It's the criminal economy, stupid!

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National tax, prefecture tax (Tokyo) and then city tax (Shinjuku). Plus national health and pension. Plus property tax, etc. Here there are defined thresholds where the overall percentage goes up. Also the tax law here just doesn’t have as many opportunities for deductions and accountants are on the govt.'s side not the clients.

The fun part with city taxes is they are based on what you earned last year so if you have a period of extended unemployment you pay a tax bill as if you were earning anyway. Having lost a good job after the Lehman shock and again at the end of 2013, both times unemployed for a year, I can tell you thats no fun at all. No grace periods, mercy payment plans or anything, you gotta pay or they can repossess what you have.

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Wysinwyg, I can come up with an absurd case where the moral course of action is to kill everyone on Earth. (Demons are coming who will make anyone still living burn in hell for eternity.)

However, that’s utterly worthless in forming any useful opinion. I think that many of us here have made it clear that under any circumstance in which we feel ourselves likely to be in, vigilantism is likely, on the whole, to cause way more harm than good. At the moment, you’re like a pro-gun lobbyist who is digging for cases in which if we don’t own a gun, bad things will happen. Well, of course there are such cases, but that’s immaterial to my opinion, and certainly immaterial to whether we “support” vigilantism.

Israel_B’s opinion is abundantly clear for abundantly clear reasons. Why on earth should he engage in silly hypotheticals when we have lots of clear evidence as to how vigilantism usually turns out?

Is violence ever justified? Of course. Is a society that thoroughly internalizes the belief that violence can be justified a better one? No.

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Even by Tory standards, I have to admit that that is pretty good work. The class warfare comes standard; but the elision of “people who are ‘high achievers’ by virtue of inheriting it from daddy” with people who “look after their own family” is atypically elegant; given that those two groups are at least a generation apart.

The implication that “achievement” and “wealth” are isomorphic isn’t as creative; but also well integrated into the piece without hammering on it too overtly.

I’d give him a B+ and a reasonably comfortable spot against the wall when the revolution comes.

(edit: Wow, booze and smartphone ‘keyboards’ really don’t mix. Cleaned up some errors.)

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Over my years, I’ve been privileged enough to meet people I consider my moral superior in almost every way. People who’ve spent some part of their life truly helping others (MSF, local charities, priests, etc.). And one characteristics that was almost universal was an unwillingness to spend time condemning those not as moral as themselves (which would include just about everyone), pretty much because they didn’t consider themselves more moral than everyone else.

[Edit here - I finally found the analogy I was looking for. If I am among many people considering a massively complex “fuzzy” problem, I may end up with an answer I consider the right one. However, just because I think my answer is right (and I’ll fight for it), (1) does not mean I can’t acknowledge my answer may be not be optimal and (2) does not mean I feel intellectually superior to everyone who didn’t get my answer.]

I have my morality, and I follow it longer than is often considered wise. But do I consider anyone who doesn’t follow my particular ways morally inferior? No, not really. I’ll try and persuade them, of course, but I’m not God - I’m the arbiter of my morality, not the human race’s.

Honestly, I consider the “eat the rich” (where rich is defined as 2x what I happen to be earning) to be about as toxic to the left as racism is to the right. In both cases, it’s an attempt to make a side feel good about itself by dehumanizing some segment of the population. And yes, at least we’re “punching up”, but in the end, the sentiment makes us less effective agents of change, while enshrining the otherness of the rest of the world who don’t really count because… I don’t know - our levels of money don’t mean the same to them as it does to us?

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Yeah, a good point. My peer group is often caught between supporting parents, supporting mid-young kids, helping out their young adult kids (especially given the job market), trying to afford their house, and of course, saving for retirement since defined benefits pensions are pretty much non-existent. I see a lot of “if I could just get an extra 10-20K, that would solve a lot of problems”, which it does for about a year and then it’s back to the treadmill.

That, and given the likelihood of getting outsourced a few times (happened to me 1.5 times), we’re all trying to get that magical 6 months income in the bank ASAP.

