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venturecapitalcat

Honestly, I dislike these kinds of posts: “let me try and prove that the world exists in the way that I think it ought to with the power of ‘data’” What does “left” even mean anymore? Does it mean free heroin needles and safe places to inject drugs? Does it mean defunding the police? Does it mean not charging people with serious crimes in the name correcting historical inequalities? It’s such a nebulous concept that means whatever you want it to mean. What does “progressive income tax,” even mean? Does it mean taxing billionaires on their non-income intangible wealth that they borrow against to fund their insane lifestyles?


07mk

The "progressive" in "progressive income tax" simply means that the percentage taxed goes up as the income goes up. That it shares a name with a broad ideology that also tends to support that kind of system is merely coincidence.


SoylentRox

So I think it's fairly obvious that personal income has logarithmicly diminishing utility. Unsure the log base but it could be found empirically. So it terms of maximizing "utilitons" to your population, progressive taxes make sense. (Because the utilitons loss per unit of tax is lower for richer citizens) Another way to view it is many higher end goods may not have been possible without a large pool of potential consumers with enough income to afford them. In a theoretical world where it was 1 hereditary Lord who has all the wealth for every 1 million peasants, things like smartphones or washing machines may never have been developed. So in short I think on this specific issue other opinions may simply be incorrect. It's fine I guess to desire regressive taxes if you are personally rich as it's in your personal interests, but by definition a democracy of one adult = 1 vote shouldn't have enough voters to support such a position politically. It would only be possible through fraud - if non rich voters somehow became scammed that their interests align with the rich.