No, the government shouldn't force people to work (in the sense of sending them to jail/removing them from the country if they don't), but should provide sufficient incentives for them to work as opposed to being on benefits. Thus if someone is working as hard as they can, and is still not earning enough to feed themselves, the government should step in and give them help. Meanwhile if someone has been made redundant, and is trying to get a job but is unable to, the government should allow them to survive until they get a job offer (and if that person turns down the job offer(s), then remove the benefits). IMO it is immoral to let people starve on the streets if they are doing everything humanly possible to avoid that, and it is the mark of a good society that looks after those who happen to have been affected by particularly unfortunate events.

Better for everyone to be having the same income than for 1% of the people to have 99% of the income in an economy, if achieving that goal has no affect on total income (in reality there's a tradeoff so you have to work out the right balance based on how strongly you favour the redistribution of wealth). Anyway, why are progressive taxes fair (since I'm assuming that's the issue you're touching on with the rich paying the most in taxes)? Just think of disposable incomes. Let's say that it costs $14k to rent a house (or keep up with the mortgage payments) alnog with heating etc., and afford other essentials such as food, and clothing. Someone on $16k will only have $2k of disposable income. Someone on $32k will have $18k disposable income. That is, they have twice as much an income, yet have a massive 9 times as much of a disposable income. Let's say you tax both people 'equally', on their gross incomes, and impose a 20% tax. Suddenly that person on 16k is paying all of their disposable income in tax, AND some of the income they need for basic necessities, while the person on 32k is only paying 36% of their disposable income. Now to me that isn't taxing people based on their ability to pay. Now look at it from another perspective again: It's fair to say that there is a decreasing marginal utility to increases in your income. That is, if you're on $1m a year, an extra £1k a year is going to mean a whole lot less to you than if you're on $16k a year. Hence from societies point of view it can maximise the 'net welfare of society' by performing at least some sort of redistributive role (although you run into issues of utility not being readily comparable between two different people among others).

 

So what does this mean? Well say if you're a firefighter, and you get injured saving someones life from a fire, such that you can only work in a few select (and low paying) jobs, and even then only for a few hours a day (before being physically unable to work), the state should be there to ensure you can survive, and  IMO it is a poor society that would turn a blind eye/shrug it's shoulders and say 'well, we don't want to make this millionare with a ton of money pay a bit more in tax so you can pay less/receive benefits in order to survive'.

Now in case you were just referring to the difference between paying no tax and paying tax (rather than relative levels of taxation which would cover that along with the other areas), it goes back to whether you agree people who work hard should be given help if needed to survive. If yes, then that will cost money (via benefits), and someone will have to pay for it. It would make little sense to tax someone earning next to nothing if they're going to be getting benefits anyway - you'd just need to increase the amount of those benefits. Furthermore if you tax the people earning just above the subsistence level, then there will be no incentive for them to work, and instead they'll just claim benefits (that is, you'll end up with a benefits trap where you gain more via benefits than working), so you'd need to slowly scale in the taxation/removal of benefits. Then you're back to the other issues I already covered.

 

And there you do end up in the much more subjective area of what the decent standard of living is. I was referring to necessities however, that is, things you need in order to survive. That should cover healthcare however, since if you say suffer a stab wound and are slowly bleeding to death again I think it's immoral to say 'well we can stop the bleeding and save your life, but you're not going to be able to pay us the full price of that treatment'. Similarly if we're talking about a prescription for a drug/medicine that will help destroy a dangerous infection in you the same argument applies. Cosmetic areas, unnecessary medicines (e.g. aspirin for mild headaches) and the like obviously wouldn't be included in what I would view as necessary though. In short, there are roughly 4 things I'd class as 'needs': Food+water, Shelter, Clothing, Medicine (5 if you count food+water as separate categories ), and again with each of those categories it would only be the amounts needed to survive to a remotely reasonable standard. So being able to afford enough bread+water to feed your family: fine. Being given benefits to allow you to afford caviar+champaigne: too much! Since some of the 'basic standard of living' income required surveys/analysis will factor in things like cups of tea, mobile phones, meals out at restaurants, and possibly even holidays however I've been careful to focus more on less subjective areas such as what is needed to survive when defining my own views as to the criteria to be used, rather than what is needed to live a decent life (which is far far more subjective).

Show us where in the US this is NOT being done?

