receive more benefit from the government (directly through the pork-barrel; indirectly through property laws, courts, a stable currency, and the military and paramilitary forces needed to secure them) and exert more influence on the government, and so it also makes moral sense. It all seems pretty straightforward to me. The problem, of course, is that not all rich citizens care about their country or even about their own long-term viability. Should such short-sighted greedy bastards gain control of the government, things fall apart in a hurry.

By: ophelia benson

ophelia benson — Fri, 19 Sep 2003 01:46:33 +0000

And then of course there’s the whole positional goods aspect, which further complicates things.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 19:50:15 +0000

I don’t think this is quite the question asked by Drum or answered by Krugman, but I think income inequality does have real economic consequences for poor people because it drives up the price of some real essentials (like housing in major cities) and really good ways of getting ahead (like college tuition—it also drives up the supply of smart kids who can afford to work for free to break into a field, which is a problem for smart kids who can’t afford to work for free.)

By: Max Sawicky

Max Sawicky — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 18:37:51 +0000

I don’t think Levy has a serious argument. Everything hinges on what “treating people the same” means. His presumption is that everyone paying an equal share of income is equal treatment, but this is a completely arbitrary choice. For one thing, defining “income” is a task for which many trees have died. So the idea of an equal share of income leaves much to the imagination. Income received as cash? Intangible income? Income as accrued or when realized? Income received now or later? What deductions legitimately offset income? Etc. For two, equal treatment could be defined in other ways. Once again, much attention has been devoted to this by economists, among others. Is it equal sacrifice? Is it fair to tax a person on endowments she declines to exploit for the sake of higher money income? The fact that poor people pay taxes other than income taxes is the least of the complications. The content of “equal treatment,” really fair treatment, is the problem that Levy glosses over entirely.