Of course, that sounds like whining, and the reality is that we could cut back. But you get used to actually having a house to yourself (well, a rowhouse anyway), and living in an expensive city. And even with job instability, most of my peers (into computers) have managed to find jobs within 6 months of losing a previous one, so no complaints there.

As for global tax rates, I’m well aware that my post was asperational (which I prefer to transparently stupid) rather than practical. But it does seem a little catch-22 “we deserve to have more money because prices are higher here because we have more money.” I can’t imagine that catching much sympathy for the millionaires living near Central Park, although their living costs are way above mine.

Still, I am aware that we’re not looking at global equality in my lifetime (although trade has made a huge difference to a billion people). But it’s a useful barometer in remembering exactly how privileged I am and thus absolutely speaking, how generous I am with my wealth (not very).

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Hell, I’d work for half my salary if the expectation was I worked half as many hours a week. Not an option though.

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Well, moral superiority (of policies, goals, attitudes, etc… not people) is certainly relevant in the context of discussing social change. I don’t think literally every situation requires consideration of moral principles, but certainly when we’re talking about whether and how to administer justice (and what that even means) the relative morality of different ideas seems pertinent to me.

All I’m saying is: I wouldn’t ask everyone around me to change what they’re doing unless I really thought the change would bring about a morally superior state of affairs.

Well, no it’s obviously not. Thought experiments are pretty necessary for teasing out hidden assumptions in our theories, including our moral theories. You’re dodging a reasonable line of questioning, just as @Israel_B was doing.

Right, and I don’t think that’s a well-considered opinion because I don’t think it’s taking into account many possible states of affairs – many of which have pertained before on planet earth and are thus relevant to consider.

You are wrong – the reasons are not abundantly clear.

@Israel_B insisted that the reasons are clear until I pressed – at which point he admitted that the reasons are so obscure that he couldn’t even effectively explain them! That’s the opposite of abundantly clear!

These hypotheticals are not silly – they cut to the crux of what the words “law” and “justice” actually mean, and what kind of society in which we want to live. It helps us put into relief questions about how much power should be allowed the people charged with running society, and how much reserved by those ruled.

If you think these are silly questions to examine, then quite simply you have no place in this discussion.

Then it seems like your position is that the majority of people are children who cannot handle the real world and must be protected from it? That’s all I can infer from saying: “It’s obvious that violence is sometimes justified, but you can’t just allow people to know that violence is justified.” (Feel free to correct me if that’s not what you meant, but that’s how it reads.)

I simply disagree with this stance. I think the only way we improve society is for people to be adult and grapple with reality rather than letting their “betters” protect them from it.

You’re not shy about telling people here they have the wrong morals, and you’re apparently not shy about putting words in their mouths to justify the same.

But seriously, produce some examples of the moral condemnations you’re morally condemning – I think you’re putting words in people’s mouths. Is it really widespread moral condemnation of people? Or is it actually moral condemnations of actions and policies that you’re talking about? In the latter case, your scorn is misplaced.

(“Rich” can be defined different ways for different purposes; you are the one who introduced “2x what I happen to be earning” to the conversation – stop putting words in people’s mouths.)

Honestly, I could give two shits about the left – but I don’t. The left can and probably should eat itself.

Also, go find where I advocated eating the rich.

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Let me clarify something. We have an official system of law and it’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing and it’s better than people taking the law into their own hands.

So far, so obvious.

But it’s also quite obvious (to me at any rate) that not just any system of law is better than people taking the law into their own hands. I think it’s worthwhile to discuss what the crossover point is – how bad to things need to be? How do we recognize such a state of affairs? And how can people without a monopoly on violence secure justice and retain some semblance of law outside of an institutional framework?

A few people apparently think I’m some deranged cannibal leftist for daring to discuss such questions. I think they’re wrong. I think this is a reasonable and unobjectionable line of philosophical investigation, especially in light of the revelations w/r/t Mossack Fonseca and the Panama papers. And if anyone disagrees then they need to provide much better reasons why I’m an evil cannibal leftist for daring to engage in evil philosophical badthink than those so far provided.