YOu are a good little marxist.  At least you are honest in your philosophy, as long as you admit it.

It's called Communism and it doesn't work very well.

My income is in the top 1%.  While money wasn't the motivation for me to do the things I have done to become rich, I certainly would not have taken the various calculated risks or worked the kinds of hours and made the kinds of sacrifices I have made if the government was going to loot all my earnings away.

The only way you have everyone make the same is if everyone is equally miserable because few people are willing to work without being compensated for their efforts. And the reality is, most of the "poor" in the US don't work full time. That is a fact.

No, communism and capitalism are pretty much polar opposites, not to mention that pure communism is impossible anyway. Within the framework I gave above, communism is basically saying you want to harmonize incomes regardless of the tradeoff on net income, which takes you to the corner case scenario of taxing everyone at 100% where it collapses completely. If you think I was advocating communism you need to re-read it because I fear you have misinterpreted what I was saying - I was talking about the harmonization of incomes if it was at no cost to total income. It's basically a quick way of saying the concept I then detailed further before, that is that $100 is worth a lot more to someone who is poor than someone who is rich, and that society will likely be wanting to maximise total welfare. In reality if you take $100 from the rich to give to the poor then you're going to have a negative impact on total income which will offset the gain in welfare arising from the redistribution affect. The government in power will then have to determine for itself how much more beneficial it feels that money going to the poor is (i.e. how much it judges it increases welfare by) in order to determine the point which maximises their view of net welfare (the point at which the marginal gain from the redistribution is equal to the marginal loss from the reduction in total income). This is subjective by nature since it's involving comparisons of how much money is worth for different people, and is typically where you end up having the political left-right divide on redistribution. Equating everyone here with communism though is patently untrue.

Who said anything about the government abolishing property rights etc. and taking peoples wealth+earnings all away? All it's about is making sure that everyone in society contributes a fair amount to the funding of that society. Taxes are necessary even if you don't think people should be able to feed themselves if working all they can, because of all the market failures - just take public goods for example, like the classic street light example, or externalities, like heavily polluting products, or missing markets, etc.. Why should someone who earns less than you have to pay (relatively) more tax than you, especially if doing so deprives them of a basic necessity of life? Or, if starting from the position where people are taxed equally, why should the government take from the poor to give to the rich? Or to be really melodramatic, why should people starve and die to fund a tax break for the rich?

Let's keep this discussion in the realml of reality:

In the real world, the top 1% pay about a third of the federal income taxes.

Moreover, nobody "funds" a tax break. Your attitude seems to imply that people are entitled to other people's money. They are not.

Money is exchanged for goods and services, at least, that's how it's supposed to be.  But look out, here come the Democrats where money is taken from one person and given to another with no service or good provided in return solely based on the subjected assertion that this person "needed" it.

The state isn't a charity. It is supposed to, acccording to the founding fathers, to be essentially a neighborhood association - provide services that support common causes.

Now, this is elitism!

Now who's being melodramatic!

Not voluntarily, unless you mean second incomes.

that is as far from melodrama as you can get, his mom waited 2 years for heart surgery.

I am surprised you could say something so calleous and cruel.

NO, they mean the non-chronic.  As in Upwardly mobile.  At one time we believed that people could better themselves, not start at the top and work their way down (with taxes).

Well the government has x amount of spending, which has to come from somewhere, i.e. taxes. If you hold spending (and borrowing) constant, and cut taxes for one group of people, then you're going to need to increase taxes elsewhere to make up the difference. Basically if you want to cut taxes on the top 1% of earners, you're going to either have to cut spending, increase taxes elsewhere, or increase borrowing (i.e. put off the problem for another day). The money has to come from somewhere though.

That's the problem though - by arguing government should play no role in the redistribution of wealth at all, and tax not on ability to pay but rather more heavily tax the poor (relative to their ability to pay) than the rich, you will end up with situations where people are put in terrible conditions as a result of not having enough money, since they will have to work out what necessities to cut in order to pay taxes. As for keeping the discussion in reality, in practice neither the democrats nor republicans or likely any major political party in a developed country (although I could be wrong here having not read up on all of their manifesto's+policies!) support such harsh measures. That is, you appear to be suggesting that there is a flat rate tax with no annual exemption (or possibly even a fully regressive tax although I doubt that is likely) - that is someone on $10k pays 20% in tax, and someone on $1m also pays 20% of that in tax (the possibly regressive part of tax would then come in if you extended that principle further into services used from the state and decided that people should pay fixed levels equal to the use from certain facilities, or a head/poll tax), since that means you have no redistributative effect. Now what is wrong with that flat rate of tax? You're taxing the 'gross' income of people equally, not their disposable (i.e. real) income, and so can end up with them having to sacrifice necessities to pay tax.

