Do The Rich Pay Their Fair Share?

If advantageous traits are arbitrary, then disadvantageous traits are equally arbitrary, so the question then gets reduced to fairness, see below.

What is your standard of evaluation over what is fair?

If schooling was made all private, what you would find is cheaper costs and higher quality. You would also find that many people, holding the view that all children should get some education, would volunteer to educate people. More can be said, but if you want to tangent let me know.

How do you know that the riches wealth was a result of arbitrary factors? What if they worked incredibly hard. This notion that the reason you're wealthy is because you were born lucky undercuts the handwork that a lot of people put into their life. Yes some people are born lucky, but some people aren't and just work incredibly hard. I have a huge problem with people attempting to undercut this fact, and simply blaming their inadequacy on the 'arbitrary factors'.

You might say o if they worked incredibly hard its ok they can keep their wealth, but how do you differentiate the complex variables involved, hard work, arbitrary factors etc etc.

Empricial evidence consistently shows that it is an economic and social benefit to be good looking. Do you recommend tax-sponsored cosmetic surgery for those about the enter pre-school? Or high school?

You are making an claim in economics here. Fundamentally a wage is determined by the productivity of the worker, and this productivity is how readily they can satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Demand and supply factors then come in here to determine the precise wage.The reason doctors are paid more is because like you said, it's a difficult proffession to enter, so that reduces supply. Also, it you might say that perhaps doctors satisfy more wants and needs of the consumers than they do construction workers. Your claim that if they were paid equal amounts then everyone would become a construction worker is mystical economics. It's entirely incorrect. An increase in the supply would reduce prices.

Your views are abstract, which is fine, but I can't see how they can at all apply to real society without an arbitrary measurement of fairness. I'll repeat because I think this is a make-or-break for your view: What is your standard of measurement for fairness?

 

Not a good analogy in original post.. Rich make more money, often for less or the same amount of work. Better analogy would be:
Your friend's spend a half hr preparing the pizza, you observe ("supervise"), but they cook it, they watch it and continue to tweak the ingredients while it cooks..
You make more money than them..you pay 7usd they each pay 2 (because pizzas more than 8usd lol) but they each get 2 or more slices and you get 1.
Why? You make more money, you pay more, but you put in less work..

 

How is deliberate STEALING from someone less unfair than chance? Could a government ever steal enough of my money to make myself equal with someone who has downs syndrome? NO! It is a fantasy - a fantasy that uses stealing from people as a means of "fair"?

It isn't a minimal drain. It is forced upon people. If I say that paying taxes is more of a drain on me than I want to pay, and choose not to pay them, I will be thrown IN PRISON. How is that not imposing greater suffering and hardship?

If the rich make more money for less or the same amount of work, everyone would do that same or less amount of work and get rich.

 

People can't do that because many people are paid high wages just because of the people they know and the luck of their birth. Many high paying jobs have little to do with skills and a lot to do with connections.

 

I like the Rawlsian difference principle, namely that inequalities in society are permitted insofar as they also better the position of the worse off. Arbitrary factors have (some) hand in determining inequalities. The perfect society is the one where any existing inequalities in opportunities (and their resulting institutions) are perfectly maximized as per the benefits to the less advantaged. So it's an ideal to (recursively) adjust our society towards.

Because you are being deprived of some of your resources, while the person with down syndrome is being deprived by (theoretically) nearly all his resources (his opportunity to raise himself in society is pretty much ruined). It is vastly less unfair to shoulder your burden.
Obviously you will not be taxed till all your money is drained. You can't just assume that this is an 100% or 0% relationship. You (along with everyone else) in society have a determined amount of resources stolen from you, an amount which you should know before hand and be able to prepare for, in order for those whose fortunes and prospects have been decimated by luck of birth.

Imagine you were (theoretically) handicapped. Imagine how bad your life would be; imagine how dismal your opportunities for success would be. I agree that there is an important fairness in respecting the rights of property. However, I feel like the claims of these less advantaged people are more important than a, for instance, 1% drain on everyone's income so that the few less advantaged can survive (this is speculative). Further, I think that, if we were to enter into a position where we do not know whether or not we are going to suffer from handicaps, we would want some kind of insurance against suffering from handicaps. We would think a system that safeguards against this is fair, even at the expense of some of our belongings. We should promote fairness to all.

 

Once again, the person with legs is having theirs broken solely because others cannot walk.

Stealing is wrong. If I told you that I am not a good singer, and you were a career musician, can I break into your house and steal your valuables because I was born disadvantaged? If you protest that I am stealing your valuables, I respond "You should have known beforehand that there are people who can't make music like you, did you really think I would let you make music better than me and expect me not to steal from you?"

I am handicapped. I can't rap as well as Eminem. Shouldn't Eminem pay me every month because I wasn't born as good of a rapper as him? Everyone has to make their own success, I am not justified in stealing Eminem's mercedes because I was born handicapped.

 

So your standard of fairness is that anything goes so long as the disadvantaged benefit?

