Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteater
Paying taxes is one thing, but there's no such thing as a society where you don't have the "have's" and "have nots" because, news flash...not everyone is equal. Equality does not exist. Some people possess more insight and ingenuity than others or know how to leverage their resources better. This is something that you can't do anything about regardless of the political or cultural environment you call home. Inevitably, some people rise up in the world and others don't.
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I don't think many people would make a serious argument to say that mandated equality is required or even a desirable end-goal. What should be required and is a desirable end-goal is equal opportunity.
'Guaranteed opportunity, not guaranteed outcome' used to a mantra that the political left and right in this country agreed on. Use of influence and power, which are generally tied to money, to capture segments of the government is what the majority (I'd imagine) of modern leftists are angry about. We should be able to all agree that a billionaire should not have greater, easier, or more influential contact with members of Congress. There is a conflict between reality and idealism here but there are several steps that Congress could take to mitigate the risk of conflicts of interest, or the appearances of them, including what I think is the most important: taxpayer funded elections.
But that's a tangent. The crux of this discussion appears to hinge on the relative merits of 'keep what you earn', with earn being somewhat subjective, and the 'you didn't build that' camp, to borrow Obama's misquoted soundbite. I don't have the time or inclination to write a dissertation on the topic, but fortunately someone else did!
A History of Wealth Inequality
I am not for seizing wealth. I am for changing tax incentives to prevent the top .5% from simply banking a certain percentage of their income. What this would look like requires more economically-minded people than myself, but if someone is used to living on 5 million dollars a year, they could probably manage to live a comparable lifestyle for 4-4.25 million a year. And that money could then be funneled into homeless shelters, job training programs for displaced factory workers, infrastructure improvements, mass transit, etc etc.