So I've been an ancap for some time now. I'm always trying to sharpen my talking points in the case of a debate, but there is a place I am def lacking knowledge and was hoping someone from the community could help me out on. Here we go:
I read a lot on Mises.org that much of the tax code, price controls, and regulations in general actually end up hurting poor people more than anyone else. i understand this line of reasoning with regards to the printing of money and inflation, and somewhat with regard to price controls. However, with a tax code such as ours, where the rich pay more percentage wise than those on lower brackets, and the poorest paying nothing, how can this be true? Again, I favor no taxes for anybody, but if we assume there will be taxes, how can we argue that the rich benefit form the tax code. Where I have heard this applied is to public universities and that the poor end up paying for a service they will never be able to afford; the middle and upper classes do. But again, the poorest do not pay any taxes at all so how are they paying for public universities? Sales tax? Does any of that money get sourced to public universities?
any thoughts or pertinent info is appreciated.
The income tax is a small piece of the tax code and the supposedly "progressive" portion of it is what the Elites want everybody to focus on. It is true that the upper-middle class (what you are probably calling "the rich", i.e. those with a net worth between $250K and $10M) pay significantly more income tax than others on income that can be taxed and counted.
But there are many other kinds of taxes than income tax. I'll just give a brief litany: sales taxes, import taxes, tariffs, duties, excise taxes, estate taxes, real estate taxes, etc. etc. The thing to keep in mind is that the net effect of all these taxes on consumer goods is to make everything more expensive and this hurts the poor the most.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the income tax falls primarily on the shoulders of laborers. Those who sell their time in exchange for wages have the hardest time avoiding taxation and so they are very unlikely to escape taxation. Those with other forms of property and who specialize in entrepreneurial buying and selling (speculating) have more opportunities to choose jurisdictions and structure transactions in such a way as to minimize their net tax burden. This means that a great deal of their actual income may not actual be taxed at all. The evil idea of income taxation must necessarily be borne more fully by the laboring class (those without capital) than by the entrepreneurial/captalist class.
Clayton -
Yeah you really don't think about all the things that are taxed. In fact, there's almost nothing you can do that isn't taxed. Poor people basically just don't pay income tax — which, don't get me wrong, is still a travesty if you want to talk about fairness...as they make almost 26% of the income, but pay only 0.6% of the income tax (kind of interesting that these are the same people who whine about "fair share").
But really have a look at just some of the taxes you pay: