Do you support taxing people just to keep them from getting “too rich”? Why or why not?

No.

The reason you are poor isn't because rich people aren't taxed enough. That money isn't going to you, and it never will.

The siren song of "wealth inequality" is mostly bullshit. You want to know why it's growing in the US? Because we have one of the most open immigration policies on the planet. The influx of poor people is constant, but the rise of rich people--much harder. Statistically, as long as we have substantial immigration, we're never going to solve income inequality because we're constantly refreshing one side of the equation. (And, for the record, that's what we want--but we have to look at stats in context, then.)

The perception of rich people's taxes is...extremely flawed and colored by narrative. Rich people always pay taxes, one way or another. If it's not their personal income, it's somewhere else. If they throw it offshore, they can't spend it how they want it. If they defer it, they'll still pay next year. The Magic Box of Tax-Avoiding Schemes isn't nearly as robust or definitive as people think. Anything legal is explicitly designed to encourage specific behavior or otherwise capture those taxes at some point. Anything illegal almost always gets caught--the IRS doesn't fuck around.

You want infrastructure, social programs, incentives? We have the money. We have more money than we ever have. It's just that the government is incredibly bad at allocating that money and making decisions about that money. Taxing the rich just lets them fumble those numbers even more, for no benefit. If you read any article about how little the rich pay in taxes, there's always qualifiers ("Note that this analysis doesn't include unrealized gains") that basically negate the whole point.

There's also a limit. If taxes get too high, rich people will just stop making money, or move overseas (That's what rich people in the UK did in the 60s and 70s, and what happened in France just in the last decade.). And then no tax revenue is generated. (And, no, there was never some magical time in which rich people paid 90% of their income in taxes. There were significantly more deductions back then. The effective top tax rate has pretty much been between 35-45% since WWII.

IN the end, "paying their fair share" is fueled by sheer jealously. If you want to know why that money isn't getting put to better use, the blame isn't on the rich not paying their taxes. It's the inherent fucked-upedness of the government.

/r/AskReddit Thread