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October 31, 2007
Taxes, Taxes, Taxes!
In a pair of posts Draginol (CEO of Stardock) Attacks the "liberal" view of taxation. In these posts, he reveals to things: 1) he has some factually incorrect ideas about taxation, and 2) he doesn't really understand liberals. Interestingly, these things are not related. Point 1 is irrelevant; I'll be focusing on point 2...
Liberals view taxes as.. paying for stuff. Society wants roads, schools, police, fire departments, healthcare, etc. Let's ignore the why. For whatever reason (Wikipedia doesn't have a page for "Collective action dilemma", but that's the reason. See this old post for more), society has decided that government is the best provider for whatever good is under discussion.
Now we need to talk about paying for it. This becomes a simple question: Who is least-hurt by having less money? That's why liberals like to tax the rich. They can afford it...
Post Script: to the best of my knowledge, conservatives want to cut taxes not so they can pay less taxes, but rather so they can "starve the beast"-- cut government services. They do seem convinced that the freer they are to starve, the freer they are as people. I disagree pretty vehemently.
Posted by Andrew at October 31, 2007 12:13 PM