If you legally earn money in a country, you have a legal responsibility to pay towards the upkeep of that country that allowed you to earn the money in the first place. This payment is called taxes.

If you legally have earned lots and lots of money in a country, then you have a responsibility to pay more towards the upkeep of that country because you have benefited from it more than someone else who has earned less.

And if you don't like paying for government (eg you don't like taxes), then go live somewhere like Somalia where they don't have a government. See how easy it is to run a profitable business there. Now, you may have an argument that your government wastes tax money on things that it really shouldn't be wasting money on, and that there is a huge amount of corruption, and I'd agree. But that's a different argument from "I'm not paying taxes 'cause I earned it through my own hard work".

"A rising tide raises all ships."
Of course. Except in this case when the tide rises, 80% of the country get 7% of the increase, and the remaining 20% get 93% of the increase. That's not exactly "fair".

What's not fair is robbing one man because he made too much money.

I have no problems with taxes.

Well, I'm against robbing and theft by criminals too.

But you have no problem with taxes, so clearly we have the same views.

Not necessarily. Sliding scale taxes (e.g. richer people have a larger tax rate or are in a tax bracket) means that the government robs a man because he makes large amounts of money. Taxes are fine, but sliding scale taxes rob people.

Incidentally, in NZ and possibly in the USA too, although I wouldn't know for sure, the tax brackets remain constant, but due to inflation of a max of 3% each year, people earn more and more money. Basically, more and more people will move into higher tax brackets, while not earning any more real world value in their money. At the very least, the tax bracket system should be set up to increase each year with inflation. Ideally, there'd be no inflation at all, and only one tax bracket. Why should someone be punished for earning large amounts of money?

I believe I'm Libertarianism leaning. I don't have a problem with deregulating the bulk of industry and civil rights. I can't tell if you're saying exterminate as in kill or exterminate in some metaphorical way meaning there will be less poor. In which case, it probably isn't true. I bitterly admit that some industries must be regulated or else they will take advantage of the poor or unfortunate, and there has definitely been a time and a place for unions, I don't think they serve a place in modern industry. I agree with the CPSIA, even though it effects industries I want to get into. I definitely agree with enforced health codes that all businesses should keep in line with. I agree with retaining whistle blowing rights. The sad truth is that some humans cannot be trusted with their own rights. We saw that in mortgage/finance industries, and we see that with health insurance. (not that I support obamacare).

Well, I could start with a sob story. I could tell you that my parents live in poverty (even if it was mostly self inflicted), that my dad was forced to drop out of college because his family lived worse than we do. I could tell you that they struggle to make end meets and that my father is too infirmed from old age and diseases related to old age to go out get a job now, or how he got laid off fifteen years ago because someone bought the company then closed it. I could tell you that my parents would not be able to afford health care except health companies make an exception for small business owners with employees. I could probably even tell you that if there is not reform, I would not be able to seek healthcare on my own because Grave's Disease is an autoimmune disorder, apparently, even though I've been incredibly sick once in the past three years. And I could tell you that I've owned up to the sad truth that I will probably never be able to follow my dreams, or I won't be able to find a stable, salaried job out of college. I've crunched the numbers and unfortunately to live I might have to receive welfare - probably food stamps or title nine housing assistance.

But in the end what I'm going to say is this. The idea of social security, welfare, medicare, medicaid, is not a bad one. I'd be thrilled if the government paid my entire education. But right now I'm thrilling they are able to provide me about $6k in aid a semester. I am fortunate that we have these programs - even if I think they are broken. I am not looking forward to paying for programs that don't work, though, and that are treating symptoms instead of the root problems. I think that's true of obamacare. I surprisingly don't know many people who are thrilled about obamacare. Most of my contemporaries are bracing to pick up the bill from all the welfare programs that do not work and will not last. While our parents get thousands of dollars in tax breaks, we're waiting for when the government notices 'oh we needed that money' and so increases taxes in the long run. The 90s and part of the 80s were very prosperous, but we are not any more. We don't have the buying power to support the same habits our parents had. We need to change our outlook. We need to stop demanding stuff from our government and suck it up, cut programs, and refine the programs we must keep.

I find it surprising that America is still considered the most prosperous country because we're not. That prosperity is a damned lie - it will damn us all as long as we continue to pretend that we have money. I think America - both people and government - is like a lonely bachelor on ladies night. If we just keep buying her drinks, maybe she'll think we have money and will put out. Colorado is cutting their budget in several areas - unfortunately higher education is included. But we have no choice. We don't have the money. That's what it comes down to.

Whereas countries like Saudi Arabia, which does have extremely good benefits for their citizens, including free health care as well as a lot of help with higher education, makes a lot more money and is much more prosperous. What you really should be asking what's China's excuse? Why does China have a surplus even though they are pumping money into a failing (and hazardous) dam project, their people are still largely impoverished?

