Fantastic! Thanks for providing this.
Strictly speaking, your argument as stated is valid but unfortunately not sound & the reason it's unsound is because premise 4 can be false; its consequent does not necessarily follow from its antecedent. It is possible for the government to have access to the resources/money of rich people, yet not distribute these resources/money to the poorest.
I'm going to disregard this nuisance of a technicality, though, because with your original claim, as stated (
Crime, corruption, poverty, abject hunger, lack of shelter and access to basic necessities can all be reduced by taxing the rich and distributing money, goods and services to the poorest.), it does seem like it can be the conclusion to a sound argument & I think this can be achieved by making some tweaks to your premises - in fact, I think there's only one that's necessary - revise consequent for premise 4 to "the government
can distribute these resources/money to the poorest." I believe this would now be consistent with your original claim resulting in your argument being sound.
As a side note: based on this tweak, your argument is sound independent of the 1st 2 premises; I'm just going to move on for now, but we can revisit these 2 premises and how they need to be incorporated into an argument if necessary.
Yes, I do believe this is a pretty good description - I'll go with it unless some unnoticed detail reveals some sort of discrepancy; I think you get the idea of my position or what I'm getting at.
I agree that there may be several ways to address this, including educating voters, and I have quite a few:
One thing that voters ought to familiarize themselves with and understand about the economy is the Laffer Curve. This basically points out that there's an optimal tax rate for maximizing revenue; for example, a tax rate of 10% could bring in $1 trillion dollars in tax revenue, a tax rate of 50% could bring in $3 trillion in revenue, but a tax rate of 90% is going to bring in less than $3 trillion; it'll probably be the same as or close to the revenue brought in by a 10% tax rate (maybe a little more, maybe a little less). If enough voters were aware of this, then they might realize that the tax rate might as well be 10% rather than 90%, or 25% rather than 75%, etc.
Last I checked, there's a consensus among economists about the general shape of the curve, but not with where this optimal tax rate is. The free market economists more or less contend that this rate is somewhere below 50%, and socialist economists more ore less contend that this rate is somewhere above 50%. From the perspective of the top US marginal tax rate (~37%) and an analysis based on an engineering perspective (i.e. ~35%:
The Crier Curve), they seem to be in agreement with the position of free market economists, and I think it's interesting that these values happen to be very close to each other. The discrepancy can probably be explained by the fact that the blog article doesn't assume tax brackets, meaning that without tax brackets & having the same revenue results, the US tax rate would probably be ~35%.
A tax rate, even without tax brackets, as opposed to a fixed tax fee is one thing that's already being done to tax more from the rich. With a tax based on rate, someone only making $25k/yr is only paying, say - $2.5k in taxes at a 10% rate, and someone making $25 million/yr is paying, say - $2.5 million in taxes; they're paying way more in taxes than what someone makes in a year at a rate of $25k/yr (that's a factor of 100 between richer person tax bill and poorer person total pay!).
Tax brackets is something else that's being done to tax even more from the rich; now that person making 25k/yr is only paying, say - $1.25k in taxes at a 5% tax rate, and that person making $25 million/yr, at a tax rate of, say - 20%, is paying somewhere in or near the vicinity of $4.5 million or more, but below $5 million (taking into account the lower marginal rates for the lower bracketed rate amounts) in taxes, depending on where those brackets are and their rates. Now you've gone from the poor tax payer paying $2.5k to only paying $1.25k, and the rich tax payer going from paying $2.5 million to paying around $4.5 million or a "little more" (meaning something like an additional $100k).
If it's your contention that the rich have the luxury of deductions and tax loopholes to avoid having to pay taxes, then the solution to this is to have a flat tax rate. In reality, it basically doesn't make a difference, because taxes are actually money being removed from between the trading parties; what I mean is this - let's suppose person A negotiates a trade with person B; person A sells a widget to person B for $100. One scenario is that there's a sales tax of 10%, meaning that person B actually has to spend $110 to purchase the widget, and tax revenue is $10. In another scenario there's an income tax of 10%, meaning that the person A has to pay 10%, which is also $10 in revenue, and made a net gain of $90; however, with the law of supply and demand, this basically means that each party is pays will vary.
Let's suppose person A wants to have a net gain of $100 for the widget; for a 10% income tax rate, then they're going to demand $111.12 from person B for the widget. Let's now suppose person B has a budget of $100 for the widget; if they have to pay a sales tax of 10%, they're going to offer person A $90.90 for the widget. In both cases, the tax revenue is slightly different, but essentially the same amount (~$10). There are several points being illustrated by this: one is that the government is receiving practically the same amount either way; another is that one or the other party has to foot the bill; the buyer is going to lower their offer if they have to foot the tax bill, and the seller is going to raise their price if they have to foot the tax bill.
This means that the only real difference between a sales tax and an income tax is who's responsible for that cutting a check for paying that ~$10 in taxes and sending it to the government. Retail businesses already have the responsibility of cutting that check for the sales tax revenue they have to collect from customers, and retail customers don't have to concern themselves with cutting a check to pay the sales tax, since they've already paid it when the retailer collected it from them, unless they want to deduct it as a business or medical expense, etc. The same isn't true for employees when it comes to paying income tax; employee income taxes are already being deducted by an employer's payroll department, but employees have to go fill out and file income tax returns and pay up to the IRS and state tax departments if they owe money.
As businesses, retailers have the infrastructure to collect sales taxes, and employers have the infrastructure to withhold taxes; employers and retailers are essentially or usually one in the same thing, meaning that it's one in the same entity that's both collecting sales taxes and withholding employee taxes, with some exceptions (e.g. wholesale distributors).
(to be continued)
