You're viewing a single thread.
First I thought this was dumb, but actually... It doesn't seem like taxes really get distributed to everyone. I live in a poor neighborhood and our streets are all jacked up, but somehow the rich neighborhoods always have nice streets. Am I paying taxes so the rich people get nicer streets? How do I get the city to fix our roads too?
our streets are all jacked up
Not that it'll really help your situation, but you should look into whether or not your state's Department of Transportation (DOT) has some sort of reporting tool online.
Mine does, and I've used it to report several issues, including several potholes on my neighborhood road. The potholes were filled within a week after I reported it.
Am I paying taxes so the rich people get nicer streets?
But the takeaway is not to get rid of taxes. The solution is to properly distribute tax funds across all areas, rather than funnel money to the top.
We don't have enough systems in place to prevent the rich from taking more than their fair share.
We don’t have enough systems in place to prevent the rich from taking more than their fair share.
If we did, there would be no billionaires.
But I don't think this startup would help. The poor neighborhoods would still have less to invest. Privatizing taxes would just make the poorer neighborhoods worse and the richer neighborhoods nicer.
It depends. Yes, poor neighborhoods pay less taxes, and rich pay more taxes. But the imbalance in expenses may be even bigger, because of the way priorities work.
It's the same as minority representation in democracies (and the reason Soviet system, not the real one, but the theoretical one, is bad), when representatives are chosen by voting, the minority has fewer chances of being represented than if sortition (randomization) is used.
Ah yes, the tyranny of democracy. It's all good until the majority takes away your voice by sheer numbers.
It's rather that 80% of votes press their point in much more than 80% of cases. Which even feels unjust.
Money is like votes in this case.
Am I paying taxes so the rich people get nicer streets?
Yes, unironically.
How do I get the city to fix our roads too?
By being rich, or having rich friends, or managing to gather a lot of people (50+) at the front of your politicians' offices (or their homes for extra effect) and make the demand
The problem is two fold. First, the poorer people pay less taxes, thus their streets have less money. Additionally, the richer folk tend to donate to funds to make additional improvement. The solution is simple - pay more money.
I'd argue the poor pay a vastly higher percentage of their income on taxes, but I like to include all taxes in that figure, not just income tax.
More than half of households in the UK are net recipients, meaning that those who earn more, contribute more and those who earn less actually use more in social services than they contribute in taxes. Basically those who earn more pay for those who earn less. I don't think there are many countries where this is not true.
Yeah, but where do the rich people get more money from than the poor? And I don't mean middle-class doctor/lawyer "rich", I mean CEO-of-15-companies rich.
CEO is not that rich, only a few well known exceptions are. Real rich people don't live in the cities, their families own huge swathes of land and they're totally fine living in their mansions and castles far away from the cities.