A lot of change does need to happen. I do not agree with letting anyone starve and die in the streets. But I will say that our government is not empowered to do anything about it right now, and other organizations are suffering so that they are forced to also cut back support.

This is called progressive taxation. The alternative is a flat tax, which is essentially regressive as it bites into poor people's incomes much more harshly than it does rich peoples.

Basically it works like this: if you have made money from everything that society provides, you are expected to pay taxes towards the upkeep of that society. If you have made significantly more money than someone else from this society, then you should be contributing a greater share of your wealth, but you are also much better off. Then there's also the fact that if you're wealthy, you don't *need* the next extra money as much as someone else who is poorer.

It seems morally repugnant in general that a society should exist in which a minority of people can have trouble choosing what pair of designer shoes they should wear to go with their designer gown, while another person in the same society has to choose between going to the doctor to get treatment for an infection or buying food for their children to eat this week. That is, some people can squander their wealth on pretty much meaningless pursuits to make themselves marginally happy, while someone else is desperately struggling to even meet the basic necessities of life.

This is called fiscal drag, where because of wage inflation to keep pace with price inflation, you rise into a higher tax bracket and effectively have less after-tax real wealth.

In 2005-2006, Michael Cullen proposed permanently indexing tax thresholds to the CPI inflation rate. This was criticised by National (and picked up by the media) as the "chewing gum tax cut" that would only deliver $10/week at best to some people. As a result of the negative publicity, Cullen ended up dropping the idea. As we have now had much higher inflation rates for the last few years, this indexing would have actually moved the thresholds up quite a lot by now. So you can blame National for our thresholds not being inflation indexed - and they had ample opportunity to introduce it in the tax changes for 2009 or 2010, but chose to give massive tax cuts to the rich instead.




Thanks for that. It shows that you truly do have a realistic perspective on these issues; many on the right of the political spectrum simply do not have any real comprehension of how other people live in society (or have been brainwashed by the media to vote against their best interests).

While I myself haven't grown up in a particularly rich household, I would say my parents are solidly middle class. My dad was always employed and my mum ran a sewing business from home. We never had to go without food or the necessities, but at the same time my parents are very frugal with their money - we never really went on holidays or bought into the consumerist lifestyle at all when I was growing up (as it should be, really). I don't have any serious health issues at all, and neither does anyone in my family. I now have a job paying $35/hr and an interest-free student loan that has under $9k remaining, and a car worth about $10k with no debt on it at all. So I am comparatively pretty well off.

Yes, it is always difficult to target welfare in such a way that it isn't abused and yet gets to those who need it most at levels that are actually useful for them, without also being a huge bureaucratic nightmare with heaps of paper work that needs to be shuffled. The root of most social problems boils down to education, which is very expensive and takes a long time to really sink in. It's also quite difficult to do properly and difficult to measure, so it's very easy for funding to be withdrawn in the short term due to "lack of results", or schemes to be drawn up with the best of intentions to improve educational outcomes but actually end up wasting money or even harming outcomes.

Culture is also a root problem, which is very difficult to mould in specific directions, and also takes a long time. Education can help, though. There was an American news report on the Japanese disaster that I caught on TV, showing what a different culture they had. The power companies were needing to impose 3 to 6 hour rolling blackouts as they currently don't generate enough electricity for everyone to use as much as they wanted. But they found that they didn't need to implement specific blackouts, because the people, without any particular prompting or cajoling, voluntarily cut back on their general power usage so that blackouts weren't required. I can't imagine the same happening in the US (it didn't in California during their Enron crisis), or in most other western countries for that matter. Another stark example of particular American culture is your attitude towards guns - no other country in the western world handles the issue the way you guys do (where you can pretty easily buy an automatic assault rifle or rocket launcher if you want to).

From what I understand of obamacare, it is really a half-arsed solution that doesn't go all the way. It's not really state-run healthcare, but essentially corporate welfare for insurance providers by forcing all citizens to be insured (more customers). Probably the only real redeeming feature is the requirement that pre-existing conditions must be covered and also the attempt to make it easier to compare insurance policies from different companies and be able to understand with what you're actually buying into.

Yes, the US has a huge budget problem. But there are two ways to balance a budget - cut spending or raise revenues. There is massive tax avoidance (the legal form of 'tax evasion') going on in the US by large companies and wealthy individuals that structure their income using legal loopholes to avoid paying as much tax as possible. Essentially they are free-loading parasites - they take all of the benefit of a functioning society (law and order, educated populace, roads, electricity etc) and then pay as little as possible towards the upkeep of that society. In some ways this is simply a product of the environment they operate in - companies are legally required to maximize value for their shareholders, and can even be sued if they fail to do so. This leads to a situation where you must cut costs in any way possible so as to keep abreast of your competition, and unfortunately taxes are essentially just another 'cost' to a business, and often are one of the largest single sources of cost, so finding ways to reduce their tax bills is essentially mandated by law.