What does it mean to be disadvantaged? For example, I'm born with a bad back and breathing problem which makes walking up stairs difficult. If I give you my address will you give me a cheque so I can be compensated? Or is this not enough to be considered disadvantaged?

What does it mean to be disadvantaged, and how do we remedy these disadvantages?

Also, how is the difference principle a morally virtuous rule to strive for? How do you defend this equality with exceptions rule?

 

All your points are solved by an (estimated) level of advantage/opportunity that is considered standard (this might be in some sense arbitrary but it is better than the alternative).

I think I have to concede the discussion because your points are too difficult for me to answer. Answering them would involve sketching out a comprehensive political doctrine; I am not talented enough to do so.
So, I submit to you. However you should really read A theory of justice by Rawls (if you haven't already). You have a keen mind and I think you'd like it - even if you disagree with it.

 

I haven't read the book, but we've touched on Rawl's key points in philosophy units. It never really appealed to me in both a practical sense (I classify it as theoretical nonsense), and never really appealed to me in theory. However as far as I know, Rawls would support a free-market like society if it did indeed make it better for the disadvantaged. So if you accept that point, the question then becomes do you accept that a free-market beats socialistic policies? This descends back to economics, and unfortunately most philosophers are not trained in both, and most people are not trained in either. What a pity.

One thing I will say is that people always talk about this lower class, the disadvantaged, yet from an economic perspective the people that make up this class are changing, and from a more macro-perspective, there will always be a relative lower class. People will never be happy at the bottom. Furthermore, it's just an arbitrary and ambiguous term.

Fundamentally however, all egalitarian like theories must account for this basic fact. That people are different, and people act differently. When you have different people, that act differently you will always get an unequal outcome. The longer time-frame you talk about, the more divergent the outcome will be. This is not possible to stop, and all egalitarians must accept that therefore equality of outcome will never EVER be achieved. Obviously many egalitarians accept this, but people need to realize that equality of outcome is impossible to achieve.

 

Sharing is caring,
And i don't think rich people share anything..
if they did the life will be better than we know it

 

Better for who?

 

How do the rich people not share anything?

 

abolition of the current government of course or some serious oversight to all of their documents, transactions, everything.

do you know why we have more money than most parts of the world? because the rich are stealing all the resources and outsourcing all the jobs to the 3rd world countries for so cheap that no shit they are poor! stealing africa's enormous resources and paying them shit all! the rich set up a delicate system for them to only win.. can't you see over time how the gap vs rich and poor are so messed up that makes you furious! paying 0% tax is absolutely not 'minimizing' anything but stealing! just because they provide jobs (for probably shit wage) doesn't mean they have the right to not pay tax and put all of that in the management pockets!

defending the rich is stupid, they are all scum really. there is no equality on purpose, they dont want to share their money and food, they want us to work like slaves to eat and drink

 

You have to work to eat or drink regardless of whether or not there were rich people. It's not like food just normally falls out of the sky, and rich people somehow prevent that from happening.

How can a "gap" be messed up exactly? And what good reason would a "gap" make anyone furious?

 

You misunderstand everything. The scummy rich you are talking about are actually business backed by government intervention. I absolutely agree that governments shouldn't intervene in the affairs of business, but they do, and what you have just mentioned is one of the consequences of government intervention. So if you want the poor to remain in the position they are, you can continue supporting government intervention. It sounds to me that you don't actually care about the poor; far from it, you are contributing to their poor quality of life!

 

He has a point that an advantage of government is its implementation of labour laws. Certainly this is not such an absolute 0 or 100 kind of deal; I think it can easily be argued that some form of minimalist government is preferable to no government (in terms of the quality of life for all).

 

Why would labor laws be needed?

 

Anarchy vs minarchy is certainly an interesting argument, however both proponents wouldn't argue for the existence of labour laws.

What labour laws do you think would be beneficial in a minimalist government?

 

I think the most beneficial labour law is minimum wage. Economically it is obviously not the most efficient, but it safeguards against situations -- like those in certain third world countries -- where people are exploited into wages that are essentially impossible to survive on. Sure you may argue that it's better than nothing, but I think given free reign it's vastly less preferable than a minimum wage.

Another example is child labour laws.

 

I really dont like your Pizza example. I know its a way of simplifying the subject to something people can grasp but its pretty flimsy.

http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/9

IRS data shows that in 2004, the richest 50% of the taxpayers paid 96.7% of all income taxes. From 1986 to 2004, the share paid by the richest half increased from 93.5% to 96.7%, and the share paid by the richest 1% increased from 25.75% to 36.89%. At the same time, the amount paid by the poorer half decreased from 6.5% in 1986 to 3.3% in 2004. While the poor's contribution was cut in half, the richest Americans saw their contribution increase by nearly 50%. When you get past the propaganda, for the last two decades the rich have been paying more and more while the poor have been paying less and less.

Because the rich make so much more money then the poor they pay a majority of the total money in the pool that goes back out to the poor. All of the benefits we have are thanks to the minority.

I'm not a fan of taxes at all, the government doesn't do shit for me besides make me pay them money and force me to pay for healthcare. That and pissing off every other country to make a reason for why we need them to take our money.