What I've essentially outlined my support for in my posts in this thread is at most potentially a flat rate tax with an annual exemption, along with a benefits system for those on the lower incomes (and opposition to anything going further than this). The flat rate tax w/ an annual exemption itself is a fairly extreme right wing policy on the political spectrum, and a far cry from the current tax systems in countries such as the US or UK (where progressive tax rate systems are used). Meanwhile such countries also have much more extensive benefit systems (from the sound of it; I don't have a highly in depth knowledge of the US's benefits system, so am reliant a bit more on what others have said on it along with a general background knowledge than any detailed research into it) than what I've been supporting/suggesting. It also ties into the charity issue, because I do see the government as needing a 'charity' element where it offers support to those in need - that is, (hypothetically) if people were working full time and earning too little to feed themselves, I would want the government to provide them with enough income to feed themselves, rather than leaving them and hoping that a charity was to stop them from starving. As such I would see the role of charities of being to provide additional support to particular groups above what the government is currently giving (which could of course be nothing in some situations), and then those people who agree with such aims can give to those charities, while people who don't won't.

 

But this discussion is in part theoretical, since it is discussing different peoples beliefs/ideas on the role of the state with taxation+spending+benefits etc.; that is, the comment that was first raised in the OP: "We need to make sure all Americans are ensured a certain basic standard of living". Hence if I am saying I agree with the principle that the state should ensure people have a basic standard of living such that they can survive, and it is disagreed with, I can then legitimately point out that the alternative would mean those people potentially starving and/or being refused necessary medical treatment. As to the current state of the US benefits system I'm not trying to say that that does happen, I'm simply providing a justification for (some of) those benefits to be in place.

Descending into personal attacks and sweeping generalisations already? Please point to where I've said that America is "mean", or doesn't provide for it's poor. I'd also ask you to provide proof that the majority of Europeans are ignorant as to what America benefits there are, but I doubt there's much point. If I was to have given some of the top of my head (prior to you listing all of those of course ) it would've been unemployment benefit, food stamps, medical help (and yes I did know that you're not meant to be turned away from emergancy treatment if you can't pay ), and likely various other ones such as a form of housing benefit and additional support for the disabled. As it turns out I was pretty accurate with all of those.

On a side note it's pretty amusing seeing you attacking me by listing the various benefits you've enjoyed or know to exist (to disagree with me you'd then need to be saying you don't think those should exist, and hence would operating from the rather hypocritical standpoint of using those benefits and saying they're wrong). Even more so for you to do this after accusing me (and the majority of Europeans) of being ignorant!

Now THAT is being melodramatic. Firstly if the government is not redistributing wealth then it is not more heavily taxing the poor, it is EQUALLY taxing the poor and the rich. (otherwise it is redistributing wealth from the poor TO the rich, which was done quite often).

Secondly, you are assuming that people without enough money to put food on the table would be taxed and have to decide between necessities. That is the most EXTREME and INSANE and most importantly IMAGINARY "other extreme". Someone argues against redistribution of wealth, it is a safe bet to assume he doesn't mean "even in cases where people are starving".

Thirdly:

6.55$ * 40 hours/week * 4 weeks /month = 1048$/month.

7.25$ * 40 hours/week * 4 weeks /month = 1160$/month.

So they are not starving, that is for sure, and more importantly... increasing taxes on the 1% considered "rich" means they are paying 100 times more then 100 individuals would pay. so for every 1000$ you increase taxes on the "rich", you can decreasing the "poor" taxes by a mere 10$. That isn't gonna make anyone starve, I live comfortably on less then that figure.

Although every person I know who got minimum wage spent at least half their income on alcohol and tabacoo (well, after accounting for child support... if they bother paying).

Speaking of which, alcohol and tabaco are heavily taxed, in the order of 300 - 1000% depending on state, which is awesome.

