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The Forum > Article Comments > Yes - we will feel better if we are taxed more. It's true! > Comments

Yes - we will feel better if we are taxed more. It's true! : Comments

By Owen McShane, published 30/12/2005

Owen McShane argues higher taxes will not engineer greater societal happiness.

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OOOOO, Brother, beam me up Scotty:
Where does Tax come from?
When you have destroyed the intelligence that provides Motivation and ethics –when they are gone- What do you have left to Tax?
When you have destroyed motivation for reward of effort, Honor and ethic’s: where would the base for Tax to come from :is?
When total Idealism of Entitlement other than effort, reward failure, criminalize success- de sensitize truth- create misery and worship it; where is the economy to take Tax from? There is no more reward only misery, so get stuffed. Hmmmmm.
Good Idea, Lets crank up the money making machine at the mint and double the output of Money?
Money can not by you Intelligence nor can it by you reason on Morals.
OOO brother of the Ideological weapon of mass destruction, no need for atomic or chemical weapons, the time has arrived and Looters are to much in abundance, Now where is the Tax coming from to fund Utopia?
The Marxist weapon of mass destruction hard at work, a newer intellectual depravity and terrorist’s working hard at it.
Why do they not, just get a job and earn their worth?
Why should They, when they can take yours worth. Then what?
Posted by All-, Saturday, 31 December 2005 8:48:57 AM
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Shonga,

Just because you and a couple of others disagree with me doesn't make me wrong, sport. If you could manage to read a bit of history you would find that I am completely correct. You are one of the rudest, most ignorant people to ever appear in this forum - and the dumbest.

Like all those of your ilk, you think your illiterate abuse of anyone with whom you disagree is heroic and effective. It is not. You are ill-bred and offensive, and nobody could possibly take you seriously.
Posted by Leigh, Saturday, 31 December 2005 9:05:57 AM
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Although I agree with the general philosophy of the article, I believe that lower taxes are not necessarily the way to increased happiness. What is needed is VOLUNTARY taxes. The mad lefties, who think taxation is great, could pay their taxes, and the rest of us could find better things to do with our money. All you would need to do would be to enact that any taxation official who engaged in coercive or threatening behaviour toward any taxpayer would be guilty of the crime of demanding money with menaces. Hopefully the privatisation of the universities over the next few years will lead to the retrenchment of a lot of the mad lefties there, and they might then have to do an honest days work for a change. As to the comment that the left is never satisfied, I would remind you of the statement by a thirties politician who said: "We must make demands that cannot be satisfied".
Posted by plerdsus, Saturday, 31 December 2005 10:27:07 AM
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Was the point of the article that people shouldn't care about wealth inequality because even the poor have VCRs and big-screen TVs?

- Very "Brave New World". My delta drones, go back to your soma (Big Brother?)

Or, was the point that high taxation somehow caused women after the 50s to go earn money income (nothing to do with Women's Liberation or excessive materialism apparently!). And that is the cause of modern societal unhappiness.

- So, if we drop taxes, the little women will all stay at home and bring hubby a nice cold beer when he returns from the office :)

My feeling is that there should be explicit societal goals, such as,

- providing good education, regardless of family wealth
- promoting good health and wellbeing
- improving our shared spaces (not everyone stays at home all day)
- minimise our impact on the natural environment (to pass onto our inheritors)

These kind of goals cannot be met without taxation and redistribution through community spending. Whether taxes are too high or too low depends on whether we are meeting these goals
Posted by Dr J, Saturday, 31 December 2005 1:28:05 PM
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Ok,

firstly, I am not entering this discussion to win/lose but to gain more understanding. If you want to respond by being offensive, that is your problem, not mine. Secondly, the post is too long, so I'm going to have to send it in parts.

Owen, there are several presumptions in your article that need challenging.

"As for me, frankly, other people’s wealth does not make me feel bad at all. I accept they have made other choices."

Most of the wealthier people I know get given freebies by other rich people. I don't see what that has to do with choices that they made. It did make me feel bad when I was struggling to provide basics and someone else wants me to share happiness at the lovely furniture their rich rellie has just given them. Although several years later when I had a decent standard of living myself in an identical situation I didn't feel bad. I felt happy for them, even though I will work for everything I have and have never been given anything.

Or they are given financial support through Uni and hence on to a better life, while the rest of us have to figure out how to do the impossible. I can earn enough money to pay for Uni, but then I don't have time to study.

"But these new, high-tax advocates believe the way to stop me from feeling bad about the rich is to tax the high earners more, so bringing everyone back to a similar income. This, they believe, would reduce envy. Hence we’d all be happier."

"On the second point, my own research shows high taxes make some people spend too much time at work - trying to get back what the state has taken away from their spouses. But these new, high-tax advocates believe the way to stop me from feeling bad about the rich is to tax the high earners more, so bringing everyone back to a similar income. This, they believe, would reduce envy. Hence we’d all be happier."
Posted by Linda, Saturday, 31 December 2005 2:04:49 PM
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One of the main issues here is that big business rules, not government. This means that the rich and powerful basically get enormous tax concessions. The average bloke feels highly aggrieved, and rightly so. Our brand of democracy is nowhere near true democracy. The same goes for nearly every purported democracy. In fact, this wrest of power is the major problem with democracy per se.

It is just one of many parameters that has got steadily worse, and will continue to worsen as resource and environmental stress on our society worsens.

One of the basic roles of government is to balance this out-and-out profit-driven empire-building momentum with its negative effects on the community. That’s the essence of democracy. But of course they don’t do it, and couldn’t even if they wanted to, which they mostly don’t.

If everyone paid their fair share, on a sliding scale so that the rich pay proportionally more, then the vast majority of us would be paying a whole lot less tax, for the same level of community services. Of course, this is how our tax system is purported to work, but in reality, it is entirely different.

How can we expect people to be as happy as they were in the 50s or 60s when we constantly hear of big businesses making obscene profits and paying their CEOs and top execs huge amounts of money while cutting jobs? Why are our basic community services such as health and tertiary education being squeezed tighter and tighter while the tax burden remains high? Why are we being constantly told that we have to grow, and at an ever-faster rate, or else we’ll go into economic decline? Etc etc.

The amazing thing is not that unrest and general unhappiness has increased, but that it hasn’t increased much much more.

What on earth is this 11billion$ surplus about?? Why haven’t Howard and Costello returned the majority of it to the community in terms of much-needed improved services?? What does this huge surplus say about their management of our economy and tax regime?
Posted by Ludwig, Saturday, 31 December 2005 5:21:56 PM
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