Quote:
Originally posted by Night Stalker:
quote:
Originally posted by Rokenn:
A tax is a tax. They are going to take your money one way or another, so way does it matter how? Also, you did not address the wealth redistribution effect of defense contracts. So I guess you are in favor of certain types of wealth redistribution but not others?
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Damn Rokenn, I thought I was cynical. While I agree that spending on government (not just defense) is highly inefficient and loaded with fat, to to view it as wealth redistribution is way out there. Contracts produce something. Wealth distribution just shuffles money from one person to another for little practical purpose. You may argue that defense spending has little practical purpose, but that is a differnt issue.
As for how a dollar is taxed .... well with multiple levels of taxation, all you do is decrease the value of that dollar at each level - forcing everyone, gov included to loose out. [/QUOTE]The practial purpose of the wealth redistribution aspect of a progressive income tax system is just that: to redistribute wealth. And there a people out there, like me, who believe that that purpose is an absolutely indispensable one in a free market economy, a system with many wonderful inherent advantages, but also some inherent drawbacks, with one of the most important being that it produces an steadily increasing degree of social inequality, if left completely unregulated. Yes, the efficiency of the mechanisms used for that purpose is of course highly debatable.