Edit:

When someone says it is categorically and absolutely wrong for people to take the law into their own hands, pay close attention to whether they’re willing to engage with uncomfortable questions like: “Well, isn’t that what the Civil Rights movement did?” or whether they dodge the question entirely. If they think the Civil Rights movement was justified despite their position on the law, then they should have some specific reasons why we should distinguish the Civil Rights movement from other criminal* enterprises. I don’t know how to interpret silence on the question except as a tacit admission that the Civil Rights movement was morally unjustified.

*Yes, the Civil Rights movement really did break the law. That’s one of the reasons why the participants were so frequently attacked by the police and jailed.

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I’ve been thinking about whether “transparently stupid” was a reasonable phrase since I said it. I’ll tell you what motivated me to say it:

I don’t need to advocate a rapid rise in tax rates on people who are struggling to afford their houses to advocate a rapid rise in tax rates on people who are stashing millions in offshore holding companies. Trying to draw an equivalence between those people because they are both in the top 1% globally is ridiculous.

The fact that people aren’t generous with their wealth is exactly why tax rates should be higher. Taxation isn’t generosity. Warren Buffett doesn’t send a bunch of money to the treasury for no reason, and it’s because he doesn’t do that that he thinks taxes should be higher than they are.

I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like we have very different views on taxation. You have suggested there is a moral aspect to taxation - that taxation is prima facie wrong? - and appear to suggest that taxation ought to require the consent of the individual being taxed. I think taxation is a morally neutral policy lever that has nothing to do with generosity and should be based on outcomes, not on ideology: tax rates ought to be set based on the consequences of setting those tax rates, not moralizing about taxation itself. The idea that taxation is bad for the taxed is demagoguery in service of plutocrats.

Realizing your answer might not be right is good thing. Not feeling like you are a better person than people who came up with a different answer is also a good thing. Moving from that to saying “well everyone has their own opinion” or “we shouldn’t impose our morality on others” is a very bad leap. To use an obvious example, murder is wrong and if someone doesn’t know that they ought to learn it. I’m not “intellectually superior” to them for knowing that, but I’m still right.

Going out on a limb here and guessing that “No” to the latter question is meant not just to say they are equal , but that a society of people who believe violence can be justified is worse. I agree with you, but that’s because when I think about a society where people generally think violence can be justified, I am thinking of a society full of people who have been taught by their experience that violence is the response that gets the best results. A society where violence is regularly the best option is a lot worse than a society where people can comfortably think it is never necessary - having grown up not needing it and having been able to solve problems with non-violence strategies.

All the more reason we should be very worried that our society shows some signs of turning into one in which violence is needed to solve governance problems. Societies like that are bad places.

This is not to disagree with you, but I think the whole “moral” thing is confusing because it makes it seem like the whole thing is vulnerable to some kind of unstated moral relativism ("Well, that’s your opinion). And, in fact, @tlwest does exactly that by saying “I’m not God” as a way of telling you not to impose your morality on other people.

I’m willing to just flatly, objectively assert that things like less food insecurity, lower infant mortality, people not reusing disposable diapers because they can’t afford new ones, etc., are superior. Not superior according to my feelings but superior. If someone wants to argue that those states of affairs are not superior they ought to come right out and say it (“I think poor people having to reuse disposable diapers is fine.”) and then we can talk about morals.

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People actually are very generous with their wealth. Well, except for the rich, of course. The more money you have, the more likely you are to hoard it, which is probably something that needs to be rephrased for tautology club.

This is another argument for heavily progressive taxation, of course. The data indicate that the super-rich are by definition inhumanly uncharitable, they are abnormally unaffected by the suffering of others.

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Humbabella, once again, let me emphasize the difference between what is practical and what is moral. Morally speaking, we are all human beings. Our lives have equal worth regardless of where we live. However, we are human. Some humans are more equal than others depending on their proximity to us. There’s been a 2,000 year journey as we increase the size of “real humans”, and for much of the world, real humans stretches to national borders, and then diminishes outward from that depending on similarity of wealth, class, culture, and colour.

However, morally, there are no such bounds.