Another aspect is that military spending in the states is completely out of control. Really I think a lot of military spending is actually welfare spending but with a side effect of making some weapons that are useful for projecting the US power abroad.

While undoubtedly there is plenty of welfare spending that can be re-targeted or simply cut to help balance the budget, seriously clamping down on tax avoidance and military spending can provide much bigger savings with comparatively less human suffering.

The country is truly broke. You're basically sailing along on your infrastructure that was built from 1940 to 1980 or so, a lot of which is actually falling apart and in dire need of maintenance. I think the apparent wealth in the 80's and 90's stemmed from deferral of maintenance on this infrastructure as well as short-sighted cutbacks in educational and health spending (and corrupt politicians feathering their own nests and furthering lobbyists interests), and now all of those issues are starting to come home to roost.

Saudi Arabia exports oil and precious little else. The population itself is down-trodden and actually have pretty poor quality of life overall, along with it being the most conservative of the Islamic states. The government provides health care and massive subsidies in every day life as way to stop dissent and keep themselves in power. Eventually there will come a point where they will be forced to migrate away from this paradigm and it remains to be seen how well they can manage it.

China is ruled by some very smart people. They've artificially kept their currency low so as to benefit greatly from their massive exports. Essentially globalisation has shifted western world's manufacturing, notably the US's to China, and now have to buy the products back that they used to make themselves. While a large number of Chinese still live in relatively primitive conditions, they are still improving the living standards of their citizens at a rapid pace.

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Mar 17 2011, 8:20 am by Lanthanide.

Lanthanide, you killed your credibility. You're telling me appeal to pity is a logical?

How would a flat rate tax bite into poor people's income more than it does as a progressive tax rate? If all the tax bracket became equal to the lowest tax bracket (19% or whatever it is in NZ), then the lowest-income people aren't affected, and the higher income people are better off.

What has the government provided me that I actually have much need of, that society couldn't have given me through other means? What I mean is, all the money I give in tax goes to the government. What does the government do for me? Well, let's see. There's trade embargoes to countries it doesn't like, enforcement of laws (some good laws, some bad), free trade agreements to countries it DOES like, nice sports stadiums, a military to defend me even though NZ never has wars anymore, et cetera. Now, non-government affiliated companies have made sports stadiums too, so those are an unnecessary use of my tax money. Why should I or my company be restricted to trading with some companies in certain countries, and not to others, just because the government doesn't like them? I could say that the government provides me with internet and phone, but let's face it. Telecom did a horrible job compared to what a private company would have done, or numerous private companies. What happened in the Wellington CBD and Wellington in general could have as easily happened to the rest of NZ, without government help or interference.
Basically, my point is that I haven't really made money from what the GOVERNMENT provides, but they're the people who I have to give money to via tax. Now, as for SOCIETY, certainly society and the community at large has done much for me, and I'm perfectly willing to give to my church and charities and other community organizations for the services they provide.

" If you have made significantly more money than someone else from this society, then you should be contributing a greater share of your wealth, but you are also much better off. Then there's also the fact that if you're wealthy, you don't *need* the next extra money as much as someone else who is poorer."
Why should I? And what has NEED got to do with anything? When it comes down to it, if I make large amounts of money due to large-risk ventures, and others lose everything to the same, it's neither here nor there. Now, if someone is starving and needs food and shelter, guess what? There's the salvation army, soup kitchens, cheap places to live, and if the government didn't try to be God and feed, clothe, pay, and house people who are poor, then there'd be even MORE places for needy people to survive at.

How is it morally repugnant that some people are rich and some aren't? This is how the world works. In rich countries like NZ and to a large extent the USA, the poorest people are much better off than the poor in, say, Nigeria. Most aren't at any risk of losing their lives. Why should I pay tax to pay for the poor's upkeep that they DON'T ACTUALLY NEED? Now, charity to organizations working in Nigeria I'm happy to do, because there's a real need for it.


This is called fiscal drag, where because of wage inflation to keep pace with price inflation, you rise into a higher tax bracket and effectively have less after-tax real wealth.

In 2005-2006, Michael Cullen proposed permanently indexing tax thresholds to the CPI inflation rate. This was criticised by National (and picked up by the media) as the "chewing gum tax cut" that would only deliver $10/week at best to some people. As a result of the negative publicity, Cullen ended up dropping the idea. As we have now had much higher inflation rates for the last few years, this indexing would have actually moved the thresholds up quite a lot by now. So you can blame National for our thresholds not being inflation indexed - and they had ample opportunity to introduce it in the tax changes for 2009 or 2010, but chose to give massive tax cuts to the rich instead.

