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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (13530)	2/23/2010 8:44:10 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I would redefine your "moral outrage" as basic fairness. It seems to me that fairness is a reasonable factor when you compare rates among demographic cohorts. Fairness is a human value. You can apply fairness to tax rates on the salaries of executives vs secretaries or married vs single. How do you apply fairness to interest vs dividends? It seems to me that what you are doing is using the type of income as a proxy for a cohort but it's a poor proxy in multiple ways. If you want to raise taxes on the rich, then propose that directly. Raising taxes on dividends may hit the rich more than the poor but it also hits the poor. I have a poor, elderly aunt who collects dividend income from a utility stock willed to her by a friend. What about her? Is that fair? Retired people don't have salaries anymore. Many live off of passive income, instead. Is it fair to penalize them on the basis of the Protestant Work Ethic? I don't see how.

To: Road Walker who wrote (13530)	2/23/2010 1:04:48 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Unless its defined as exactly identical treatment for everyone (which it usually isn't), "basic fairness" is very subjective. Charging different people (including those with much higher incomes) a higher percentage, or even a greater dollar amount, could be described as unfair, so could taxes that leave high income people with much more than lower income workers (which would require confiscatory taxation), so could confiscatory or even just high taxes on anyone. There are some potential, and perhaps even some actual tax situations just about anyone would find to be unfair, but often when people talk about "unfair" they mean very different things. For that reason, and because economic impact is a huge issue, impacting most things fairly directly and essentially everything when you include indirect effects, I would generally give a very high weight to the economic impact over perceptions of fairness. And when I see a tax situation I would consider unfair (say the 95% marginal tax rates that caused the Beatles to write "Taxman"), that I want to protest, I'd usually state the objection in terms other than fairness. False dilemma. How so? This isn't an issue where two alternatives are presented as the only choices ignoring third, fourth etc. options. Its an issue of how much weight to give different issues or criteria.