Thus I’ll stick with my original point. As a moral point, my money should be going to outside to help the truly needy, not allowing me to own a house (and yes, I’d lose my house as well under any truly moral system because the benefits that money would provide elsewhere would vastly outweigh the advantage of each child in my family having a bedroom).

However, we’re not going to see that. Hell, I’m too greedy to even fight for that on paper. But I still know what’s moral.

(And honestly, I don’t spend a lot of time pondering over the ultra-ultra-ultra wealthy. If we’re going to make the country more moral, it’ll be based on the sacrifices that me and my fellow voters are willing to make.)

Ah, that’s why I’m grateful to live in a democracy. I can’t impose my will on others - but the voters can. Thus it becomes my job to persuade others to my morality. If I can do that enough that the government is composed of like minded people, then we are free to impose our morality on the country. (Within limits, of course, but I think we can assume common sense here.)

However, when I lose (and I often (always) do), it’s not because voters are evil or stupid or mislead. It’s because I failed to do a good enough job persuading others as to the correctness of my position. After all, it’s not the responsibility of people to automatically see the rightness of my position. It’s my responsibility through my contact with my fellow human being to bring them around.

And I fully expect those who I disagree with to do the same. After all, I fight for what I believe in. Why shouldn’t they?

Of course, fully and absolutely agreed on every point you made there.

I’m so not Libertarian, but if I can’t argue their point, I’ve not considered my own correctly. And I suspect their answer is simply you exchange short term gain for long term loss. Is it coincidence that the USA is the economically dominant power and probably the most Libertarian country on the planet (not anarchy, but Libertarian)? Is it coincidence that countries where you have an absolute responsibility to your extended family and share everything are among the poorest?

Now I’m not going to argue any further, because while I believe there’s some truth to their point, I strongly disagree with them. But I don’t consider most Libertarians to be arguing in bad faith. They honestly believe that the reason that the poor are not starving in the US is because of a society that didn’t offer financial security. They believe we trade long term prosperity for (almost) all for short term security. Luckily for me, in my country (Canada), they’ve mostly failed to persuade others of the correctness of their position :-).

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Yeah, reality is that people who are capable of empathy and don’t have economics degrees are pretty generous. I shouldn’t be willing to cede that for the sake of argument with someone who really, really wants to say we aren’t generous.

This reads like your moral value is that everyone should have the same. Even Marx didn’t think that (“'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”). My moral value is that suffering is bad, death is worse. Your moral value leads to the conclusion that we are all immoral so it’s hypocritical for us to raise taxes on the very wealthy in order to improve outcomes for the very poor unless we are willing to live in poverty ourselves. My moral value leads to the conclusion that we should use evidence to determine tax rates that actually create the most benefit. Hence, I called your morality demagoguery in service of plutocrats. You are drastically simplifying ideas (e.g., higher taxes = less money in your pocket) and the outcome of those simplifications is that we justify the ultra wealthy hoarding enough wealth to feed the world. Plus, hypocrisy is irrelevant. If I’m a hypocrite I’m twice as likely to be half right.

Headlines relating to the Panama Papers have estimated 8%-14% of the worlds wealth is hoarded in offshore tax havens doing nothing. In the first year of America’s “Economic Recovery” after the big recession the top 1% captures 121% of the income gains. Dismissing the ultra wealthy as a big part of the problem would be like a citizen of England in 1510 saying “Well, I don’t spend a lot of time pondering over King Henry VIII”. There are a lot of problems that everyone needs to solve together, but doing so will make everyone better off, not worse off. Higher taxes would make us all richer, not poorer especially in the US.

I wasn’t arguing against Libertarianism. I was saying that if someone really thinks its find for people living the US to find themselves in a position of reusing disposable diapers then I’d rather they come out and say it than obfuscate. Libertarians don’t think that, they think that fewer regulations and less government will actually make that situation better. They also want fewer people to be starving, and they think they have a better way to achieve that.

Of course they also have a moral value regarding freedom that I think is out of place. But they don’t disagree that life expectancy going down is a bad thing.