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So did Labour during their years in power (ample opportunity to change things, that is.) Because both parties are full of politicians, negative publicity means a lot to them, so neither will do it until it becomes a favourable thing to do. I blame both National AND Labour for not changing the way tax is done.

First, that isn't event a complete sentence, unless you mean "illogical" not "a logical". Second, I don't see where I'm "appealing to pity".

Jack: clearly you don't know what governments actually do. They set the laws in which the country runs. If you want one clear example, they set building standards, and then enforce them to be enacted in the country through legislation, paper work and inspections, commonly called "red tape" that is criticised for slowing everything down but actually (in this case) saves lives. If it were not for enforced building standards by the government, right now Christchurch would look more like Haiti. Pretty much every single thing in this country runs the way it does because of the laws the government has set - contract law, taxation law, the driving code, restrictions and controls on hazardous materials, PROPERTY LAW, banking law, control of firearms just to name a few. Sure, some of this stuff could be taken up wholly and completely by private organisations, but the outcome would be much more fragmented and uneven, and a lot of things would never get done.

Finally, government collects taxes and uses this money to manage projects on a large scale that would otherwise *never* get done, because while they are beneficial to society, there is no direct revenue stream from them. The obvious example of this being roads. Sure, you could make every single road a toll road (even the street your house is on, so you pay someone 50 cents each time you leave your house), but how many roads do you think would exist in the country then? Show me a country in which every single road is provided by a private entity, and then maybe you might have a case that everything the government does can be replaced by private entities. The fact that you listed military and sports stadiums as amongst the most important things that governments do only shows that you really have no clue what you're talking about.

"How is it morally repugnant that some people are rich and some aren't? This is how the world works."
That doesn't mean that the world HAS to work that way. Seriously, it doesn't. Try and think out of your box for a change instead of just accepting everything as the way it is an thinking that it is the best possible model for everything to work on. Here's a wikipedia article I dug up quickly that broadly shows that capitalists systems as run by the US, UK, NZ and Australia (english speaker countries) don't actually provide the best outcomes for their population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Poverty_Index

Yea, I don't know why the "a" was in there. Appeal to pity is not logical. Me giving a sob story is an appeal to pity, and for some reason, you trusted me more as a result. Which is not logical.

I do in fact understand what governments do. Using your housing code example, for one thing companies building buildings in earthquake prone areas would want to build them earthquake proof to better protect their investment. People who don't care how safe a building they work in will pay the price for their stupidity when an earthquake hits, whether that's through loss of life or loss of capital and stock. However, if you look at my Role of Government thread you'll see that I support governments making laws that protect people. That us why there should and always will be SOME tax. My problem is there is too much taxation which is being used on things which the government has no business doing (e.g. Running an airline, a phone company).

I think it would certainly be possible for roads to be owned by private investors and all be toll roads. This would make road-owning an actual business sector. If soneone overtolls their road, someone could build a road from the same a to b and charge a lesser amount. Of course, to protect its citizens from people making dangerous roads, there would be some kind of road standards.

Sports stadiums were merely an example of the kind of large unnecessary projects governments become involved in. Roads, phone power and water companies, et cetera can be included.

I'd like to think I'm thinking quite far out of the box, or I wouldn't be aeguing for huge government changes. I understand it doesn't have to be this way. What I want is a compelling reason WHY it shouldn't be that some people get rich and others are poor. That article you linked to merely shows that compared to the average bloke, certain countries have larger or smaller amounts of poor people. What it fails to account for is how much better off these so-called poor people are compared to the genuinely poor people of countries such as Nigeria.

I don't pity you. I respect your opinion more because you have a background that shows you have at least some personal understanding of what it is like to be poor and disadvantaged in life. The simple fact is that many people who have right-leaning views (which generally I perceive your's to be, but you also clearly socially liberal) come from wealthier sections of society that have no or very little personal experience with being poor or disadvantaged.

To dumb it down further, your argument remains the same, but my perception of it's merits has changed, it's gone from "well how do I know that this isn't just another selfish prick who doesn't care about the poor" to "well this person clearly understands something about being poor, but still has still come to the same opinions - this is worth more attention". It's really no different than two people saying "nuclear power is good", and you find out that 1 person read an article in a magazine about it, and the other person grew up in Belarus near Chernobyl and despite their personal background they've come to espouse a view that may not normally be expected from someone in that position.

While the merits of the argument itself don't change, if you know the person making the argument has specific relevant life experiences, or specific academic knowledge of the subject, you can consider their position more seriously, especially if their position seems to be one that someone with that background would not normally have. If anything it's an appeal to authority, not pity.

I never felt that I had a bad lot in life. Maybe my parents were good at sheltering me, but it hasn't been until the past year or so that I really felt in any way impoverished.

I'd like to think that I'm socially liberal/fiscally conservative. I want to help everyone but I can't if I don't have the money.