Does It Really Cost This Tea Party Congressman $200,000 to Feed His Family?

Two wrongs don't make a right Matt or did they forget to tell you that in Communism 101?

 

Who mentioned communism?

 

>I guess the rich folk on the board are defending the rich folk

I'm probably one of the richer folk on the board and as I recall last year paid about 3% or less of what we spent in federal taxes.

 

Around here real estate taxes are running around 1.3% of assessed value.

 

How much property is being taxed?

 

In any event, if one policy (redistributive taxation) is designed in part at least to offset other wrongs (exploitation of labour, large-scale tax avoidance, etc), who are we to say that that's wrong?

 

If party A offends party B and the government decides to address it by taking money from party C ...

It's fairly easy to see that is wrong.

 

Because, unless you can come up with a better way of doing it, that's the only way to get money out of Party A. There's also the concept of both Party A and Party C owing a debt to society which needs repaying, in that they have reaped the benefits of living in a country where they have been able to accumulate wealth (infrastructure, the rule of law, education, good health care provision etc) and it's right and proper that they pay something back in to that pot through, inter alia taxation. If you don't believe me, just ask yourself whether Bill Gates would have been so successful if he'd been born in Mogadishu and tried to set up Microsoft in Somalia rather than Seattle...

 

Sure everyone has an obligation to the system that benefits the members of that system.

The question is why do some have a larger obligation than others who also benefit from the same infrastructure, rule of law, education, health care provision, etc.

Don't both upper and lower income earners drive on the same roads, benefit from the same rule of law, etc?

Take a pretend set of twin brothers - both growing up under the same set of circumstances - one worked hard and is financially successful and the other dropped out of school and is a drunk.

Should the government take money from the successful hardworking brother to support the drunkard brother simply because one has more money than the other? Is that "fair"?

 

To answer your first question: because the wealthy have a greater ability to pay; the system is based, in part at least, on affordability. That's partly what makes the whine in the OP so laughable: "I only have $200000 pa to live on"!

You point is taken re the twin brothers - no, it's not right. But I'll give you another pair of individuals: two baby boys are born at the same time, with the same IQ. One is born into an affluent New England family, the other into a poor Southern family. Both are hard workers, but one goes to private school, the other to public school with fairly mediocre teachers. One gets a job at his daddy's friend's Boston law firm after graduating at an Ivy League establishment, the other graduates as a teacher and manages to land a job at another public school because he isn't so well-connected and didn't get such a great education. IMO it's very right and proper that Man 1 pays a higher rate of tax than Man 2 and that that payment is invested into helping to improve the public education system so that the chances of people like Man 2 are bettered and we have more of a level playing field; if that means that, incidentally, from time to time, your work ethic twin has to pay higher taxes to, in part in effect, help out his wastrel brother, then that's a price I'm willing to pay - a small amount of unintended unfairness is sometimes necessary to address a much greater injustice.

 

Such blatant jealousy over the wealth of others. Sad

 

Yep, that's us...We're rich people on here. :laugh:

 

No envy, just realpolitik.
[ETA - but, if you want to go down that route, I pose the same question as I did in effect earlier - how was that wealth accumulated?]

 

It just doesn't matter. covetousness is not helpful

 

Neither is injustice. That's why it matters.

 

Good grief, injustice? Where do you get that from?

 

See my post at the top of the page. I would have thought it would be fairly obvious.

 

I read it and that is not an injustice. It is covetousness. To call it an injustice is to overstate your position. It discredits your argument.