But also, the arguments you presented are arguments serious Libertarians I know would call strawmen. They are easily countered using facts. It’s hard to find serious Libertarians who think the US is a Libertarian haven. It’s a crony-capitalist mess where the rich write the laws in their own favour with predictable results. There is a reason why Rand Paul isn’t the Republican nominee for president. The kind of “Libertarians” who succeed in the US want to outlaw abortion and continue drug prohibition. The Republican party is built on government and big business exchanging favours for favours. It’s among some of their elites you’d find people who, if they were honest, would genuinely admit that they just don’t care if some poor people are reusing diapers because poor people are garbage.

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Sometimes it is out there. I’m currently an 80% worker for 80% pay, but I have a somewhat seasonal job so I work a lot more for a few months and then work 3 days a week the rest. Been at it for a year so far, I hope the company lets me continue the arrangement.

ETA: That 20% though, that really does hurt my topline a good bit and erased a lot of my ability to accelerate my savings and have more cushion in the fun account. Still adjusting to it.

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I’d work for half my salary for half the hours and probably get about the same amount of work done. It seems like it would be a real sweet deal for them.

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I have much the reverse value system. Death is nothing to worry about, it’ll be there when you’re ready for it, or even before, and dying well is a privilege to be envied. But causing useless suffering is the most immoral act possible for a sentient being; just permitting useless suffering is deeply immoral.

Stop it, I shall swoon! Bring me my smelling salts Wilfred!

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And just because I’m right and you’re wrong doesn’t mean we can’t be friends! :smile:

Of course by “reverse” you mean “for nearly all purposes the same.”

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That happens a lot, doesn’t it? Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul got along great with each other despite their extreme differences in ideology, and often voted together as a tiny minority within the House of (corporate) Representatives.

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My claim is that the needs of those earnings a few hundred dollars a year are much greater than than my need to live in a house instead of an apartment. My need to own a car instead of take public transit, etc.

I’m not a good enough person to act on that morality, but I know what’s moral. Reducing suffering is indeed the goal, but pretending my discomfort is worse than their poverty is hogwash. Again, we’re all too greedy to do the complete right thing, but it’s worth keeping in mind as we fight to do what we are willing to do.

Back of the envelope calculation for the US: 100% income tax for the 0.1% would, if redistributed, add $2K to overone else’s income. 100% income tax for the 1% would add another $2K. 100% income tax for the top 10%? $14K.

Now, there’s no doubt a lot of income hiding going on, but the truth is that they’re not that significant to our tax base. Moreover, I am in favour of heavily progressive tax rates, closing loopholes, etc. My point is not that the actions taken to restrain wealth are bad. It’s that it’s counterproductive and hypocritical to pretend that somehow the wealthy are different from us. (I’ll draw the line at criminal activity - most of us are not criminals.)

The solution to people gaming the system for their benefit is to build a better system, not to pretend that most of us don’t take advantage of the system or to pathologize excessive wealth when we’re rolling in it due mostly to where we live and the colour of our skin than any amazing merit on our part.

In other words, I’m in accordance with the political direction of the Corey’s posts. However, I think the self-righteousness and demonization that accompanies those is for the most part both lazy and counterproductive.

Yes and no. Indeed, they certainly believe that removing all (or almost all) social support programs (and the taxes that pay for them) would make things better in the long term (as they claim that American’s minimal social support from the 1800-1940’s made America better even for its poor), but I’ve only met a few who claimed that magically things would be good right now for the very poor…

Yikes. In the current economic climate, I can’t think of anyone who isn’t working flat out. You have my envy.

And with that, off to work to try and prove I’m as productive as 4 Indians. (Luckily, and as it should, wages are going up there as well, even if mine have dropped. The great equalization is happening…)

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This is probably the fourth or fifth time you’ve rephrased this point in this thread, so I think it’s probably best that we make an end of it. Inventing an unrealistic “moral” outcome for the purpose of arguing that no one is moral is a strategy to justify doing the wrong thing. Other people trying to argue for policies that would actually alleviate suffering are doing the right thing.

You can’t think of anyone who isn’t working flat out for that house they don’t need or that car they don’t need, you mean? Are you too greedy to give those things up or do you have envy for someone who does without them? If its the latter then it’s an easy enough problem to fix.