When YOUR income goes down, what do you do?  You cut cost.  Cut out the nights out and golf club fees.  WHy is the government any different?  They NEVER cut spending.  NEVER.  Even now, it is not a question of cuttiing spending - it is only a question of how fast to increase it.  A cut in DC is when they do not get to increase spending 25%.  I wish I could spend like that.

that is an interesting point Dr Guy...

I am wondering though, how much room there is to cut. I know of many underfunded organizations that need more money. I can think of nothing off of the top of my head that needs to be cut. The only solution I see is raised taxes on everybody. That, and a temporary tax to work towards paying off the national debt. Paying interesting to foreign powers is beyond stupid. The rich LEND to other people, they don't borrow. If the united states keeps on borrowing, it would not remain among the rich of the world for long.

No, at the risk of repeating myself again, to tax people equally you should be taxing them equally on their DISPOSABLE income. If you tax them 'equally' on their total/gross/(whatever else you want to call it) income, you're not taxing them equally according to their ability to pay. Thus if you are taxing them on their total income, you end up with situations where someone will be only earning just enough to pay for necessities, but are then being taxed and have to cut back on necessities to fund the tax. Since these are necessities, it is not being melodramatic at all to talk about issues of starvation or homelessness or lack of healthcare etc., because those are all deemed necessities. If you tax equally based on disposable income however you end up with an (admitedly slight) redistributative effect, since those on higher incomes will be paying a higher proportion of their total income than those on lower incomes (while if you have benefits to ensure people can survive you have the more obvious/direct redistribution where those taxes then go towards benefits for the poor).

To outline a quick summary of my argument: If you're completely against the redistribution effect of taxation, and want people taxed equally based on their total income, then you are therefore arguing in favour of people having to cut back on necessities (such as food) in order to pay taxes, even if you don't actually think that should be the case. You'd also presumably be opposed to benefits for those on lower incomes, since that is effectively equivilent to taxing those people less in the first place, which also means you can end up with the situation where someone working as much as they can is having to cut back on necessities.

Several problems with the minimum wage argument you've presented. Firstly, the minimum wage itself, if set above the equilibrium wage for any market, will result in excess unemployment. So, although those working may be fine, those out of work may not, even if they are actively looking for a job+want to work, and hence if you want them to survive you'll need benefits. Even if you assume the minimum wage is set at or below the equilibrium however, you still run into the main issue with that reasoning: You're assuming working 40 hours a week. Now for your typical person that's fine, but what if you're disabled, and are only capable of working 20 hours a week, not 40? Or what if you also have to look after your children when they come back from school, and so can only work during school hours? Again in such situations you would want a benefits system and/or taxation to come into play to ensure those people could still survive. The final point (which is admitedly slightly pedantic) is that you failed to provide information on the cost of all necessities. Yes it's fair to assume that $13,624(less tax) will be enough to buy food for a year, but will it include shelter, medical bills, etc.? Since those costs won't be equal for each person, it's not a streatch to say that you will have some situations where it turns out that isn't enough money (especially if you then introduce taxation on that figure, which will mean you have even less)!

 

Well to draw a better analogy you would need to talk about my hourly wage going down. What would I then do? Well like the government I would have 3 options: cut my spending, as you mentioned, Borrow money (which in the case of an individual is arguably much more justified, since if I am at the start of my working life and expect to get pay rises in the future then it would follow the idea of consumption smoothing over a lifetime so as to maximise my utility on average), or increase my income by working more hours/overtime.

Furthermore, although it's a very cheap political promise issue (we're going to give everyone tax cuts/increase spending! How? Oh, we'll cut government spending. But not in a bad way, we'll cut out inefficiency and make savings so no-one gets hurt), cutting spending itself carries disadvantages - do you cut your military spending, and so risk jeopordising your country's ability to invade other countries protect itself, or do you cut back on the police+fire service, with the inevitable problems that would cause wrt crime, destruction of property+deaths? Maybe you make cut backs on education and risk hurting your economy in the long term, or stop maintaining the roads/other infrastructure and risk business/trade suffering, or instead you could cut back on other publicly provided services available to everyone, or on benefit programs for the poor. Also with much of the government expenditure, people on low incomes often benefit as much or more than people on the higher incomes, hence if you cut spending in those areas you are still making them pay (indirectly and to a lesser extent) for that tax cut on the rich. Oh just to pre-empt you or anyone else I'm not saying inefficiencies or excess spending areas don't exist btw.